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Leah Purcell, backyard showrunner

"I took from my Aunties, how they spun a yarn," Leah Purcell says in the Hector Crawford Memorial Lecture.

Actor, Writer, Director, Producer Leah Purcell received a standing ovation yesterday at the Screen Forever Conference when she gave an emotion-charged Hector Crawford Memorial Lecture.

As the first Indigenous woman to deliver the annual industry lecture, Purcell gave a stream of consciousness reflecting on her career and childhood growing up in Murgon, Queensland.

“I was a backyard showrunner, and will proudly claim that. I was using that word long before it came into our industry,” she recalled fondly.

As a young girl, Purcell would stage family shows commandeering up to 20 kids and cousins.

“Having so many people in my hands and knowing I wanted to put a performance on, I worked them bloody hard!” she continued.

“I took from my Aunties, how they spun a yarn, how they told a joke. Blackfella gotta go the long way round to get to the punchline!”

Her career, which includes successes such as Redfern Now, The Secret Daughter, My Place, Wentworth, Police Rescue, Somersault, Lantana, The Proposition and Jindabyne, is one entirely without training. Purcell told delegates she persevered through trial and error, and “get shit done” is her middle name.

“I’ve never waited for nothing in my life. Tell me ‘no’, I will find another way,” she insisted.

“If I can’t come through the door or go over you, I will go under you, sideways, through a back door, give me a gap and I’m gone!”

Along the way she has won Helpmann Awards, AACTA Awards and Premier’s Literary Awards -an honour that contrasts with her rural upbringing.

“I couldn’t say the word ‘literary.’ I was a ‘C average’ student. I couldn’t read out loud, and here I am winning awards for that,” she said.

Her Indigenous roots continue to resonate through not just her work on screen, but her approach behind the cameras.

“When we do a project we milk that bloody thing until you can’t there is no more (intellectual property) you can screw out of it.

“That’s the Blackfella way,” she explained.

“When you hunt the Dugong it’s a special time. You do a sacred kill and share the meat, the oil and skin. You share time with family and sit down.

“So as Blackfellas we’re not going to leave anything behind.”

Whether through book, documentaries, stage play, feature film or television, Purcell draws upon her mob but with a purpose to effect change -especially on projects where she is director.

“We were putting women’s black faces as sexual objects. We’d always had Justine Saunders and Rhoda Roberts who were always raped, downtrodden and murdered. They didn’t have any power in anything. I wanted to make a change from that,” she continued.

“My mother came from a generation where she didn’t have a voice. Her culture was taken and lost from her. My grandmother was considered to be ‘sub-human.’ So if I was going to get anywhere in life I had to take their strength, their energy and do what I’m doing.

“If I sat on the fence and didn’t push myself to the extremes, then I was doing an injustice to what they went through.

“I was born in a time where I could take my talents and excel in what I do.”

Yet despite the industry acclaim she has achieved, Purcell insisted, “I don’t ever want to ‘make it’ because I plan to retire when I’m 98.”

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