The Umbra

(2023)

06:24 minute single-channel film.

Curators can request a preview link by emailing hayleymillarbaker@gmail.com

Set during the witching hour, the darkest point of the night when the veil between the physical and spiritual realms is thinnest, The Umbra follows a young Aboriginal woman as she transitions from the physical world into the spiritual realm. She moves quietly through this sleeping household, occupying the space with quiet reverence and attentiveness. This gentle initiation reveals her enduring magic and innate connection to ancestral traditions and the unseen.

 The spirit world she enters mirrors our own but adheres to different laws, blurring the boundaries between life, death, and the afterlife during an act of astral projection. Drawn by a magnetic pull, the spirit of another young woman—sisters, friends, descendants, or ancestors—appears, moving with mirrored caution that shows a natural bond between the two across time and space.

The Umbra continues the dialogue between the living and the ancestral, illuminating the limitless nature of existence. This coming-of-age moment defies the genre boundaries of horror, fantasy, and documentary, offering both unsettling and luminous experiences. Rooted in Indigenous cosmologies, where time is cyclical and being is collective, it embraces temporal slippages as truths—time folds, overlaps, and returns, dissolving the boundaries between past, present, and future.

Suspense arises not through spectacle but through stillness, with symbolic motifs such as dream-like eye makeup, disruptive poltergeists, and the Indigenous concept of deep listening anchoring the film in intuitive and spiritual ways of knowing. The Umbra serves as a cinematic invocation that explores spirituality, intuition, and the psyche through the lens of Indigenous womanhood and collective memory.

Commissioned by RISING: Melbourne for Shadow Spirit, an exhibition curated by Kimberley Moulton and produced by RISING: Melbourne. Co-commissioned by Illuminate Adelaide.