Wongar is available to stream on demand as part of the 2020 Melbourne Documentary Film Festival.
This observational documentary is a look into the life of the titular Serbian-Australian writer. Born Sreten Božić in what was then Yugoslavia, the man now known as B. Wongar fled his homeland after the outbreak of World War II, he found up in Paris for a time, having literary adventures with Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre before winding up in Australia in 1960.
He immersed himself in Indigenous culture, adopting the name B. Wongar and writing a series of acclaimed and controversial books centering on the erasure of Indigenous life by colonial authorities and in particular the effects of outback nuclear testing on Indigenous communities. And yet, while he identifies as Indigenous, his actual identity as a white immigrant has been subject to strong criticism from many corners – is he giving a voice to the voiceless, or usurping the Indigenous position at the cultural table?
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