Aquarius

When we first dived into making a film about an "alternative" festival held over 50 years ago, we assumed there'd be a lot of looking back. Back to what was contemporary then, back to what triggered the passion and the buy-in from so many hippies and radicals to stay in this region and make it the frontline of the battle for the environment and against authority. Who knew these young, mostly middle-class student pioneers had it in them?
But the film is not looking back, it's looking down the same lens those hippies looked down so many decades ago- to the future. The people who refashioned Nimbin into the hippy capital of Australia travelled across the country and the world to join in a festival of rebirth - Nimbin Aquarius - to be part of a social experiment to create the future they wanted to be in.
They were told to come in tribes, to build their own shelters and share food. They brought skills with them developed through a confluence of world events - global wars, environmental destruction and stifling conservative power structures - and those skills fuelled by youthful passion and vision led them to recreate their world into something ungovernable, hopeful and alive. That's the Aquarius spirit and the soul of our film.
Aquarius is an archival miracle - a kaleidoscope of multimedia material gathered from institutions and participants with videos stored under beds and images never processed and drawings and student newspapers and memories held by individuals for over 50 years. Through extensive collaboration with participants and organisers we pull all these resources together to examine the power of this one event to continue to shape history.
The film is a visceral adventure, we hear the story from participants, fearless raconteurs. We stay on the fields with them to experience the Nimbin magic. Their stories and music animate the archive. Aquarius reaches from those fields and that generation to now, illuminating the continuing struggle between the establishment and the alternative, between community and the individual to effect change in the face of overwhelming odds.
Aquarius is as much about now as the festival that recycled a town over 50 years ago. Our "now" is populated by the rainforest saved by the blockades led by the Aquarians. It is strewn with intentional communities inspired by the original communities started post festival. Our "now" has adopted natural birth and food cooperatives, sustainable home building, and meditation techniques, medicinal grass, psychedelics for healing and Indigenous recognition. All these ideas were new to Australia and rejected or banned by the mainstream, and yet the Aquarius organisers opened up the festival to those radical ideas.
Aquarius is the mythology of the green hills in rural Australia. Despite fierce opposition and messy growth periods the counterculture dreamers succeeded because of their unwavering commitment to two principles: community is stronger than the individual and love is more powerful than violence.