Shadow Sister is a film biography of Kath Walker, Australia's foremost aboriginal poet, who will give her first poetry reading in Berkeley at this screening. Kath Walker's deeply expressive poems, first published during the Civil Rights era of the 1960s, and her stand on the platform with other aboriginal campaigners during that time contributed greatly to the world's growing awareness of the Australian aboriginal cause.

Shadow Sister looks intimately at Kath Walker the person, and gives us a glimpse of how the Australian aborigines love and respect all natural aspects of their native land.

Now in middle life, Kath Walker has returned to the place where she spent her early childhood - Stradbroke Island, Queensland - and taken up the land which was once the “sitting down place” of her native tribe, the Noonuckles. Kath has handed the banner of active campaigning to younger aborigines, but in her poems she still fights for the rights which she believes crucial to the survival and identity of her people.

She lives at her beloved “Moongalba” alone and with few posessions but shares her days with the many children and other visitors who come there. For “Moongalba” is something very special: a secret land filled with living memories - isolated, but with no sense of loneliness.

As a woman - as a person - Kath Walker is unique. And not only because of her tremendous achievements, won against all odds. Born anywhere, any colour, Kath Walker would still be someone of great understanding and perception, living in enviable unison with nature in its most clear and basic forms. And her gift of communication with the animals and plants is almost mystical.