Uncovering revelations from WA’s colonial past

“Viewing the work from start to end will forge different kinds of ‘revelations’ in viewers as the work itself accumulates in their minds,” says Alana Hunt about her new documentary, Displacement & Replacement: A Remixed Narrative of Western Australia. Showing as part of Revelation Film Festival 2026, the documentary is a ‘remix’ of 12 films commissioned by the state of Western Australia in the 1960s and 70s, delving deep into Western Australia’s colonial history to spotlight the violence that unfurled alongside the development of roads, mines, railways, and agriculture and the weaponisation of community prevalent throughout WA’s past. Ahead of the film’s Perth premiere at The Backlot on Saturday, July 11, NATASHA PAUL spoke to Alana Hunt to find out about the making of the film and the influences that inspired her vision.

Congratulations on having your new documentary, Displacement & Replacement: A Remixed Narrative of Western Australia, selected as part of Revelation Film Festival’s 2026 program! How long has the documentary been in the works, and how are you feeling about seeing it on the big screen?

It has been brewing in my mind for quite some time, but it was finally made last year with the support of the Copyright Agency’s Partnerships Commission and Perth Institute of Contemporary Art.

I tend to think of this film as an “accumulation” of material; it doesn’t build a linear narrative as such but remixes and accumulates material that enables us to see and think and feel about things that are relatively familiar in a new light.

I am thrilled it’s being shown in a cinema context—because in contrast to a gallery where viewers may walk in and out, accessing the work at any particular moment and for fleeting periods of time, the cinema holds people in time and space. Viewing the work from start to end will forge different kinds of “revelations” in viewers as the work itself accumulates in their minds.

Displacement and Replacement remixes films commissioned by the state of Western Australia in the 1960s and 70s to highlight the violence of the colonial project. How did you come up with this highly innovative and powerful idea?

I first became aware of the late filmmaker Bryan Lobascher (whose archive I have reworked) in the restaurant at Lake Argyle Caravan Park, outside Kununurra. His film on the construction of Lake Argyle screens on a television inside the restaurant most days. It’s full of really graphic images of environmental destruction—including the largest non-nuclear explosion in Australian history, where a mountain was blown apart to build the dam wall. And they are detailed accounts of how WA has been colonised. It really disturbed me that this film continues to play, more or less with a sense of pride, with really no recognition of the damage to Miriwoong Country and people that the dam and the town of Kununurra have caused.

I used some footage from that film about Lake Argyle in my first film, Surveilling a Crime Scene (2023), which also screened at Revelation. And it was through that that I came to learn Bryan had produced a whole suite of films from this period for the WA government—which were now out of copyright.

Were there any previous documentaries or films that influenced your decision to remix archival footage?

I am inspired by a lot of filmmakers and artists, but in terms of archival material probably Harun Farocki, Soda Jerk, and Kamal Aljafari. While I don’t always work with pre-existing archives, I do think there is something very powerful in crafting ways for existing material to speak for itself in ways it might not have initially intended. I adore Harun Farocki’s work Videograms of a Revolution from 1992.

Tell us about the process of acquiring, selecting and remixing the twelve films—was it particularly challenging, especially when choosing phrases from each film’s narration to include?

It was quite simple really. I used these 12 films because that was all I could legally access; these are the films now out of copyright.

It took a long time to go through the films scene by scene—so it was laborious—but I followed my intuition when it came to selecting the phrases. And in that sense the process becomes meditative, you get into a zone and rhythm, following the work and your gut sense.

Your recent solo exhibition, A Deceptively Simple Need, draws on the weaponisation of ideas of ‘home’ within Australia’s settler colony, which Displacement and Replacement also draws on. Can you tell us more about how the documentary challenges ideas of ‘home’ and ‘community’?

These archival films are more or less about Western Australia’s industrial and economic growth in the 1960s and ‘70s, at a time the state “celebrated” its one millionth (colonial) citizen. But if you follow the arc of most of these films, they don’t only depict these industries and the economic growth they are promising, they also promise a “good life” for the (colonial) citizen. It is that which brings me to the inherent violence within these deceptively simple aspirations for “home” and “community” within settler-colonialism.

As a non-indigenous person, I think it is really important for us to understand and recognise how colonisation is not merely a past event but an ongoing process and a structure intimately wrapped up with the way that our lives as non-indigenous people have been used to displace and replace First Nations people from their home and their Country.

Why are documentaries like Displacement and Replacement so important to the cultural commentary around colonisation, especially in Western Australia?

Hopefully it ruptures our blindspots!

Do you have any documentaries or films you’re looking forward to seeing at Revelation Film Festival 2026?

Sadly, I will not be in Perth when the festival takes place. But I could try to sit in the Lake Argyle Caravan Park at the same time the remixed version screens in Perth and sit there and watch one of the original films. Ha! You gave me an idea…maybe I can ask Lake Argyle Caravan Park to screen Replacement and Displacement on their restaurant’s television…that would be a win!

Displacement & Replacement: A Remixed Narrative of Western Australia will show at The Backlot on Saturday, July 11 as part of Revelation Perth International Film Festival 2026. Tickets are on sale now from humanitix.com