Published in 2014, Dark Emu was critically acclaimed, won major literary awards and has sold a phenomenal 360,000 copies. The Indigenous dance company Bangarra adapted it into a dance and Pascoe wrote a version for young readers.

But there has also been ferocious backlash that questioned Pascoe’s claims about the sophistication of Aboriginal culture and the quality of his research.

The most comprehensive rebuttal came two years ago in anthropologist Peter Sutton and archeologist Keryn Walshe’s book Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate.

They argued that Pascoe was broadly wrong in his claims about the sophistication of Aboriginal culture and that his book was poorly researched, exaggerated many points, selectively emphasised evidence to suit his opinions and ignored information that did not support his case.

Sutton and Walshe raise their concerns in The Dark Emu Story, which will screen on the ABC later this year.

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But as producer Darren Dale of Blackfella Films has said, the documentary is “us trying to reclaim some of the debate around the book”.

Clarke, a writer-director who is best known for the SBS documentary The Bowraville Murders, is a Muruwari and Gomeroi filmmaker and The Dark Emu Story has Indigenous academic Marcia Langton, broadcasters Stan Grant and Narelda Jacobs, choreographer Stephen Page and others arguing for the book’s importance despite the criticisms.

Originally planned as a three-part series, it is now a single feature-length documentary that is competing in the festival’s $60,000 competition for “audacious, cutting-edge and courageous” films.

“Because the culture wars erupted the way they did, that had to be addressed,” Pascoe said. “That’s now quite a significant part of the film’s purpose, to talk about those issues and how they manifest themselves in Australia.”

Pascoe rejected the criticisms in Sutton and Walshe’s book.

“I find it a little bit embarrassing that people of such great intelligence can avert their eyes from the bleeding obvious,” he said. “The film addresses that and the significance of the new archaeologies is unmissable and this is what I hope Australians will cheer about.

“They will find after watching the film that there are many examples of Aboriginal people having a really strong, well-founded society and economy.”

The controversy has been hard on Pascoe, who says in the documentary that it resulted in him separating from his wife, author Lyn Harwood, for four years and that they still live in different houses, adding: “I just feel very tired in my spirit.”

Before the screening, Pascoe said he expected the backlash.

“I was also expecting the kind of [positive] response that the book had because during its production over a period of five or seven years, I’d come to understand Australia’s craving for a more realistic telling of the history,” he said. “But I knew that there were some in the country that could not tolerate anything but a colonial Raj mentality.”

Andrew Bolt and other conservative commentators have called Dark Emu a literary hoax and claim Pascoe invented an Aboriginal family background.

“I wasn’t surprised at all,” Pascoe said. “Eighty-five per cent of my genes are Cornish and English so I can see both sides of the fence.

“That’s a difficult position to be in. You ask any Aboriginal person how difficult it is to honour both families.

“But it’s really the Australian condition, where we have to come to terms with the fact that for 30, 40 years there were virtually no white women in this country. As a consequence, there are a lot of mixed-race Aboriginal people.”

Pascoe said Australians should be excited by archeological revelations that indicate “a culture that has no other likeness in the world”.

“This last 20 or 30 years has been quite revelatory about the culture of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people,” he said.

The Voice to parliament referendum, Pascoe said, had been caught up in the same culture war as Dark Emu.

“It’s really sad that conversations which should be considered and full of information and progress become three-word slogans – “the Canberra Voice” and things like that, which are just silly,” he said. “Aboriginal people who have misgivings now, should the Voice succeed, will find that it changes a lot.”

Email Garry Maddox at gmaddox@smh.com.au and follow him on Twitter at @gmaddox.

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