Word: gulpilil
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...sparking on the adventurous cattle drive that is required to save the old homestead from their rich and avaricious neighbors. She also inherits Nullah (Brandon Walters), an adorable child of mixed white and aboriginal blood, who needs her love but also needs the mystical wisdom of his grandfather (David Gulpilil), a sort of shaman, who stands about the outback, often on one leg, spouting gnomic wisdom (he has the ability to "sing" people he takes a shine to out of trouble). Along the way there are stampedes, fancy dress balls and the beginnings of World...
...Churches. They're set to Adelaide, Rome and Los Angeles time. The first and last are to be expected in an indie-film hothouse. As for the second - more on that later. But there should be a fourth. Ever since director De Heer was invited by legendary actor David Gulpilil to make a film about his home in north central Arnhem Land, the office has been running on Ramingining time. In the three years since, De Heer has been stretched physically, mentally and culturally. "I knew from the beginning that the process would be different to anything that...
...that matter, heard. When Ten Canoes has its world premiere as part of the Adelaide Festival of Arts this Sunday, it will be the first feature to play out almost entirely in an indigenous Australian language (Gulpilil's intermittent narration is in English, as are the subtitles). But in a film set before Western contact - where young warrior Dayindi (Gulpilil's son Jamie) hunts for goose eggs while being told Dreamtime stories - Ganalbingu, the language of the "magpie goose people," rules. Dayindi has been coveting his older brother's young wife, and the cautionary tale Minygululu (Peter Minygululu) offers...
...starting point was an old black-and-white photograph of canoe-making taken by anthropologist Donald Thomson in the 1930s, which Gulpilil showed De Heer in Arnhem Land. "We need 10 canoes," said the actor, who had starred in De Heer's previous film, The Tracker (2002). Arriving at a narrative that satisfied both the Yolngu's desire for traditional storytelling and Western audiences' need for plot and pace proved a lesson in cultural navigation. Many Yolngu neither speak English nor understand movie-making: "It was conceptually outside their thinking about the world," says De Heer. The Yolgnu's only...
...there's an edge to Gulpilil's laugh, there's good reason. Shot in a crocodile-infested lagoon just after last year's wet season, Ten Canoes was as thrilling in the making as it is on screen (its filming will be the subject of an SBS documentary, Eighteen Canoes, to be aired close to the film's Australian release in June). For up to seven hours a day, director and crew would wade through thick swamp, with crocodile spotters on platforms above. "It really was the leeches getting you from the waist down; mosquitoes from above the waist," says...