Films:
Sunday 25 6.00pm
The Courtyard Hereford
Ten Canoes (15)
Director: Rolf de Heer
Starring: Crusoe Kurddal,
Jamie Dayindi,
Gulpilil, Dalaithngu.
Australia, 2006,
1 hour 30 minutes, subtitles
If you want to be borne away to a totally different time and place, then come and hear an Aboriginal tell a story his ancestors have been telling since the world was young. How Ridjmivaril lost his wife, the sorcery, the war party, revenge, pay back and how his brother Dayindi finally got what his heart most desired. Mixing colour and black and white to great effect, this is a fantastically beautiful film that makes full use of the glorious scenery of the Australian swamplands and shows the Aboriginals' daily lives, their rituals and the annual goose hunt in ethnographic detail.
As the narrator of the first ever Aboriginal-language film says 'It's a story like you never heard before', a story full of bawdy humour that is playfully and stylishly told. True to the oral tradition from which it comes it is a story about storytelling, about the beliefs men live by, and how a young man learns 'to live the proper way'.
"an unmissable one of a kind" London Film Festival
Winner of Un Certain Regard, Special Jury Prize, Cannes Film Festival 2006