ORANGES AND SUNSHINE: Director Jim Loach + David Wenham discuss their landmark Australian-UK co-production
IT HAS BEEN 18 MONTHS SINCE Kevin Rudd delivered Australia's formal apology to the "Forgotten Children", in the Great Hall of Parliament House. Since then, little has been heard about the shocking Child Migration Program that existed between Australia and the UK. That is, until now.
Oranges and Sunshine, a film based on the long-forgotten program, stars Emily Watson as a Nottingham-based social worker, named Margaret Humphreys, who uncovered a well-kept secret between the two nations: the mass, enforced migration of orphans from the UK to the Commonwealth, including Australia, which totalled over 130,000. The so-called Child Migrant Program - which took off in post-war, economically ravaged England - was only officially stopped in 1970.
Filmmaker Jim Loach instinctively knew this forgotten story would have to be what became his feature debut. "Honestly, she got four or five sentences in, and I was absolutely spell bound," he says, of the horror story which real-life campaigner Margaret Humphreys described. "I found it completely extraordinary. I was amazed so little had been said about it."
While shaken and stirred, Loach (pictured, above) found the nature of this dark, forgotten episode in Australia's (and the UK's) history inadvertently helping with his own burgeoning dreams of becoming a feature filmmaker, on his own terms: far from the madding crowd back home.
"I think it's probably not a coincidence that I was drawn to the story because it happens in Australia - the other side of the world from my home town," he says, reflecting on the down side to being the son of a celebrated director (Ken Loach).
"My dad being my dad, it's always going to be a factor, back home. You feel like you get in the neck whatever you do. It's completely out of control. But to me, he's just my dad. We're really close. In Australia, it's not a big deal, more of a talking point. So I could just get on with making the film - a film I very much wanted to make."
Joining the understated Englishman on his cross-cultural mission - "Oranges and Sunshine" is an Australian-UK co-production, in every sense is an enviable cast of acclaimed stars, including Australia's David Wenham and Hugo Weaving (pictured, above, with Watson). The pair play two of the victims trying to cope, some 30 years on. Wenham, in particular, admits that playing the character of Len was one of the biggest challenges of his acting life.
"I couldn't understand Len to begin with," he says. "He responds in a rather unusual way: he's supremely confident, somewhat defensive, and he's seemingly unaffected by these traumatic experiences, which is sort of interesting. And from an acting perspective, it's very hard. Because it's not the way someone would normally respond."
Wenham (pictured, above, with Watson) was so vigilant with his research, he was even invited by one of the real-life children from the program to visit him, in Perth and go down to the house the kids built, a house that soon became their prison.
"Having been to the real Bindoon [one of the more infamous sites, referenced in the film], it does give the idea of what it's really like," he says. "This huge structure in the middle of nowhere: these kids were children used as slave labour, used to build the so-called "facilities" in which they would supposedly learn and live in."
The formal apologies from both governments (the UK's followed Australia's, in February 2010) coincided with the film's post-production, after 20 years of campaigning by Humphreys herself. But while Loach insists it could be just that (a coincidence), he does feel that the film has already made a difference: to some of the children who suffered at the time.
'We showed the film to a lot of the real people in Perth, who became an inspiration for our characters," he says. "They were incredibly supportive. It was incredibly moving experience. I think they really got a lot out of seeing their experience validated on screen. And the audiences in England have told us that they take it as a very inspirational story, that it's an uplifting story, that one woman didn't give up. So, hopefully, we have made a difference."
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