Kari Hill, with her daughter Ruby who will also be part of the Spirals film. Photo: Supplied.
Creative Australia has backed a deeply personal Illawarra film about grief and healing, selecting debut screenwriter Kari Hill’s Spirals as one of just 25 projects nationwide for its Match Lab program.
With a ticking crowdfunding deadline attached to the program, Hill is now racing to bring her lived experience to the screen and spark broader conversations about loss.
The film tells the story of a grieving teenager who, after the sudden death of her father, spirals down into self-destruction until she reconnects with the bush and her ancestors, and spirals up and heals.
Hill said it focused on her lived experience of grief and, after exploring her own healing, she now felt it “was time” to share it.
“It’s been 30 years and it’s my dad’s 30th memorial this year,” she said.
“I felt that with so much of my journey, I’m ready to share that.”
With just two weeks left in a crucial crowdfunding campaign that Creative Australia will then match, Hill is in a final push to bring the film to life.
However, it was grassroots backing from Culture Bank and Wollongong City Council that led Hill to where she is now.
She said when she and her producer Antonio Barea first saw Culture Bank, an Illawarra community-powered initiative funded by donors who have a direct say in the creative projects selected, she jumped at the chance.
“I absolutely loved that it was funding coming from the people in the area that could support the arts,” she said.
She said that funding not only provided her the encouragement to continue with the project, but led to her applying for the Small Culture Fund with Wollongong City Council.
“Both those two seed fundings allowed the next application for Creative Australia and their Match Lab, and Spirals was one of only 25 nationwide that was successful for that,” she said.
She said she had surpassed her first milestone of $10,000, which would be matched by Creative Australia, but she still had until 14 April to build on that.
“It’s exciting because from the very beginning with those seed funds, it’s allowed that momentum to grow, because my really big vision is to be able to pay everyone on my team and have those experienced people in the industry with me,” she said.
Hill said that meant she was able to be a director’s attachment to well-known Illawarra director Sharon Lewis on the film.
She said the inspiration for screenwriting came from completing a videography project with South Coast Writers Centre, along with a three-year screen writing course with veteran director Graham Thorburn, mentoring as part of Creative Plus Business with Screen Illawarra chairman Nick Bolton, and completing a film and production course with iTeC Academy.
However, the basis of the film lay in a deeply personal story.
“I grew up in Mount Kembla and Dad would take us bushwalking, and my brothers and I would go bush and we wouldn’t come home until we got hungry or it got dark,” she said.
“So I’ve got that really big connection to the bush.”
Hill said that in 2019 she was part of the School of Shamanic Womancraft, where she went on a vision quest involving three days and nights in the bush alone, fasting, drumming, and meditating.
She said the film was bringing all that together and would be filmed in Mount Keira and Mount Kembla and involved Wadi Wadi elder Dr Aunty Barbara Nicholson as her Aboriginal consultant to weave in the Wadi Wadi Country story and provide cultural authenticity.
There’s a bigger vision for the film though, for Hill.
“The film is part of it, but it’s the seeding part to really explore community connective conversations, where I want to bring people together to really start to talk about how we grieve, how we talk about death in our society, our journey with substance misuse, and how we can start to really shift those and support, especially, our younger generation,” she said.
“I feel this is an amazing way and medium to share stories and healing, and start those conversations.”
She said she hoped people would come away with a deeper understanding of the power of the bush, and that anyone, Indigenous or not, could find healing on Country.
“That’s the key takeaway, that wherever we are now, whatever adversities we’re experiencing, that we can walk, preferably without shoes, on the earth and that helps heal, and that it’s there for all of us,” she said.
She said once the crowdfunding was complete, it would give her a better timeline for location scouting, casting and filming. Her daughter will also be part of the project.
“It’s just amazing, this beautiful legacy and support of the community, and I just feel so grateful,” she said.
“It’s been a huge process to come forward with the past and then bringing it into this healing that’s happening.”
Creative Australia crowdfunding for Spirals closes 14 April.
