She Who Must Be Loved

Freda Glynn was never a big talker but these days she talks even less. When her documentary filmmaker daughter Erica Glynn tells her she wants to make a film about her, Freda responds simply with a shrug. And yet Freda has so much to relate. She could, for instance, talk about how she ran CAAMA, the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association, an organisation that has been dedicated to Aboriginal music and culture since the early 1980s. Or perhaps how she trained Indigenous filmmakers at Imparja Television, casually managing to raise five children on her own at the same time. But instead, Freda uses her daughter’s project to research part of her family history. There is uncertainty about whether Freda’s grandmother was killed during a massacre of Indigenous Australians; Freda’s own mother was never able to clarify events during her lifetime. Together, Freda and Erica Glynn embark on a complex search for answers. Freda, we learn, is a determined woman whose strength, humour and creativity are expressed in all her dealings with the people she cares about. She is also a woman whose work has had a lasting impact on the Aboriginal community’s struggle for emancipation.