Solid Awards: Women’s Work marking 10 years strong in 2023

The 2023 Solid Screen Awards have been given to 6 Indigenous women representing a variety of roles in different media platforms and communities from across Australia, Hawaii and Native America. The annual Solid Awards honour those who have long standing and also emerging careers in the screen arts, to acknowledge those creatives and technicians who have contributed substantially to their respective industries over decades. The Solid Screen Awards have been presented annually by Yugambeh organiser Jenny Fraser since 2014 and are home grown in Australia, with a unique focus on Indigenous Women around the world. “The awards are gifted to trailblazers in community as a small acknowledgement for the work they do in maintaining screen culture keeping communities informed and uplifted. This is also my way of archiving the contributions of the storytelling matriarchy” she said. The winners are Karla Grant, Sasha Sarago and Karina Hogan from Australia, along with Keala Kelly and Taylour Chang from Hawaii, and Native American Musician Laura Ortman.

Karla Grant is an Arrernte presenter, producer and journalist with an extensive media career that spans over 30 years, working primarily in Indigenous news and current affairs for NITV and SBS. After briefly working at Channel 10, she arrived at SBS in 1995 and worked on Walkley Award winning ‘ICAM’ (Indigenous Current Affairs Magazine) before being appointed executive producer of the national broadcaster’s Indigenous Media Unit in 2002. It was in that role Grant first pitched Living Black, the current affairs program she still hosts and serves as executive producer in 2023, now on NITV. Living Black is the longest-running Indigenous current affairs show on Australian television, and focuses on issues concerning Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Karla has dedicated a huge part of her career to witnessing and reporting on the shifts in policy and attitudes in Australia, and is a known and respected voice in the media and a spokesperson for Indigenous affairs.

Sasha Sarago is a writer, filmmaker, activist and the founder of Ascension Mag, Australia’s first-ever digital lifestyle platform for women of colour. A proud Aboriginal woman of the Wadjanbarra Yidinji and Jirrbal clans of Cairns, and also African-American, Sasha has dedicated her creative career to raise awareness around diversity and equality in the fashion industry.  A former model, Sasha has since become a tireless advocate raising awareness around colourism, identity, equity and diversity in the media and lifestyle sectors. Sasha wrote and directed the documentary ‘Too Pretty To Be Aboriginal’ to and understand the origins of this phenomena. She interviews four Aboriginal women and what surfaces are personal stories enmeshed in racial complexities, where Aboriginality is questioned and Australia’s past still lingers. Through her journey of making this film Sasha realises that in order to heal many Aboriginal women’s trauma, those truths must be told.

Karina Hogan is a Bundjalung and South Sea Islander Content Producer, Broadcaster and Journalist with a thirst for making a positive impact and elevating voices in the health, media and arts space.  Karina was the researcher and impact producer for the Logie Award winning documentary ‘Incarceration Nation’ and is completing a research Honours degree at Griffith University focusing on the representation of diverse and First Nations women impacted by violence in the media. In 2019 she worked with the Brisbane Indigenous Media Association – 98.9fm Let’s Talk program /podcast to confront and raise Indigenous issues. Karina was the Indigenous Lead for the Commentary and Mobile Journalism Program run during the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, aimed to amplify womens voices in sports media in the Australasia Pacific region. She is also a Board Director of Blackdance theatre company based in Brisbane.

Anne Keala Kelly is a filmmaker and journalist focusing on Hawaiian political and cultural issues, Indigenous peoples and the environment. Keala co-produced “The Other Hawai’i,” a 30-minute television news program for Al Jazeera English’s “Inside USA”; she has filed stories from Kathmandu, Geneva and her home in Hawai’i, and her articles and essays have been published in The Nation, Indian Country Today, American Indian Quarterly, the Honolulu Weekly and other journals. Keala has also produced documentaries and short features for radio, which have aired on the Pacifica Network’s Free Speech Radio News and NPR’s The Environment Report. Keala’s first feature length film, “Noho Hewa: The Wrongful Occupation of Hawai’i,” has received international film festival awards and is widely taught in university courses focusing on Indigenous Peoples, colonization, Hawaiian sovereignty, and militarism.

Taylour Chang is a filmmaker of Native Hawaiian, Chinese, and Japanese descent and currently serves as Director of Public Programs and Community Engagement at Bishop Museum. Taylour  previously served as Director of the Doris Duke Theatre, an art house cinema located in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, and Curator of Film and Performance at the Honolulu Museum of Art from 2013-2022.  She received the 2019 Art House Convergence’s Distinguished Service Award, celebrating outstanding achievements in mission-driven cinema exhibition. She started making films at an early age and screened several films at the Hawaiʻi International Film Festival. In 2023 she curated Na Wāhine Kanaka Maoli in Hawaiʻi Cinema.  Taylour participated in the 2021 Cine Qua Non English Script Revision Lab, and has received her B.A. from Yale University and double majored in Film Studies and Theatre Studies.

Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache) works across recorded albums, live performances, and filmic and artistic soundtracks, and is a vibrant collaborator.  An inquisitive and exquisite violinist, Ortman is versed in Apache violin, piano, electric guitar, keyboards, and pedal steel guitar, often sings through a megaphone, and is a producer of capacious field recordings. Laura has performed at The Whitney Museum of American Art and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Toronto Biennial in Ontario, the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, among countless established and DIY venues in the US, Canada, and Europe. In 2008 Ortman founded the Coast Orchestra, an all-Native American orchestral ensemble that performed a live soundtrack to Edward Curtis’s film In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914), the first silent feature film to star an all-Native American cast.

2023 marks the 10th anniversary of the Solid Awards which began at the inaugural Solid Screen Festival held at Innot Hot Springs, a remote gathering On Country in Far North Queensland in 2014. The Solid Screen Awards were mainly presented in person while travelling throughout the year, including attending a memorial for a Palestinian activist held as a side during the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York, and also a Talk Story event on multiverse narratives hosted at Bishop Museum in Honolulu, and at the 2023 Kyogle Readers and Writers Festival. A special edition of the Solid Awards were also presented to the First Nations and Pacific Islander participants of the Mobile Journalism and Commentary Program part of FIFA Women’s World Cup held in Brisbane, on Jagera Country in Australia: Cassie Ariuu, Tamara Creamer, Jacqualine Elwell, Talei Gaunavinaka, Ruby Ketchell, Eliza Kukutu, Losirene Lacanivalu, Louise-Anne Laris, Nicolea Mateariki, Cleverlyn Mayuga, Cynthia Mewa, Elizabeth Osifelo, Kirrilly Phillips, Mavis Podokolo, Adi Tinai, Finau Vulivuli, Asinate Wainqolo and Sam Walker.

“It is always an honour to be in the company of eminent thinkers upholding Indigenous Knowledges, ideas and voices. Long live Solid Screen Awards", said curator Jenny Fraser.