Community & Business
30 April, 2025
Third Gilgandra Film Festival this weekend
Trouble Up River – The Polish Missionaries promises to be informative viewing at this weekend’s third annual Gilgandra Film Festival (GFF).
The festival was first held in 2023 when Sydney-based documentary maker Simon Target travelled to Gilgandra to showcase the documentary ‘Warrawong: The Windy Place on the Hill’.
This year, Simon, the artistic director of the GFF, spent considerable time traversing through the Sepik River in some of the most remote corners of the developing country to film 'Trouble Up River – The Polish Missionaries (Mission PNG)'.
“I literally go up the side river in a canoe in with a motor on the back and this is the river that's 1500km long and there are no bridges,” he said.
“It's just an extraordinary look into the into the heart of this country.”
Simon explained while the viewers need to watch documentaries to obtain the lessons learned, he gets to update his knowledge on the run while filming.
“I never knew that (Papua) New Guinea is our closest neighbour,” he explained.
“Actually I thought it was New Zealand. But is closer and twice the population of New Zealand (NZ is around 5.5 million).
“It’s (PNG) made up of 400 islands. It's an extraordinary country that we read nothing about it partly because of security problems.
“You know it's a tribal culture … it would be my dream that one day Australians can visit our neighbour with freedom but they can't yet.”
Many Australian sports fans know that PNG is the only nation where rugby league is the proclaimed national sport.
In 2028, PNG will be part of the National Rugby League competition and the country already competes against Australia at test match rugby league level.
However, like Simon said, outside of that, very little is known about the country with a population of almost 11 million people and a capital of Port Moresby.
'Trouble Up River – The Polish Missionaries' will be the feature film on evening two at the festival in conjunction with 'Gilgandra Stories' (a look into the lives of three Gilgandra residents), 'What Country Children See' (highlights of the kids’ documentaries from night one) a special animated film from Poland, 'There are People in the Forest'.
“It rains heavily and it's all tropical,” Simon explained of the setting in PNG for Trouble Up River.
“It's basically on the equator this country, but it features huge mountains and when it rains it rains so much that the water flushes down the river and you can drink the seawater 20 kilometres offshore where the Sepik River flows out into the ocean.
“It is incredible the fact of all this freshwater is it just completely dilutes the salt water so there's an island off in the ocean where you can drink seawater.
“It's an extraordinary natural phenomenon but there's no roads. There's no bridges this night. You can't drive up there. You can only get up there at a boat and you can only get up there if someone's holding your hand then you got somewhere safe to stay.”
He also explained some of the intricacies of this powerful documentary.
“They (some PNG residents) still believe in witchcraft and they believe some people are cursed,” he said.
“They decided that 11-year-old girl was a witch and they started you know preparing a bonfire to kill her.
“And that's when if the nuns that didn't say she's not a witch I'll look after her, that young girl would have lost her life.”
Simon makes documentaries world-wide, usually working for the ABC and SBS. He said eventually a goal for the local festival is to host the event outside in a paddock using projectors that can be charged at EV charging stations.
Night one features 'The Young Filmmaker’s Evening' which is a free event with no ticket required. The main night of the 2025 GFF will be in shire hall, tickets can be purchased online.
