Mitch Nivalis exclusive interview: Equal the Contest

NIVALIS: Looking through my Dad’s subscription to National Geographic as a kid, I was always interested in the way photography - a single still image - could create emotion and also educate. So I first started teaching myself photography while I was travelling after finishing high school, then came back to Australia and decided to make a career out of it. I wanted to open up conversations and bring awareness to different ways of living and different experiences. I always felt like I didn’t fit in, being gay and gender diverse, so sharing other people’s stories allowed me to help people to have a voice, when I didn’t feel like I had one of my own. It helped me feel less alone, knowing there were so many different ways of being and living and I loved that photography could celebrate that. After about 5 years of running my photography business, I started experimenting with short films for the same reason. Bringing sound into it allowed me to start telling stories differently and I found that really exciting. Prior to photography I was playing in bands and making music, so bringing sound to my visual image-making really resonated with me. Filmmaking is rhythmic in a way a still image isn’t, so I loved how that opened up possibilities in storytelling.

NIVALIS: When I moved to Ballarat in regional Victoria I noticed there were a lot of amazing artists, but the town wasn’t particularly known for being a creative city at the time. So I started making 2-minute docos on some artists I’d met - partly to help promote them and partly to hone my skills as I was teaching myself how to make short films. During that process, I met Al Wunder, a world-renowned improvisation teacher and I just felt his story was much bigger than I could fit into a 2-minute film. The way he teaches moves beyond performing. His lessons are important for everyone to take into their everyday lives and I loved the process of learning from him as I was making the film. Each project for me has felt like the logical next step. Al’s story The Wonder of Improvisation was a 35-minute film and I learnt a huge amount about filmmaking during that process which moved me from 2-minute films to a longer format (although still known as a ‘short’). When I enrolled in a Master of Photography, I didn’t set out to make a feature documentary. I set out to challenge myself to find new ways of working, particularly around using image-making to challenge gender roles and stereotypes. So I was looking for a project when I came across a poster for the Mt Alexander Falcons football team. Their use of the word ‘gender diverse’ in their poster made me stop as I’d never seen that word used publicly to welcome people into the world of football. I really just started experimenting with image-making to try to find a way that would best help viewers understand gender, gender expression, bodily autonomy and the barriers that exist for women and gender-diverse people to play sports. A series of events unfolded within the first 2 weeks of my connecting with the club that made me realise this needed to be a documentary film. But the experimenting continued and I also created a 180-page photo book and a silent abstract projection work as part of the project in addition to the feature-length documentary film, now known as Equal the Contest.

NIVALIS: Definitely I approach most of my work from an advocacy perspective, with themes usually centring around gender equality, visibility for diverse cohorts of people and inclusion. I don’t think I have a signature approach as such. I want to keep challenging myself to find different ways to work and to choose devices and techniques based on the best way to share the story and provide a sense of understanding. If there’s any common ground in all of my work, it’s probably a sense of vulnerability and low-key filmmaking. I’m not interested in huge crews and overcomplicating things as I think that tends to detract from the rawness of the human story.

NIVALIS: Thanks for being the first platform to pick up the film! I mentioned earlier I turned up at the Mt Alexander Falcons football club because they were so explicitly welcoming of gender-diverse people. But it became a feature film because of the experiences the club faced when simply trying to play football. Basically every challenge you could face concerning gender inequality unfolded and I just kept documenting what was happening. It was unbelievable. One thing after the other. What I knew instinctively made the story so compelling was the way the club and players were responding - with positivity, with a knowing we have the right to play and we have the right to access facilities. The experiences we were having are sadly universal across sporting codes and around the world. The barriers that exist for women and gender-diverse people to turn up and play sports are real and not easily understood by people who have always had sports handed to them. So I knew this story would resonate with people who’ve felt excluded from sports, but I also knew this story would create an understanding - an ‘ah-ha’ moment - for the people who’ve never felt excluded from sports. I particularly wanted to make this film because this story is so common, yet so rarely told.

NIVALIS: The whole process was organic. We had 4 people on the executive committee of the club - Lou, Alana, Gabe and Sam - and they were so articulate and fabulous to work with. The other people who have speaking roles all emerged as obvious cast because of the themes I wanted to explore within football - leadership, player safety, inclusion, participation, gender and legacy. There’s a great mix of sexuality, gender identity, age, body shape and culture in the people on screen and just allowing everyone to be visible has been a powerful way to normalise and shift the idea of what a footballer looks like. Including myself in the narrative was the most challenging aspect and the thing I resisted most. I’ve always preferred not to be visible, to hide, but I soon realised my own story of learning to play football at 42 years old, with no experience and as a gender-diverse person was an important aspect. Once I accepted that, everything started coming together and the film really took shape. The process of being the main character, producer, director, cinematographer, audio recorder and editor was utterly exhausting though!

NIVALIS: You’re absolutely right and I often say this isn’t a sports doco or even a story about football. There are a number of devices I used, the most obvious being the cameras I attached to my body as I was playing and training. I knew if I shot this from the traditional perspective of the sideline, the audience would focus on the quality of the game, which wasn’t the point, and the whole boring rhetoric of “no one wants to watch women play sport” would persist. Instead, I wanted people to focus on the experience of the game. I wanted the audience to get a sense of what it feels like to step onto the field through the perspective of my body - to hear my breathing, to feel me hitting the ground when I’m tackled, taking a mark, kicking the ball. These are all experiences that so many women and gender-diverse people have not had the opportunity to experience. The second aspect of using cameras on my body was to subvert people’s understanding of the game and who plays it. There’s such a stereotypical idea of who belongs on a football field and what people might expect to see when they are watching a game. So by opening the film from the perspective of my body, I wanted the audience to immediately think "I know this game, but I’ve never seen it from this perspective before.” In that way, there’s more chance of the audience putting aside what they think they know and being open to learning new things about the game and its players, via our experiences. The film is also very raw emotionally and there is a lot of vulnerability on display. Initially, because I was creating the film for my Masters and not intending to be in it, I had been making video diaries simply to remember what I was feeling at certain moments to help me write a better thesis. But when I realised I needed to be in the film, the video diaries were the perfect devices to use. They allowed me to capture pivotal moments, like the first time I played a game. It’s highly emotional because no one was ever meant to see it! Immersing myself as a player as well as a filmmaker and leading with vulnerability, I think also allowed other people in the film to be vulnerable. We all understood the opportunity we had to help audiences see what was happening and to try to play some small part in creating change so no players or clubs would have to go through this experience again. There are also small things that no one would really notice, like the omission of scores. Football and sports, in general, are so fixated on the score and who wins. I wanted to reiterate the importance of participation, so at no point during the film do you ever know what the score is in any of the matches. Winning is so much more than the final score and particularly in Equal the Contest, winning is about being on the field in a safe environment and getting to experience what your own body is capable of.

NIVALIS: One of the most powerful scenes for me is the practice match against West Brunswick. It’s the first time we play a game with tackling. It’s really the scene where we become a proper footy team and our dream of playing becomes real. It feels like we’ve triumphed over all the challenges in this scene, though in reality that’s only momentary as more challenges are yet to come. It’s joyous and emotional and the footage from my body cameras is visceral and exciting. I really love this scene. Also the scenes with Mavis, who played football in our region in 1948, hold a particular place in my heart. Mavis is always an audience favourite. She’s so humble and really speaks to the history of football in Australia and what women like Mavis went through just to be able to play. She’s a reluctant pioneer. Mavis’s storyline parallels the Mt Alexander Falcons story 70 years later and shows how gender inequality is still impacting the ability of women and gender-diverse people to be able to participate in sports.

NIVALIS: Originally I dreamed of creating a soundtrack of music from Australian women and gender-diverse people for the film. With budget constraints, I had to whittle the dream down, but did end up being able to license 3 songs which are really powerful throughout the film. The song Pay Gap by Bec Goring (ex-AFLW player) has the pivotal line “My mother taught me not to use my body, my sister taught me to be brave and daring.” It works so well coming out of the West Brunswick match after we’ve had bodies colliding on screen and leading into a scene with Mavis, who talks about being ashamed of having played football in 1948. As soon as Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers released their song Girl Sports I knew how perfectly it would fit in the opening credits of Equal the Contest, so being able to license that song was a real highlight. And finally, one of our players, Tadpole, who is also featured in the film, is in a band called K5 and they have a cracking song called Stretch Marks. The energy of that song was the perfect way to run on to the field in our last practice match before the AFLW game and I also used it to roll credits as a nod to the important role Tadpole has played in shaping the culture of our club. The rest of the score, which pulls the whole film together was composed by an incredible woman named Anisha Thomas. I was keen to also use an Australian woman or gender-diverse person and when I met with Anisha who was living in LA at the time, I knew she was the right fit. She immediately understood the film shouldn’t sound like a traditional sport or footy film and went about coming up with scores that aligned to shift assumptions about football. She was a total joy to work with and I found the music to be a really exciting part of the filmmaking process working alongside Anisha.

NIVALIS: The response to the film has been incredible - beyond anything I could have hoped for. It’s been very humbling. From standing ovations in the cinema to people coming up after and gushing in person, or emailing and sending messages on social media. Meeting people after the film has made me realise just how universal the story is for women and gender-diverse people. Queer audiences are also excited to see themselves reflected on screen. So often queer stories are focused on trauma, but Equal the Contest shows queer people just participating in sport in very ordinary ways. Women have been sharing their own experiences and noting the film has made them feel less alone. Possibly the most exciting responses have been from men. I’ve had a lot of comments from men who’ve said they have a much better understanding of the barriers that exist for women and gender-diverse people now. They have a better understanding of how they can contribute to change. I’ve had men who lead football clubs and women’s teams reach out to ask to screen the film to their club so they can make sure everyone at the club can start to understand how the women’s teams are experiencing the environments that have been structured to first and foremost benefit the men’s teams. There are a bunch of quotes from audiences on the website which highlight the impact the film is having. One of my favourite ones is “This is a story of our times. A real story showing why change is needed and how change can happen. It is about local communities, individuals and sports. It is revelatory and inspirational. Make sure you see it.”

NIVALIS: Making Equal the Contest and being immersed as a player and filmmaker was life-changing. Connecting with the club and team really allowed me to develop a strong sense of community and it was really the first time I felt like I fully turned up as myself and felt unequivocally accepted - but not only accepted, celebrated. Professionally it allowed me to stretch myself and do something I’ve never done before, in creating a feature documentary. I’ve developed wonderful relationships with all the people who came together to help make this film a reality, especially Producer Tony Coombs and associate producer Alex Kelly, along with all the club members. And beyond the making of the film, since we’ve begun releasing Equal the Contest I’ve made countless connections with people across organisations, sporting clubs and the general public that have buoyed me both professionally and personally. I gave every last part of me to making Equal the Contest, but the making and reception so far have given back ten fold and I feel extremely grateful to have been able to bring my lived experience together with my skills to be able to create a project that very much feels like my life’s work. I’m so grateful to everyone at the club for getting on board with what I was trying to do and to have come with me on this journey.

NIVALIS: There are two new ideas for films that are brewing, but at the moment the focus is still very much on Equal the Contest as we are just at the start of release. But as soon as I get some space I’ll be exploring the next opportunities and look forward to seeing where I can take things from here. There’s so much change to be made, but I think as a society we’re really at a point where most people are ready, so it’s the perfect time to be sharing lived experiences and having robust conversations.