Do What Calls Your Heart

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Exhibited at Blue Mountains Cultural Centre, Katoomba for Blue Mountains Portraits, 2025.

Winner of People’s Choice

Title: Do What Calls Your Heart

Year: 2025

Subject name: Mary Waterford, AM

Medium: acrylic & oil on linen

Mary Waterford, AM is a long-term resident, human rights and social justice activist based in the Blue Mountains. She is a  proud lesbian partner, mother & grandmother. She has a commitment to truth telling and justice for Indigenous communities. She is a Founding Member at Blue Mountains East Timor Sisters / Together for Timor and has coordinated many community activities, together with her partner Jude Finch and their colleagues. The group has been steadfastly focused on the social cohesion and development of Timor-Leste, resulting in strong friendships and connections to the Blue Mountains. Mary managed Katoomba Neighbourhood Centre in the early 90s, Mountains Community Resource Network in the 2000s and Western Sydney Community Forum in the 2010’s.

She is an advocate for change in the LGBTQIA+ community. This portrait shows Mary walking across the Harbour Bridge during Sydney World Pride Bridge Walk, in 2023. Mary is also a key subject of a locally produced documentary by Frogmouth Films,
currently in post production, titled: Unstoppable Change. This film celebrates the ways in which the personal connections between local people inspire and galvanise others to demand change. It documents a story of community, social justice and a movement for change through positive story telling. 

The title of this portrait is inspired by the activist Joanna Macy:

“You don’t need to do everything. Do what calls your heart; effective action comes from love. It is unstoppable, and it is enough.”

Unstoppable Change: a documentary

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Unstoppable Change

A Film by Frogmouth Films

From the colour and joy of Sydney World Pride to the bustling streets of Timor-Leste’s Pride March, the LGBTQIA+ community touches every one of us in solidarity.

“When you leave this place and go back to your homes – whether that be across the bridge, across the country or across the seas – we want you to feel part of an unstoppable movement for change.”

– Anna Brown OAM, CEO of Equality Australia

UNSTOPPABLE CHANGE is a documentary film from award-winning filmmaker Rani Brown at Frogmouth Films. It celebrates the global connections we share as a community, as individuals and as change-makers in a world where human rights are too easily at the mercy of political whims. UNSTOPPABLE CHANGE examines the ways in which the personal connections between local people inspire and galvanise others to demand change. UNSTOPPABLE CHANGE, takes you from the colour of Sydney World Pride to the Pride celebrations and the ongoing struggles for the dignity and human rights in Timor Leste.

Mary Waterford, a human rights activist based in the Blue Mountains, leads you into the heart of Timor Leste. Her warmth and wisdom is as infectious as the joy and courage of the LGBT community with whom she works. Mary shows us ways in which her long term connections in Timor Leste grow from

genuine and mutual engagement with human rights issues. She works alongside her Timorese friends, advocating for change.

UNSTOPPABLE CHANGE is a film that celebrates the work of the LGBTQIA+ global family and the part each of us play in addressing the changes still needed for our brothers and sisters, our mothers and fathers, around the world.

UNSTOPPABLE CHANGE is in pre-production and invites you to become a sponsor. We will travel to Timor Leste in June- July 2024 to interview participants and film at Dilli Pride March. We will continue to work in respectful consultation with Arcoiris, the Dilli based NGO. Interviews and dates are still being finalised. Any support will be gratefully received and acknowledged in the film credits.

Thank you for being part of UNSTOPPABLE CHANGE.

Rani Brown

FROGMOUTH FILMS

Ego’s Garden

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Ego Lemos is the founder-coordinator of Permaculture Timor-Leste ,PERMATIL and PERMATIL Global. He is the founder of the PERMA-YOUTH movement and School Gardens Program. He co-authored ‘Permaculture Gardens for Kids’ produced by PERMATIL, and A Tropical Permaculture Guidebook He recently toured Australia, performing with the choir, Koru Lian Timor and talked with me about PERMTIL’s exciting water conservation and education projects. Here is the preview for the 10 min short film:

Changing the Story

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Lis Bastian talks about community projects and what helped her to stop and recharge after the fires, floods and Covid in 2020. Lis helped establish The Big Fix, a registered charity in the Blue Mountains, NSW. In her work she develops and shares collaborative models for living. She works with with artists and storytellers to creatively redesign media, education, work and to consider how communities connect. The Big Fix is an umbrella organisation for The Big Fix Media, Blue Mountains Pluriversity, Edgy Blue Mountains (a Collaborative Social Enterprise Incubator), Blackheath Community Farm and the Blue Mountains Permaculture Institute.

I acknowledge the Darkinjung, Darug, Dharawal, Gundungurra, Wanaruah and the Wiradjuri peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area; and pay respect to Aboriginal Elders past, present and emerging, recognising their strength, capacity, resilience and deep connection to Country.

Courage for the Long Haul

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2018 Courage for the Long Haul (14min) Filmed collaboratively with Cloudcatcher Media. Written, produced and edited by Rani Brown.

Premiered at Melbourne Environmental Film Festival. This film considers community processes that unite beyond political affiliation to protect our life support systems on Earth. Australian Independent Film Festival , Brisbane, Byron Bay International Film Festival, Byron All Shorts
Byron All Shorts, 2019 Audience Award Best Short Film Australian Independent Film Festival, Brisbane 2019 Finalist

Knitting Nannas

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We meet women from all walks of life who have come together to bring levity to an otherwise serious situation. They apply the principles of non violent direct action with powerful results.

2013 Knitting Nannas (21 min) Written, filmed, edited by Rani Brown. The story of a dynamic group of women who productively and peacefully protest the coal seam gas industry in Northern NSW.

Premiered at Flickerfest International Film Festival, Sydney and Byron Bay All Shorts International Film Festival 2014. Screened in Australia and internationally for community interest groups. Screened at Blue Mountains Cultural Centre, Katoomba for World Heritage Day celebrations, 2014 and World Community Film Festival, Courtenay, British Columbia, Canada 2016, Flickerfest, 2014 Highly Commended, Greenflicks Environmental Short Film Byron All Shorts, 2014 People’s Choice Award

Walking (home)

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Frogmouth Films, 3 min, 2018 Walking to break a cycle of inertia. Seeking kinetic moments to return to stillness during grief. Begin to self correct. Re set. Re visit. Walking in sequences has its own intelligence, its own timing. Hope. … Continue reading →