Movie role close to home for Broome girl
For Ngaire Pigram, playing her part in Sundance-nominated film Mad Bastards was not about acting.
Broome-born and bred, Ngaire grew up around Kimberley characters just like those which feature in Brendan Fletcher’s new movie which has premiered around the Kimberley and in Perth this week.
Fletcher knew Ngaire through her father, Stephen Pigram, part of the Kimberley’s own Pigram Brothers, who collaborated with Alex Lloyd on the soundtrack, and had also been impressed by her work in Beck Cole’s short film, Plains Empty.
One of the few with acting experience in the film, Ngaire said for the entire cast, it seemed easy to bring life to the story of 15-year-old Bullet, his estranged father TJ, and Ngaire’s character, Bullet’s mother Nella.
“It wasn’t the kind of film where you had to have lots of experience because we weren’t so much character acting,” she said. “Our own characters and the real people we’ve grown up with were not so far from the characters we were playing.”
When the audience meet single mother Nella, she seems just as lost as her young son, but has an experience that snaps her out of her own weakness – just in time to confront TJ’s return to Five Rivers.
“Being a single parent myself, I understand how you need to be the constant in your child’s life,” Ngaire says.
“Nella has to protect her son from the fact that his father could be gone again in a flash, but at the same time she accepts that her father might be what her son needs.”
Mad Bastards also addresses issues such as alcohol and drug abuse, physical abuse, depression and suicide – things that Ngaire says seem to occur in cycles, like anyone who has grown up or lived in the Kimberley for a time has seen.
“There are cycles, but some people don’t want them to continue and they’ll shift,” she said.
“When you step out of it, and start working toward change, it’s hard to believe that you believed that thing to be normal – because people often see these things start as children, so they continue them into adult life.”
This film offers hope in the form of a somewhat happy ending – one Ngaire said might be hard for some Kimberley others to believe it to be realistic, but one that could be an inspiration to some.
“I don’t want it to come across as ‘this is just black fellas’. These are human stories, human journeys and we’re just telling our side,” she said.
“It’s is not a made-up fairytale that’s going to change the world, but I’d like to see some people realise enough is enough, some dads or mums go home to their kids, for some people to make some shifts.”
Proud of the finished film after seeing it on the big screen, this 32-year-old mother of two is beaming and optimistic about the future. Earlier this year she performed at the Barbican Theatre, London, in The Sapphires.
“It was my first professional theatre job. I got to do the three things I love – singing, dancing and acting,” she said.
“It brought a lot out in me as an actor because in theatre you’ve got to be big and loud.
“I’ve been chipping away at acting for the last six or seven years, and I’ve done a fair bit with short films. Now I’d like to write.”
Mad Bastards is now showing in Broome at Sun Pictures. Visit www.broomemovies.com.au for details.
