A FILM screening and a flag raising ceremony will help celebrate NAIDOC Week in Sandgate and Shorncliffe this year.

Sandgate writer/director Dean Gibson will show the retrospective documentary film Wik vs Queensland at Sandgate Town Hall at 6.30pm on Sunday, July 8 just before it premieres on television (channel NITV).

Mr Gibson will continue to raise awareness of aboriginal history with a flag raising and lowering ceremony each day from July 9-15 at 6.30am and 5.30pm at the end of Shorncliffe Pier.

He said Wik vs Queensland played out like a political thriller and there was an overwhelming response when it was screened at the Sydney Film Festival.

Dean Gibson and Mark Broadbent during the filming of Wik vs Queensland.

“It takes viewers back in time to get a sense of what Australia was like and how the attitudes towards Aboriginal people were perceived back then,” he said.

“Strong research and 1990s period news archives help set the scene of the case and decision.

“Behind the scenes, we have managed to gain access to the never-seen-before archives of a young Noel Pearson moving around the Cape, meeting with the Wik people, dealing with the courts and, of course, engaging in the top end of town with the Australian Government politicians in Canberra.”

The film was produced by Bacon Factory Films, Bent3Land Productions and Freshwater Pictures. It was commissioned by NITV with principal production funding from Screen Australia and in association with Screen Queensland.

READ: Courier Mail