Lousy Little Sixpence: NFSA Digital Restoration
A moving account of five children from the Stolen Generation and the rise of an organised Aboriginal protest movement in NSW in the 1930s.
Lousy Little Sixpence tells the story of five children who were stolen from their families by the Australian Government to become unpaid servants for white families. The title refers to the amount of pocket money they were supposed to receive for their forced labour – but didn’t. In the 1930s, Aboriginal people began to organise politically to fight the Aborigines Protection Board that ran the scheme. This landmark documentary is a moving account of a hidden history and documents the early struggle for Aboriginal self-determination.
The NFSA Restores program is the National Film and Sound Archive’s premiere film restoration activity which digitises, restores and preserves, at the highest archival standards, classics and cult films so they can be enjoyed by contemporary and future audiences.
Cast
Geraldine Briggs , Flo Caldwell , Chicka Dixon , Bill Reid , Violet Shaw , Margaret Tucker
Director
Director
Producer
Producer
Director of Photography
Language
English
Country
Australia
Bonus Content
Introduction Lousy Little Sixpence
1mCurator of the Buwindja Collection, Gillian Moody shares what inspired her to select Lousy Little Sixpence. She invites you to engage, explore, reflect on and Buwindja (remember) these exceptional Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and stories.
In Conversation
19mGillian Moody, Curator of Buwindja, sits down with Pauline Clague, filmmaker and Associate Professor, Jumbunna, UTS, as they take a deep dive into the rich history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander storytelling in screen culture. They reflect on how the films in the Buwindja Collection showcase eras of change in filmmaking with fascinating insights into the dramatic shift from stories being told about First Nations peoples to Indigenous filmmakers telling their own stories. As Pauline powerfully states, it is now the case that ’Nothing about us without us’”.