Ten Canoes
The oral tradition is captured well by this ""story within a story within a story.""
David Gulpilil has been in just about every major Western film featuring Aboriginals you'd care to mention: from his debut in Walkabout to Crocodile Dundee, Rabbit-Proof Fence and recently The Proposition. Ten Canoes is now his opportunity to tell a story of his own. Inspired by a photo of ten men of the Arafura swamp taken in the 1930s, he and writer/director de Heer gathered together the group's descendants (of which narrator Gulpilil is one; his son also appears) to portray their hunting trip, during which those characters themselves tell a story of Aboriginal myth. The oral tradition is captured well by this "story within a story within a story": the present-day narration - with black and white photography for the '30s, and colour for the myth - bringing us deeper into the plot as we journey further into history. Humour, romance, conspiracy and revenge all add up to a refreshingly different cinema experience. [Alec McLeod]