Short documentary films and photographs for Pilbara Community Legal Service, made on outreach with the team in Jigalong, a remote Martu community in the East Pilbara.
Client: Pilbara Community Legal Service
Where: Jigalong, East Pilbara, WA, Martu Country
When: May 2025
We made: Film, photography
Showing up, again and again
Jigalong is hundreds of kilometres from the nearest major centre. PCLS goes anyway, on a regular outreach run, with domestic violence prevention, housing advocacy, tenancy support, financial counselling and general legal help delivered on Country. The model depends on trust, and trust depends on turning up.
We travelled with the team, met community members alongside them and sat in on workshops. We filmed the staff interviews in a dry riverbed just outside town. In the middle of the day that country is so flat and bright that any open position blows out the background, and the riverbed gave us texture behind each person and cut off the line to the horizon.
We wanted to leave something behind. We made portraits of the children and printed them on the spot on a small Canon Selphy we had carried in. One girl took over a camera, photographed her friends, then turned it on Luke. As the heat went out of the day, the boys came out to play footy barefoot on an oval cut into the red sand.
The films are part of a PCLS campaign to build awareness and funding for remote outreach.
Photographs and film: Ripple Narratives
