Collaborating Scholar, Tom Murray’s The Skin of Others is one of the outstanding films of the Sydney Film Festival. About colonial relations with First Australians, The Skin of Others is told through the biographies of two remarkable men: Douglas Grant (c.1885 – 1951) and Balang TE Lewis, and also features Archie Roach.
The Skin of Others is a feature-length extension of an ABC audio production and a 2018 short film, an exchange between Douglas Grant and Henry Lawson. A link to the film is here. Enjoy your listening and viewing of these, and don’t forget to book a ticket for the full feature.
Guardian reviewer, Luke Buckmaster, noted The Skin of Others included the final film appearance of the late Balang T Lewis (otherwise known as Tom E Lewis), who died in 2018. It is an exploration of
the life of Douglas Grant, an Indigenous Australian activist and veteran whose jam-packed life includes fighting in the first world war on the frontline in France, where he was captured by Germans.
The Germans, Buckmaster continued, were “very curious about Douglas” due to “his dark complexion, history as an Aboriginal man educated in a white society, and even his ability to put on a
Scottish accent,” according to a biography published on the Australian War Memorial website.