This is something I have always wanted to do: screen in a prison. I do joke about captive audiences: I suppose it’s a way to make light of it, and there is some truth to it. But I also figure, no matter what, inmates are still Australians who miss out on Australian films. And when I first started to research Ivanhoe with the Central Darling shire, the population of the small minimum security prison farm was included in the town’s statistics. So why not?

We made the approaches. I visited the facility to see if it could be done, and everything fell into place quickly. We were approved. So we spent a night with the inmates, in their visitation yard, watching The Tracker on the big screen.

The prison population is almost all Indigenous – men from young adult to quite senior, who have made it to this minimum security training facility through good behaviour, and a desire to train and skill up before they are released. The longest they stay is two years, and the population never rises above 50. We don’t expect any ‘trouble’, given how the men got here, and why they are here. When I ask if there’s any problem screening outside the compound, in the unfenced visitation yard, the simple and quick response was: “Well they can run, but there’s nowhere to go”. Ivanhoe sits in the middle of the central plains – wide, endlessly flat and treeless. Literally nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

Despite all this, James Giddey (from West Darling Arts) and I get the run down on what to do and how to do it.

We are told the men have been given no choice: “You all go, or no one goes!” Because we have gone to the trouble, as a mark of respect everyone has to attend. Apparently a few objected because they had watched the film on video on NAIDOC day. But at the designated time the 41 inmates were counted in, lugging their own seats into the bottom corner of the yard where we had set up the screen. To a man they looked strong and fit, and proud.

Because we were in a prison we couldn’t turn all the lights out. It was a moonless, very dark night. So screening conditions weren’t ideal. But once the light hit the big screen, and Archie Roach pumped through our big outdoor speakers, it looked like the men were in. And they stayed in all the way through – laughter rippling through the group at the light moments, and a hush of recognition at the turns in the story that cut to the quick of Aboriginal experience.

We were told that there had been a little bit of “disquiet” in the population over the last couple of days, and that The Tracker could actually ease the peace back in. It seemed to have that effect. This captive audience seemed captivated. After the men had been counted back in, our officer came back to report that they were all talking about the film, and that they had loved it.

The songline of my job is that I watch these films with different audiences each time I see them. The last two nights, with the kids in Wilcannia and the men of Ivanhoe Correctional Facility, allowed me onto the fringes of lives I can never know, never experience. But through The Tracker, even if only for 90 minutes, I could be a part of their lives. I think Rolf de Heer, David Gulpilil, Gary Sweet and all those involved with The Tracker have been well acknowledged for the beauty and brilliance of their work. Well, here’s one more nod in their direction, from this white fella, for two very, very special nights. Two nights in the thrall of the silver screen, where at least I felt a part of something that is fundamentally, deeply, a part of the land I traipse across – the stories of the people who will always, before and after everyone else, own this land and the truth of it, both beautiful and awful. Thanks to you all for letting us be there.