Changing Images: An Interview With Tracey Moffatt

Tracey Moffatt is one of Australia’s most exciting young experimental film makers. She made her debut with Nice Coloured Girls which won the prize for the Most Innovative Film at the 1988 Festival of Australian Film and Video, Frames. She also won the Frames Best New Australian Video Award with a five minute Aboriginal and Islander dance video called Watch Out. Tracey Moffat believes that black women have either been overlooked or misrepresented in films made by white people. Her aim is to change this image, she is determined to show that there are strong black women, survivors. Not only does she want to change the images. She wants to present the new images in a different way. ‘I really wanted to avoid the clichés and didacticism of earlier films about my people. The last thing I wanted was the usual groans, “Here we go again, another predictable docomentary about Aborigines’”. She has achieved both aims in her film Nice Coloured Girls where three young Aboriginal girls go out in the Cross, find a Captain (Sugar Daddy) and roll him.