Christmas Menu - Item 4

Ten Canoes

An Aboriginal tale of magic and mystery, set in a time before white settlers came to Australia, this comic retelling of a traditional fable is the first major feature film to be made entirely with native Aboriginal dialogue. It's thoroughly entertaining, moving and informative too. Set a thousand years ago in central Arnhem Land in northern Australia, a group of Ganalbingu tribesmen embark on a hunt for magpie geese. To navigate the crocodile-infested swamp, elder Minygululu leads the tribe in building canoes made out of bark. When he discovers that Dayindi has a crush on his third wife, he tells him a story set in a mythical time after the great flood that explains how his people developed laws to govern their behaviour, the same laws used by the tribes today.


Every so often, a film comes along that fully merits the term “world cinema”, transporting viewers from wherever they’re watching to one of the four corners of the earth.

This is bold, resonant cinema, a return to first narrative principles that rebukes its younger characters’ impetuousness to insist ‘a good story must have proper telling’. Ten Canoes, one of 2007’s outstanding releases, is a proper telling indeed.