Black Chicks Talking

Black Chicks Talking

Author	Leah Purcell
Publisher	Hodder Headline Australia
Publication date	2002
Pages	363
ISBN

Black Chicks Talking is an arts project by Australian actress Leah Purcell featuring a 2001 documentary film, a 2002 book, a stage production and an art exhibition. The film is co-directed by Brendan Fletcher and features Indigenous Australian women including Purcell, actress Deborah Mailman and politician Kathryn Hay. Following the book and film, Purcell wrote a fictionalised dramatisation under the same title.

Purcell got the idea for a book featuring interviews of Indigenous Australian women following the success of her semi-autobiographical play Box the Pony. After seeing the play someone suggested that Purcell find other indigenous women to tell their stories. Purcell sought out nine other indigenous women who personally inspired her, some professional, some not. The interviewees comprised politician and former Miss Australia Kathryn Hay, actress Deborah Mailman, netball player Sharon Finnan, United Nations youth delegate Tammy Williams, Rosanna Angus, Cilla Malone, Frances Rings, Lisa Fraser-Gooda and Rachel Perkins. To initiate discussion, Purcell asked each woman the question "Out of the five senses, which one do you relate to and what is your first pleasurable memory of that sense?" Her partner Bain Stewart gave her the idea of filming the interviews and using them as the basis for a documentary. Further interviews were conducted over the telephone, particularly when participants felt uncomfortable opening up on-camera. The interviews explored the topics of identity, family and culture in relation to Indigenous Australian women.

Purcell used the documentary footage of the interviews as the basis for the film. Only five of the women from the book are featured in the film — Hay, Mailman, Williams, Angus and Malone. In addition to the solo interviews conducted for the book, Purcell filmed the women talking over dinner at a restaurant in Sydney. The documentary was finished before the book was published.