Ten Canoes

Ten Canoes (2006)

Ten canoes, three wives, one hundred and fifty spears...trouble

A story within a story within a story. In Australia's Northern Territory, an Aboriginal narrator tells a story about his ancestors on a goose hunt. A youngster on the hunt is being tempted to adultery with his elder brother's wife, so an elder tells him a story from the mythical past about how evil can slip in and cause havoc unless prevented by virtue according to customary tribal law.

Date of release
2006-06-29
TMDB
6.8 / 10 (83)
Runtime
1h 30m
Genres
Adventure, Comedy, Drama
Director
Rolf de Heer, Peter Djigirr

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Box office: A$3.5M
  • Awards: 6 · Nominations: 8. Including: AACTA Award for Best Film; AACTA Award for Best Cinematography; AACTA Award for Best Direction; AACTA Award for Best Editing

Ten Canoes is a 2006 Australian historical drama/docudrama film directed by Rolf de Heer and Peter Djigirr and starring Crusoe Kurddal. The film is set in Arnhem 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.

Production

The title of the film arose from discussions between de Heer and David Gulpilil about a photograph of ten canoeists poling across the Arafura Swamp, taken by anthropologist Donald Thomson in 1936.

It is the first ever movie entirely filmed in Australian Aboriginal languages. The film is partly in colour and partly in black and white, in docudrama style largely with a narrator explaining the story.

Arafura Swamp, Northern Territory, Australia

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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