Geoff Bardon - a schoolteacher who helped start one of the most significant art movements of the 20th century - has been described as the right man in the right place at the right time.
It was in the 1970s that he headed to the Western Desert town of Papunya, 250 kilometres west of Alice Springs. "My dad said: 'What's a young man doing in a place like Papunya?'," says Geoff Bardon in Mr Patterns. "Most people were going to Paris."
Leaving Sydney, Geoff packed up all his possessions in his blue Kombi. "I was going to build a world of my own," Bardon explains in the one-hour documentary, made under Film Australia's National Interest Program.
And Geoff Bardon - who died in mid-2003, soon after being filmed - did build a new world: the world of Papunya Tula art, where Aboriginal artists used western materials to paint their traditional dot designs. Within Geoff's lifetime, it had taken the international art world by storm.
In his work as a teacher, Geoff saw his students drawing their traditional designs and symbols in the sand, and he encouraged them to draw these "patterns" in the classroom.
Says Bardon: "I didn't set out to rock any boat, but it just seemed silly to have the young people drawing cowboys and Indians all day when they had an intact culture of their own."
His work with the students won the support and confidence of the tribal elders who became the "painting men" of Papunya.
For filmmaker Nic Testoni, who wrote Mr Patterns with Jo Plomley, making the film came about through a family connection - Geoff Bardon had been a lifelong friend of his father.
"It's very true that Geoff was the right man in the right place at the right time, but he only became a catalyst because of the open and sensitive person he was," says Nic, who was a child when his father invited Geoff to come to their home to stay and work. Geoff lived at the Testoni home while finishing one of his first books, based on his time at Papunya. Says Nic: "The story is that Geoff turned up at our house in Wollongong with a manuscript under one arm and a frozen turkey under the other."
Bardon once presented the Testoni family with a dot painting. "That was my introduction to Aboriginal art," Nic remembers. "I knew nothing about it, but that it looked magical and mysterious to a child. I was only vaguely aware - through that painting that hung in the lounge room for years - that Geoff was involved in Aboriginal art."
In fact, Geoff Bardon is widely regardedÑby the Papunya community and the art communityÑas the person who triggered the Western Desert art movement.
Growing up in Wollongong, Nic Testoni went on to become a Logie-winning actor, best known for his role in Home and Away for more than four years. It was after Home and Away that he headed off to New York University with Jo Plomley to study documentary production. When Nic and Jo returned to Australia, they set up their production company Reel World Productions, starting the search for their first project.
"Our lecturer in New York said that for your first film, you need to do a story that you - and no-one else - can do," recalls Jo. It was when she and Nic were sitting in a cafe with Nic's father, John Testoni, that the family association with Geoff Bardon was discussed - and the idea of Mr Patterns was born.
The unique relationship with Geoff gave Nic and Jo and their fellow producer, Megan McMurchy, access to Geoff Bardon's substantial personal film collection, photographs and his memories. Geoff entrusted them to tell his story for the first time on film. On one of their trips to Geoff's home, Nic and Jo came across a pile of 16mm film canisters of footage Geoff had shot in Papunya in the 1970s - using much of it in Mr Patterns.
"The footage he recorded in Papunya shows the relationship he had with the people. It's an amazing record of that time and is so indicative of Geoff the filmmaker and the man. The intimate nature of the footage - the way the kids and adults look into the camera and smile - gives you an insight into the esteem in which he was held," says Jo.
Geoff says in Mr Patterns: "When I was at Papunya I learnt about friendship in a mature way... where I could be respected and give respect."
With a small crew, Nic and Jo travelled twice to film Geoff at his home on the New South Wales central coast, hearing him talk about the early days in the Western Desert.
"Geoff believed Papunya Tula art should hang on gallery walls, next to the masters. That was his motivation and his vision," says Jo.
One of the people interviewed in the film by director Catriona McKenzie is the curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art at the Art Gallery of NSW, Hetti Perkins. "I think that Geoff was a visionary," Hetti Perkins says.
"The representatives of the Papunya community were also happy to lend their support to the film," says Nic. "They had fond regard for Geoff, and community president Michael Nelson Tjakamarra said 'the kids of Papunya should know who their grandfathers were and what great artists they were'." Interviews were conducted in Papunya with Michael Nelson Tjakamarra (a renowned artist as well as community president), Long Jack Phillipus Tjakamarra (one of the last surviving Papunya "painting men") and Linda and Amos Anderson (former students of Geoff Bardon).
The title "Mr Patterns" was chosen because it was the affectionate nickname given to Geoff by the kids he taught at Papunya.
Says Jo Plomley of Geoff Bardon: "Not many people die knowing that they really made a change in the world."
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