The Other War: An investigation via documentary film into images of race and otherness in WW1 and their implications for Indigenous communities today

In 1915 German scientists began an immense task of wartime science designed to categorise ‘the peoples of the world’. This ideological experiment involved Indigenous Australian and Pacific POWs, and paved the way to post-war NAZI racial ideology. The sound, image and other cultural records captured during this wartime experiment are now UNESCO-listed. This documentary film ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) project applies innovative and socially inclusive 'reconciling' research methodologies to repatriate significant Australian cultural records from this WW1 POW archive. It documents a post-colonial chapter in the aesthetics of 'otherness', and describes an important history of indigenous involvement in the foundational Australian narrative of WW1 conflict.