She was the brains behind the musical Bran Nue Dae, Mabo and her company Blackfella Films have made documentaries like First Australians and First Contact.
The daughter of iconic Indigenous activist Charlie Perkins, she has also actively been fighting to have the nation's first people recognised in the Australian constitution.
On top of all that, she has taken on the beloved Australian book Jasper Jones: now a funny, dark, murder mystery movie set in Western Australia in the racially charged dying days of the 1960s.
“It’s just a great story,” says Perkins of her attraction to adapting Jasper Jones from the page and stage, to the big screen.
Source: Supplied
“It has these great elements: it's got the murder mystery, which is the great hook.
“But it's also got the beautiful humour of those characters and that great dialogue … you know, laugh out loud hilarious.
“That combination of different tones is something I always like. It's really hard to have multiple tones going in the same thing and of course the social commentary resonated with me.”
Comfortable with being dubbed a political filmmaker, Perkins says as an Indigenous creative it’s important her work hits on multiple levels.
“Our films definitely are ambassadors for our nation,” she says.
Source: SBS Distribution
“That's what you get to understand, people get to understand Australia through our filmmaking and that's when you realise how powerful filmmaking is cos it frames - it can frame- a nation.
“It can frame a national narrative in the way that films like Peter Weir's Gallipoli framed that legend.”
Jasper Jones is currently in cinemas Australia-wide.
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"I hope for more black superheroes": From Cleverman to comic books, Indigenous storytelling in 2017
