Aborigines tell their own tale in mystic film (fwd)

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Aborigines tell their own tale in mystic film
Fri May 19, 2006 8:29 PM ET

By Kerstin Gehmlich
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=filmNews&storyID=2006-05-20T002905Z_01_L19149818_RTRIDST_0_FILM-LEISURE-CANNES-ABORIGINE-DC.XML&archived=False

CANNES, France (Reuters) - Director Rolf de Heer had to hire crocodile
hunters and learn how to build canoes out of trees for his new film,
which he made with Aboriginal actors speaking their own language.

Heer, a native of the Netherlands who moved to Australia at age 8, said
he developed "Ten Canoes" with members of the Yolngu community in
northern Australia because he wanted to let the indigenous people tell
its own history.

"I think the greatest importance to them is to show their story and to
have their culture valued by our culture," Heer told Reuters on Friday
after he presented the film, which is showing at the Cannes festival
outside the main competition.

"In the end, the film can, in Australia, provide some sort of little
extra step in reconciliation and understanding -- and just enjoyment. I
think if we can enjoy indigenous culture, that is more important than
anything else."

Heer's gentle parable on pride, love, jealousy, and tribal ties is set
in an Australia of some 1,000 years ago.

Hunter Minygululu takes the young Dayindi on his first goose egg hunt
into the marshland, where he learns that Dayindi fancies one of his
wives.

To ward off the young man and to teach him how to respect tribal law,
Minygululu recites the story of a similar incident involving their
hunting ancestors centuries ago.

Heer said it was a challenge to film in the Yolngu languages -- the
movie has English subtitles -- and to transfer the tale into a plot
accessible to Western viewers.

"(The Yolngu's) storytelling is based on repetition and building in
off-directions. We are more direct," Heer said.

Aborigine actor David Gulpilil, who starred in "Crocodile Dundee" and
Heer's "The Tracker," takes on the role of ironic narrator.

Heer said his crew had demonstrated nerves of steel during shooting.

"If you stand in a swamp, up to your waist for 6 hours at a stretch, and
leeches are getting at you from the waist down, and mosquitos from the
waist up, and the local says there's a big one coming, a crocodile,
then in the end you just have to say ... 'Tell me when it gets closer.
Keep shooting'," he said.

Showing the film to the local community of Ramingining where it was shot
was a moving experience, he said.

"They made so much noise, laughing and cheering, that they could
understand perhaps only 30 percent of the dialogue. But it didn't
matter because they understood what was going on. They were laughing at
jokes that I didn't know were there," he said.

"It's the first time they have seen that sort of drama ... that is their
own story, with their own people doing it, particularly in their own
language. So it's been fantastic."

Reuters/VNU