How Ten Canoes made cinema history

Podcast: Witness History · BBC World Service

Opublikowano: 2026-10-20

In 2006, Ten Canoes made Australian cinema history. It became the first feature film performed entirely in Aboriginal languages and the first to bring a traditional Yolngu story to the screen. Shot in the remote swamplands of Arnhem Land, the production relied on old anthropological photographs, clan languages and ancestral hunting knowledge to recreate life before European settlement. For the cast, many of whom had never acted before, the experience was transformative. One of them was Frances Dulibing, chosen unexpectedly by director Rolf de Heer to play Nolingo, the jealous second wife at the centre of...