Ten Canoes

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Film Description

An Aboriginal tale of magic and mystery, set in a time before white settlers came to Australia, this comic retelling of a traditional fable is the first major feature film to be made entirely with native Aboriginal dialogue. It's thoroughly entertaining, moving and informative too.

Set a thousand years ago in central Arnhem Land in northern Australia, a group of Ganalbingu tribesmen embark on a hunt for magpie geese. To navigate the crocodile-infested swamp, elder Minygululu leads the tribe in building canoes made out of bark. When he discovers that Dayindi has a crush on his third wife, he tells him a story set in a mythical time after the great flood that explains how his people developed laws to govern their behaviour, the same laws used by the tribes today.

Film Information

DVD Extras

Making Canoes - An interview with Peter Djigirr, co-director and actor.

Technical Details

Film Media

9 Stills

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Reviews & Articles

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Review by Mike McCahill on 5th September 2007

Every so often, a film comes along that fully merits the term “world cinema”, transporting viewers from wherever they’re watching to one of the four corners of the earth. A collaboration between directors Rolf de Heer and Peter Djigirr, the truly mythic Ten Canoes achieves for the
Aboriginal people what Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner did for the planet’s Inuit population, and last year’s Kekexili: Mountain Patrol did for those living on the Chinese/Tibetan border.

David Gulpilil - presiding spirit of the two best known depictions of Aboriginal life, Walkabout and Rabbit-Proof Fence - narrates the story-within-a-story. As they go about collecting bark with which to make the canoes that will allow them to collect goose eggs, a tribesman tells the young buck who’s been coveting one of his wives what happened the last time a young man tried to move in on his older brother’s woman.

What follows is a noir-y plot – clandestine trysts, accidental murder – played out in broad daylight, against breathtaking widescreen scenery, and topped with a surprise be-careful-what-you-wish-for punchline. De Heer and Djigirr use colour and monochrome to differentiate between the
stories being told, so you never quite get lost in the bush, and the key players are introduced in stark, expressive close-ups that forge themselves on the memory: there’s the village elder with his shock of white hair and Pooh-like love of honey, and the fearsome sorcerer in red-and-yellow warpaint who breaks down when he finds his powers are
unable to save a dying man.

Anything worthy or patronising about the project gets undercut by an earthiness that is, one assumes, an essential part of Aboriginal culture: given the unabashedly scatological humour, you probably shouldn’t watch the film on a full stomach. The jovial, cheeky Gulpilil is the perfect narrator, pre-empting viewer expectations and offering reassurance when the Arabian Nights-style plotting threatens to become overly convoluted. This is bold, resonant cinema, a return to first narrative principles that rebukes its younger characters’ impetuousness to insist ‘a good story must have proper telling’. Ten Canoes, one of
2007’s outstanding releases, is a proper telling indeed.

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Review by Howard Schumann on 20th August 2007

For the Australian Aborigines who are said to date back 65,000 years, the ancestor spirits are still alive. They are a part of an Aborigine's "dreaming" and come to life in the stories indigenous Australians have told through the ages. Playfully narrated by Australian icon David Gulpilil, Ten Canoes, directed by Rolf de Heer (The Tracker) and Peter Djigirr, tells a dreaming story that acts as a lesson for a young man in the tribe who feels that the youngest wife of his older brother should be his. The story has elements of kidnapping, sorcery, and revenge but is mostly about values: how a community living in a natural environment before the coming of the White man developed laws and systems to guide its people.

Set a thousand years ago in central Arnhem Land near the Arafura Swamp in northern Australia, east of Darwin, a group of Ganalbingu tribesmen embark on a hunt for magpie geese, a wild bird used to sustain the tribe. To navigate the crocodile-infested swamp, elder Minygululu (Peter Minygululu) leads the tribe in building canoes made out of bark. When he discovers that Dayindi (played by Gulpilil's son, Jamie) has a crush on his third wife, he tells him a story set in a mythical time after the great flood that explains how his people developed laws to govern their behavior, the same laws used by the tribes today. To distinguish between the past and the "present", De Heer uses muted color to show the ancient landscape and black and white for the more modern story.

Through myth and illuminating visuals, Ten Canoes generates a greater awareness and understanding of indigenous Australian culture and acts as an impressive counterweight to the argument that Aborigines should give up their past and join the modern world. That the film is entertaining and deeply moving as well as informative is a very welcome bonus indeed.

View more reviews by Howard Schumann

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Mike McCahill's Films of the Year 2007 by Mike McCahill

With the cinema deluged with uninspired sequels and needless remakes, DVD has been a reliable source of both discovery and solace over the past twelve months. My selection offers some of the most striking sights I’ve witnessed of late: a faun-like creature standing ten-feet high; naked men wrestling in shocked hotel lobbies; and a former teen pop idol transforming into an ambassador for music from another planet. Take That and the Spice Girls: take note.

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