The Fringe Dwellers


The Fringe Dwellers is a 1986 film directed by Bruce Beresford, based on the 1961 novel The Fringe Dwellers by Western Australian author Nene Gare. The film is about a young Aboriginal girl who dreams of life beyond the family camp that sits on the fringe of white society.
The film is acclaimed as being the first Australian film featuring Indigenous actors in all the major roles. It achieved critical and international success when it was released in 1986, but gained only a lukewarm reception in Australia.

Plot

Trilby is a young Aboriginal woman living with her people on the outskirts of everyday Australian society. Trilby encourages her mother to apply for a Housing Commission home being built in an area inhabited mostly by wealthier white families. Her mother, sister Noonah, and Trilby save enough for them all to move there from the "fringe". They buy some new furniture for the house and improve their station in life. But there is a culture clash. Trilby learns that her family is actually happier surrounded by their community and extended family, and that her own goals are not necessarily the goals of others in her life. With xenophobic neighbors casting a constant judgmental eye, Trilby and her boyfriend, Phil, attempt to find happiness in their new environment. Trilby becomes pregnant, gives birth, but drowns her baby, making it look like an accident. Her family leave their suburban house after Trilby's father loses all their rent money in a card game: the family return to their house in the camp. Trilby, however, leaves on a bus bound for the city.

Cast

Production

Beresford had been interested in making a film from the novel since he read it in the mid-1970s, buying his copy at a second-hand book shop in London. Funding was difficult to raise but eventually was done through the Australian Film Commission and Queensland Film Corporation. The Fringe Dwellers was shot in Cherbourg and Murgon, Queensland, Australia.

Awards

The film was nominated for seven AFI Awards and won for the Best Adapted Screenplay. It was also entered into the 1986 Cannes Film Festival. Cinema Papers reported that "three Aboriginal activists walked out" of the screening at Cannes, without naming them or giving any further details. This claim is repeated in David Stratton's book The Avocado Plantation. However, this is difficult to substantiate and indeed the Sydney Morning Herald reported that there were "no mass walkouts".

Box office

The Fringe Dwellers grossed $174,433 at the box office in Australia.