I’ve thought about resistance: what resistance and where the resistance might have been in my life.

When I moved to Sydney I became a feminist and a builders labourer. That’s where I learnt to lift my own weight – as a feminist on a building site.

The anti-war, the Vietnam War demos, in the States: going to Washington D.C. twice and demonstrating. And being on building sites and having meetings in the lunch room about what was happening on other sites, or what was happening with the Green Bans, what was happening if people got sacked, or if a job stopped sometimes there’ll be a march to that job, or there would be various things involving protests, or taking over a crane in the middle of the night. UTS, in the UTS building we took over a crane and we took turns going up for a day, or two, or three. Those things came up. We had a rally over the Sydney Harbour Bridge to call attention to having bike tracks, bikeways, and have more safety for bicycling in the city. I guess I think there were probably were a few more, but those are the things that came up for me.

For me, I can make films about things, you know political films or whatever, or just films about people who are pretty amazing or do the most amazing things and resist in their own way and are trying to change people’s lives, and making things better for everyone, not just themselves. I think that it’s a group thing for me: resistance, always. Because when you make films, you don’t make it alone. You have a whole group of people that work with you in various ways, you know, for the common good.

Becoming a feminist meant that I just grabbed and I did everything; I did anything. I learned how to use a camera. I learned technology. I was fearless in a way that I would not have thought about before. So there is a connection with the BLF (Builders Labourers Federation) as well what’s happening now in WestConnex. So it’s big, that metallic thing. It’s just tons of machinery. That’s what we are pushing against.

SCENT

Dank, damp cement, the metal of machinery and iridescent green ferns

By

Pat Fiske