Rodeo Days

A personal film about my Australian ancestry and identity, employing archival footage of 20th century rural life, given vibrant expression in a hybrid of experimental film, spoken word and music video. My father and his brothers and sisters lived through desperate poverty during a childhood in the Depression-era. Their father abandoned the family, leaving their mother to take care of all six children alone and without work. As the boys reached early adulthood, they took to the rodeo circuit, travelling wide distances between events, a life on the road. Talented horsemen, they became well-known as rodeo champions. Rodeo was appealing to poor country men partly for providing a sense of status they were sorely lacking, and because of the prize money on offer. Rodeo events at that time offered high prize money to the winners, often 20 times more than the average wage for a rural worker. Newspaper reports at the time record the many broken bones for those rough riders, and worse. The heroism of these men who were otherwise in the lowest strata of workers in society, was often accompanied by alcoholism and family violence. Rodeo Days combines what I witnessed of this time and its recent memory in my father's generation, my own personal family experiences, and wider observations about the history of anglo-Australian society and my personal place as part of it.