Ten Canoes

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 got 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, black and white photography for the '30s, and colour for the myth bringing us further into the story the further we go into history. Humour, romance, conspiracy and revenge all appear in what makes for a refreshing change. [Alec McLeod]