Audio, Composition, Composer, Music Score, SFX

"The Witchdoctor and the Windmill” explores the life of the Indigenous artist, Linda Syddick Napaltjarri. She was the last of the world’s 6 ‘clever women’ who after experiencing a fully traditional, nomadic desert childhood went on to win Australia’s biggest art prize.

Linda’s insistence that she had her stepfather’s permission to paint his Dreaming stories (men stories are usually forbidden for women to paint amongst her people; the Pintupi) cast her as a maverick and led to a rift between family and community.

This film explores Linda’s personal and community struggles alongside the larger themes of colliding cultures as the Pintupi confronted new and bewildering intrusions into their country.

Her paintings are visual records of first contact in the 1940s as the Pintupi began their first encounters with White Australia. She was the first Pintupi Modernist and last senior female artist of her era.

This biopic traces Linda's life coming in from the western desert in a traditionally raised family to her painting journey which took her art to the heady heights of the European art scene, and then back to the art sheds of Alice Springs. The Australian government gifted Linda’s work to visiting dignitaries, and yet she passed away as a prophet without honour. With these exclusive interviews and her full co-operation, we wanted to acknowledge her astonishing legacy and place in history.