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Bushfire Victims Share Their Experiences - ‘From The Ashes’

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A digital story-telling project, ‘From the Ashes’, produced by the Australian Centre for the Moving image and Latrobe City Council, premiered to communities affected by the 2006/2007 Gippsland Bushfires

By Latrobe City - 1st June 2007 - Back to News

Gippsland Bushfires at the Toongabbie Mechanics Institute on Friday evening.

The ‘From the Ashes, Stories from the 2006/2007 Gippsland Bushfires’ DVD is the culmination of a project designed to aid community recovery after the bushfires, by encouraging those affected to share their stories.

Prior to the DVDs inaugural showing, Latrobe City’s chief executive officer, Paul Buckley, thanked the participants for involving themselves in the project and sharing their very personal stories; conceding that the graphic footage being shown might still bring many a tear to the eye of those affected.

"It is impossible to watch these very personal experiences being revealed in ‘From the Ashes’ without sharing some of the fear, loss, and disillusionment that must have been felt at the time; yet with all these stories there is also an element of hope and determination for the future - a sense of moving on. As such, these stories help the path to recovery and are in fact part of the recovery process itself," Mr Buckley said.

Latrobe City’s manager community support and development, Steve Tong, said ‘From the Ashes, Stories from the 2006/2007 Gippsland Bushfires’ is an innovative way for bushfire victims to tell and share their very personal experiences in a contemporary way. "This project is also an essential resource for decision makers, emergency managers and recovery workers to understand the unique nature of human reaction to the same event," Mr Tong said.

"Latrobe City in partnership with the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) facilitated a three day workshop where ten participants from across the Gippsland region each produced three minute stories of their experiences in the recent bushfires.

"The ten stories provide an intimate account of what individuals experienced before, during and after a bushfire. Prior to the workshop, the participants developed draft stories. The stories were refined further with assistance from Latrobe City community development workers and ACMI facilitators," Mr Tong explained.

"Individual participants shared their stories with the group and then narrated them to still photographs and video images. ACMI then took the stories at the conclusion of the workshop and further edited them to a highly polished product."

Mr Tong said the stories have become a resource for communities to assist them in the recovery process. "When people in our community view these stories, they may relate to the insights and perspectives relayed in the stories and consider their own experience and the uniqueness of them. Alternatively, they may reject the storyteller’s view. Either response forces the viewer to consider their own reaction and progress their own emotional recovery."

The DVD ‘From the Ashes, Stories from the 2006/2007 Gippsland Bushfires’ runs for approximately 30 minutes and will be shown at recovery closure celebrations across the region and feature at the Briagolong Film Festival. The DVD will also be available for anyone in the community to borrow from Latrobe City libraries.

"It can be used as a tool to inform communities and organisations, and demonstrates the diversity of responses and the common threads in the lives of those who have experienced trauma," Mr Tong concluded.

Source: http://gippsland.com/

Published by: news@gippsland.com

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