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“What happened to my culture when it was interrupted by yours”: Gulpilil

David Gulpilil in Another Country.

 

Another Country, which has just been selected to screen at Cannes Film Festival, came about in part from a visit the film’s producer Rolf de heer made to David Gulpilil while he was in prison.

De heer arrived at 9am at the Berrimah low-security unit and Gulpilil, weighing just 39kgs at the time, was wearing khaki shorts, thongs and an olive green t-shirt.

A long-time friend of Gulpilil, de heer wanted to help.

 “He (de heer) went to visit David and had a conversation about what David was going to do post-prison and David said ‘I don’t know, I think I want to make a film, I think I want to make a film with you Rolf,’” Another Country director Molly Reynolds tells IF.

The next morning, in stifling heat, de heer pitched a rough idea for a film which would become Charlie’s Country and Another Country would quickly follow suit.

“Rolf and David were going to make Charlie’s Country and I said ‘well look if you guys are going to go up there I’ll go up and make a documentary,” Reynolds says.

“I know there are stories that I want to tell and the story that I will tell is clash between culture and who’s the best person to tell it… to give their experience of it – that’s David Gulpilil.”

In Another Country, legendary Australian Indigenous actor, Gulpilil (Walkabout, Storm Boy, Crocodile Dundee, Australia, Rabbit Proof Fence, The Tracker) tells the tale of when his people’s thousands-of-years-old way of life was interrupted by a new culture. 

Reynolds says she initially thought it would be a film that Australians would reject and say, “no, we’re not going to take this.”

“Because David says this is a story of what happened to my culture when it was interrupted by yours and he says that directly and early on.

“Someone once said to me. It’s a lot to put at our feet Molly. But I said it pretty well speaks to the truth of things, so I’m quite amazed that the Australian audience took to it.

“It’s already had some outings overseas in the North America and audiences are responding well to it here as well.”

The film, which has screen at HotDocs, MIFF and festivals around the world, will screen as part of Cannes Cinéphiles, one of four sidebar sections of the festival along with Critic’s Week and Director’s Fortnight, in the Cinéma des Antipodes strand programmed by Bernard Bories.

Reynolds says the Yolngu of Ramingining was generous in working with her and cinematographer Matt Nettheim.

“There was a tremendous accessibility,” she says. “Smartphones also made a real difference and working with the mob and being able to film them and hang out with them because they were so familiar with audiovisual, where having gone there 10 years earlier they didn’t know what it was to be captured and what it is you were capturing.

“It was a terrific thing to be able to go there having pre-existing relationships. There was trust and the familiarity with what it is to be filmed.”

Reynolds says working with Gulpilil was fantastic.

“I enjoy David’s company very much and when he gives his all he is nothing short of remarkable,” she says.

“He’s an incredibly complex character. You have got to remember that when he was a teenager he was in the bush and he was found because he was a remarkable dancer. He was cast in Walkabbout and then he had this crazy life.

“As he (Gulpilil) says at the beginning of Another Country:  “I have hung out with Bob Marley and Jimi Hendrix”. This brings complexities to things. But I find him charismatic and mercurial – that’s the way I describe David Gulpilil.”

Another Country, distributed by ABCG Film, has so far grossed more than $70k at the Australian Box Office.

Reynolds says Gulpill is someone who is jammed between cultures.

“He’s a blackfella more than anything else, but he’s not entirely grounded in his own culture anymore because the dominant culture, being the whitefella culture, has led him astray.

“He had his input (to the film) in that way and then when it came to the writing of it and the crafting of it, it had the three themes which were: time, rubbish and money and we worked on how to craft it.

“English is his sixth or seventh language and even though he speaks it better than most of his mob it’s still the finessing of it.  The fine expression came from Rolf and I because he understands it but he doesn’t know how to express it.

“So we would say OK David, what if we say it this way. He would say Hey! How do you know what I’m thinking! This is it! What I have always wanted to say!’ that’s the two tiered way in which the writing came together.

She said there were to recordings of Gulpilil’s narration.

“The first part we did in Darwin and David, not only did he not put his teeth in, but it just was not a good recording.

“We decided to do it again and we did the narration in Adelaide and that’s the one that you hear today.

“With Another Country he (Gulpilil) said 'this is my best, this is my best work to date' and I know that it will hold until he makes his next film and he will say this is my best work to date. We did the world premiere of the film at the Melbourne Film Festival and there was a great reception, a standing ovation and David was there for David Gulpilil retrospective and it was just fantastic for him."

The film was mainly shot at the same time as Charlie’s Country, which allowed Reynolds to save on costs such as accommodation, catering and accounting services.

“It wasn’t financed conventionally. As it evolved we found the solutions to getting it financed.

“We were able to get started under the auspices of Charlie’s Country and having those resources available to Matt, the cinematographer, and I.”

"The film was the only Australian documentary to be nominated for an Asia Pacific Screen Award in 2015, was nominated for a UN Media Peace Award, won the Grand Prix at the 2016 FIFO Pacific International Film Festival where Abderrahmane Sissako (Timbuktu) was head of the jury, and was ranked 4th in The Guardian’s 10 Best Australian Films of 2015 (further awards list below).

The shoot was also a smooth one with a bit of luck thrown in, according to Reynolds.

“There was my colleague Matt Netheim and I – there was just the two of us – and because of the people we knew and the community we tore around for six weeks and collected a whole lot of footage.

 During the pickup shoot there was a fortuitous moment where a Kangaroo met its fate.

“First day back on the job and Matt’s working away and I clock this kangaroo and I say ‘it’s very interesting that there’s a kangaroo in town… it could be useful just to have in the library of shots'.

“I gesture to Matt and nod my head. He picked up the tripod took it a couple of feet and pulled focus on the Kangaroo and the rest played out in a very dramatic form.

“This giant of a kangaroo tried to make his escape, but must have half blind. It runs into a fence rather painfully and then the dogs get it cornered. Then it gets beaten to death and then it gets eaten at a family barbecue later on that day.”

Another Country is only the fourth documentary in 20 years to screen in the Cannes Cinéphiles section.

“It had a very good theatrical run at Palace Nova last year,” Reynolds says. “It’s certainly not a Sherpa, it’s not running at over a million dollars, but it had a really remarkable run.

 “It’s played at every festival since MIFF until now. The distributors had me going away at least once every second week from July last year until early this year.

“But that’s beginning to wind up and I am looking forward to what’s next.”

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