NEW documentary ‘More Than A Fish Kill’ about the devastating events of 2019 and 2023 in the Darling-Baaka River had its Far West premiere screening at Broken Hill City Art Gallery on Thursday night.
The documentary explores how artists, fishery managers and First Nations custodians came together in the aftermath of the two disastrous fish kill events.
The film was created in a collaboration between National Museum, CAD Factory and with videography by Otis Filey, a former Broken Hill resident.
Kirsten Wehner, the James O Fairfax Senior Fellow in Culture and Environment at the National Museum, said that the idea of making the film came after spending 10 days in Menindee in Winter 2023 for the Pangala event that celebrated the return of Murray cod that had been rescued in the fish kills.
“We decided we wanted to turn the Pangala performance into a documentary so that we could share the story more broadly,” she said.
Filmmaker Otis Filey became involved with the project while filming the ‘Pangala: Returning Home’ event on the river.
“The event followed the relocation of some Murray cod following the 2019 fish kills,” Mr Filey said.
“These huge cod that had almost died in the fish kill were rescued and taken to Narrandera to breed. The CAD Factory’s idea was to hold a ceremony when the fish were brought back to country and it was kind of a form of artistic healing, bringing these different groups together in celebration on the river.”
Mr Filey moved to the Menindee area from Melbourne in 2019, where he spent months living on the river with a friend.
“We were living on the side of the Darling Baaka, sleeping in a tent, walking the river every day,” he said.
“Furiously documenting when the first flows in over three years came down in 2020, and the lakes filling up.”
He said that when he first arrived in 2019, he and his friend Dan Schulz had been interested in the Darling Baaka but unaware of how dire the state of the river was.
“We had this idea to canoe the river, but as soon as we arrived we realised that wasn’t going to be possible because there was no water,” Mr Filey said.
“We actually had built a canoe with wheels that we’d planned to wheel between dry sections of the river, but we thought the river would have a few hundred percent more water.”
When he realised his canoeing idea wasn’t going to be possible, he bought a camera with the intention of becoming a documentary filmmaker.
“It was the perfect place to begin because everyone was desperate to talk about the river,” he said.
“The limitations of being new to something and shy about it didn’t really exist because everyone wanted to talk about the dire state of it.”
Mr Filey said he hadn’t witnessed a fish kill until the second in the lakes in 2023, which saw 30 million die in the Darling-Baaka system.
“I spent 10 days documenting it for The Guardian, which was horrific but also an amazing experience to be in the middle of an unfolding disaster and have everyone speak in such a raw way.”
He said it became clear when filming in this time that the event was an ongoing disaster that would continue to unfold.
“Even when the river had lots of water, it was still in a really dire state,” he said.
Mr Filey said the collaboration for the More Than A Fish Kill film came together well as he’d already previous documented the dry river, first flows and fish kills, so he was able to bring this to the documentary.
Previously the film had been screened in Canberra, to which Ms Wehner said audiences were blown away at seeing the gravity of the fish kill.
“People in Canberra had heard about a fish kill but didn’t really have any sense in their heads of what that looked like,” she said.
“They were absolutely blown away watching the documentary.”
Ms Wehner said the team had always intended on bringing the film back to the Far West in the hope it can honour the story of the river.
“We wanted to give people the opportunity to know that their story had been heard,” she said.
“We also really want to honour all the incredible work and the experience people here have gone through, and hope to contribute in some small way to the healing, or at least recognising the incredible grief and trauma that people and country have experienced here because of the state of the river.”
