TEN CANOES

NARRATIVE, Australia, 2006, 90 minutes

Director/Writer: Rolf de Heer
Co-Director: Peter Djigirr
Producer: Rolf de Heer, Domenico Procacci, Julie Ryan

This remarkable film has been receiving rave reviews since its debut, for reasons that are apparent from its first stunning frame. In collaboration with the Ramingining Aboriginal community, director de Heer and indigenous co-director Djiggir have crafted a film that pays such authentic homage to ancient oral tradition that the two almost seem to meld. Celebrated actor David Gulpilil narrates the viewer through a story that grows, he explains, like a tree, for it is only in veering off from the trunk that one can ultimately get to know the whole in its entirety. The story in question concerns young Dayindi, who secretly covets his much older brother’s Minygululu’s youngest wife. While traveling with their fellow tribesmen to harvest bark to make canoes (a remarkable sequence in and of itself), Minygululu retells an ancestral story that has odd parallels to Dayindi’s own. Weaving dazzlingly back and forth in time, the story unfolds in non-linear fashion, exploring side branches laden with tales of sorcery, gluttony, kidnapping, war, revenge, and of course forbidden love. While ultimately a lesson about respect for one’s culture and the laws that bind it, this is a funny, ribald, and joyous film. (Ruth Cowing).

· 2006 Cannes Film Festival: Special Jury Prize

Julie Ryan has been working with Rolf de Heer since 1996; their films have received many awards through the years. In 1999, Ryan spent three months in the jungles of French Guyana co-producing her first feature film, THE OLD MAN WHO READ LOVE STORIES, starring Richard Dreyfuss and Hugo Weaving. The film was nominated for Best Film at the 2005 Film Critics Circle of Australia Awards, Australian Film Institute Awards and the IF Awards.