| Ten Canoes | |
|---|---|
 Promotional movie poster for the film | |
| Directed by |
|
| Written by | Rolf de Heer |
| Produced by |
|
| Starring | Jamie Gulpilil |
| Narrated by | David Gulpilil |
| Cinematography | Ian Jones |
| Edited by | Tania Nehme |
| Distributed by | Palace Films and Cinemas |
Release date |
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Running time | 92 minutes |
| Country | Australia |
| Languages | |
| Budget | A$2,200,000 |
| Box office | A$3,511,649 |
Ten Canoes is a 2006 Australianhistorical drama/docudrama film directed byRolf de Heer and Peter Djigirr and starringCrusoe Kurddal. The film is set inArnhem Land in northern Australia, before Western influence, and tells the story of a group of ten men doing traditional hunting in canoes. A narrator tells the story, and the overall format is that of a moral tale.
It was Australia's submission to the79th Academy Awards for theAcademy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but was not accepted as a nominee.
The film is set inArnhem Land, in a time separate of Western influence, and tells the story of a group of ten men in a traditional hunting context. The leader of the group, Minygululu, tells the young Dayindi (Jamie Gulpilil) a story about another young man even further back in time who, like Dayindi, coveted his elder brother's youngest wife. The sequences featuring Dayindi and the hunt are in black and white, while shots set in distant past are in colour. All protagonists speak in indigenous languages of theYolŋu Matha language group, with subtitles. The film is narrated in English byDavid Gulpilil, although versions of the film without narration, and featuring narration in Yolŋu Matha, are also available.
Minygululu tells a story of the warrior Ridjimiraril, who suspects a visiting stranger of kidnapping his second wife. In a case of mistaken identity, Ridjimiraril kills a member of a neighbouring tribe. To prevent all-out war, tribal laws dictate that the offending tribe allow the offender to be speared from a distance by individuals of the tribe of the slain man. The offender is allowed to be accompanied by a companion, and in this instance he takes his younger brother, Yeeralparil. Whenever one of the two is hit, the spear-throwers will stop, and justice will have been served. Ridjimiraril is hit and mortally wounded but survives long enough to return to his camp, where he is tended to by his eldest wife. When he knows he is dying he performs a ritual dance and once dead his hair is cut and his body is painted to enable the ancestral spirits to guide him to the next world.
The elder brother's kidnapped second wife then finds her way back to the camp. She reveals that she had been kidnapped by a different tribe, much farther away and had taken this long to return. She mourns her lost husband, who had attacked the wrong tribe, though now she and the elder wife take his younger brother as their new husband. The younger brother, who was only interested in the youngest of the three wives, now has to care for all of them, and satisfying their many demands is clearly going to be much more than he wished.
Minygululu tells this story in the hope that Dayindi learns of the added responsibilities of a husband and elder statesman in the tribe, and in the end we see Dayindi withdrawing from his pursuit of Minygululu's young wife.
The actors and actresses, mostly fromRamingining in EastArnhem Land, speak various dialects of theYolngu Matha language family. Crusoe Kurddal is fromManingrida and speaksKuninjku.[citation needed]
The title of the film arose from discussions between de Heer andDavid Gulpilil about a photograph of ten canoeists poling across theArafura Swamp, taken by anthropologistDonald Thomson[2] in 1936.[3]
It is the first ever movie entirely filmed inAustralian Aboriginal languages.[citation needed] The film is partly in colour and partly inblack and white, indocudrama style largely with a narrator explaining the story.
Ten Canoes was released on 29 June 2006.[citation needed]
At the end of 2006, the film stood as one of the highest grossing Australian films of that year. By October it had made just over $3,000,000 from a budget of $2,200,000.[citation needed]
Ten Canoes grossedA$3,511,649 at the box office in Australia.[4]
Ten Canoes has an approval rating of 98% onreview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes, based on 66 reviews, and an average rating of 7.8/10. The website's critical consensus states: "Ten Canoes combines adventure, comedy, and anthropology to explore an Aborigine folk tale both fallibly human and legendary. Helmer Rolf de Heer depicts a barely represented oral tradition with a clean style".[5]Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 82 out of 100, based on 20 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[6]
Ten Canoes won theUn Certain Regard Special Jury Prize at the2006 Cannes Film Festival.[7] De Heer rejected claims he is a white director making anIndigenous story: "People talk about, what is a white director doing making an Indigenous story? They're [i.e. the Indigenous actors are] telling the story, largely, and I'm the mechanism by which they can."[8]Ten Canoes was screened at theSydney Film Festival in June 2006 and was released nationally on 29 June 2006.
In October 2006Ten Canoes was chosen as Australia's official entry into the Best Foreign Language Film category for the 2007Academy Awards, thus becoming the third Australian film to be considered for the award (followingFloating Life in 1996 andLa Spagnola in 2001).[citation needed]
Ten Canoes was nominated for sevenAustralian Film Institute (AFI) Awards, of which it won six. The movie won the awards for Best Picture (Julie Ryan, Rolf de Heer producers), Best Director (Rolf de Heer and Peter Djigirr), Best Screenplay - Original (Rolf de Heer), Best Cinematography (Ian Jones), Best Editing (Tania Nehme), and Best Sound (James Currie, Tom Heuzenroeder, Michael Bakaloff, and Rory McGregor). It was also nominated for Best Production Design (Beverly Freeman).[citation needed]
It won three awards from theFilm Critics Circle of Australia: Best Film, Best Editing (Tania Nehme), and Best Cinematography (Ian Jones). (The latter award was a tie with David Williamson's work onJindabyne.) The film was also nominated for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.The Balanda and the Bark Canoes, a documentary that aired on Australian networkSBS and which detailed de Heer's experiences making the film, won Best Australian Short Documentary for de Heer, Tania Nehme, and Molly Reynolds. The documentary explores the interplay between cultures in a film project immersing abalanda (white man) into the intricacies of kinship systems impacting the casting of the film as well as giving some voice to the inner conflicts of indigenous peoples today caught between the world of their heritage and that of modern life. This aspect has been explored by academic D. Bruno Starrs with regard to the "authentic Aboriginal voice".[9]
The film received the Grand Prix for Best Film atFilm Fest Gent in 2006.[citation needed]
The film ranked #72 inEmpire magazine's "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema" in 2010.[10]
| Award | Category | Subject | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| AACTA Awards (2006 AFI Awards) | Best Film | Julie Ryan,Rolf de Heer | Won |
| Best Direction | Peter Djigirr,Rolf de Heer | Won | |
| Best Original Screenplay | Rolf de Heer | Won | |
| Best Cinematography | Ian Jones | Won | |
| Best Editing | Tania Nehme | Won | |
| Best Sound | Michael Bakaloff, James Currie, Tom Heuzenroeder, Rory McGregor | Won | |
| Best Production Design | Beverley Freeman | Nominated | |
| Cannes Film Festival | Un Certain Regard - Special Jury Prize | Rolf de Heer | Won |
| FCCA Awards | Best Film | Won | |
| Julie Ryan | Won | ||
| Best Director | Peter Djigirr | Nominated | |
| Rolf de Heer | Nominated | ||
| Best Original Screenplay | Nominated | ||
| Best Editing | Tania Nehme | Won | |
| Best Cinematography | Ian Jones | Won | |
| Film Fest Gent | Grand Prix | Peter Djigirr | Won |
| Rolf de Heer | Won | ||
| Inside Film Awards | Best Feature Film | Julie Ryan | Nominated |
| Rolf de Heer | Nominated | ||
| Best Director | Won | ||
| Peter Djigirr | Won | ||
| Best Script | Rolf de Heer | Nominated | |
| Best Actor | Crusoe Kurddal | Won | |
| Best Cinematography | Ian Jones | Won | |
| Best Sound | Michael Bakaloff | Won | |
| James Currie | Won | ||
| Tom Heuzenroeder | Won | ||
| Rory McGregor | Won | ||
| Mar del Plata International Film Festival | Best Film | Rolf de Heer | Nominated |
| Peter Djigirr | Nominated | ||
| NatFilm Festival | Audience Award | Won | |
| Rolf de Heer | Won | ||
| Satellite Award | Best Foreign Language Film | Nominated | |
AfterTen Canoes sparked worldwide interest inYolngu culture, a spin-off educational project known asTwelve Canoes was born, in collaboration with the people atRamingining. A website, videos and study guide were created, focussing on twelve key subjects.[11] The film of the twelve segments was shown onSBS TV in Australia, and has been available online.[12] The DVD was released in 2009,[13][14] and as of 2024[update] the website continues to be available.[15]
