About

Ten Canoes will screen from an archival 35mm print.

A collaboration between Rolf de Heer and the Ramingining community of central Arnhem Land, Ten Canoes is a cautionary tale of forbidden love. Shot on and around the beautiful Arafura Swamp, the film unfolds during a goose egg gathering expedition on which a young Dayindi, actor David Gulpilil’s son Jamie Gulpilil, is told of trouble in the mythical time of his ancestors which came of wrong love. Taking inspiration from the ethnographic photographs of Donald Thompson, de Heer uses Thomson’s representations of culture (originally intended as anthropological documentation of what was seen as a dying culture) and reappropriates this cultural history telling a Yolngu story in Yolngu voice spoken in the Ganalbingu and Mandalpingu languages.