Punchy Broome doco

The life story of a Broome-based Golden Gloves boxer is set to be shown to thousands when a locally produced short film makes its debut at a Perth film festival.

Jadai: The Broome Brawler will be screened today in Perth as part of Revelation Film Festival’s Get Your Shorts On, alongside seven other short films.

The film has a personal touch for co-director Curtis Taylor as it depicts a family story.

“Jadai is actually about a story about my grandfather, so the film is very close to me and my family,” he said.

“He was a Golden Glove boxer in the 1960s boxing circuit, but one night he got himself into trouble with the local police, which then led to a battle for his freedom.”

Taylor said the story came about when he worked with co-director Nathan Mewett on a previous short film, and while the pair travelled between locations and remote communities, conversation turned to his grandfather.

Mewett said the original idea was to take the unique family story and make it into a feature film.

“There was so much more to the story that we wanted to expand it into a feature but we were approached by Sydney Film Festival to put in an application for the Lexus Short Film Fellowship,” he said.

“So we made the short version and hopefully we can concentrate on writing the feature later on.”

Taylor said he hoped to elaborate more on the story and showcase more of Broome when he and Mewett began work on the feature version.

“Because it’s a short we scratched the surface and we would like to elaborate more when we do the feature,” he said.

“This story is very specific to Broome and its pearling industry, the travelling boxing shows and the melting pot of cultures in the town.”

Mewett said he really wanted to showcase the amazing landscape and rich heritage and cultures of WA that had not been explored before.

“If the traditional owners are willing to collaborate and share stories such as these and more indigenous directors like Curtis are given the opportunity to do so, it will be a benefit to audiences who would never really experience some of these places and points of view,” he said.