After the screening of Charlie’s Country, a film about an Australian aborigine who is withstanding the aggressive hegemony of the white people, moderator Damijan Vinter talked to Dutch director Rolf de Heer, who wrote the script in cooperation with the lead actor, David Gulpilil, in the Linhart Hall of Cankarjev dom. The filmmaker revealed many an interesting detail from the rather atypical shooting. For a year or so, he lived in the aboriginal community together with the lead actor and could engage in prolonged contemplation as nothing much goes on in these communities. He also learnt a great deal about the systematic pressure exerted against the Aboriginals by the white Australian population.

He worked with the excellent Gulpilil already in 2002 on The Tracker. On first meeting him, he was overcome by the apprehension that their characters might be too dissimilar and that they might not be able to work together. However, Gulpilil asked him to join his community for a while. After a week or so, they shared several experiences and became friends, explained de Heer, yet this friendship was of a special kind: Aboriginal people have no concept of friendship, their interpersonal relationships stem from family and other traditional human ties. The filmmaker made the Ten Canoes without him, since David had left his community. After learning that he was fighting alcoholism, and that he was imprisoned, the director decided to visit him. To the director, he seemed “a dead soul, whose life had abandoned it.” When asked what he wanted to do when he came from prison, Gulpilil categorically replied that he wanted to make a film with him. On learning the happy news, “the actor was instantly invigorated”. In concluding, he explained that his acting skill was still superlative, to which the Best Actor Award presented within the scope of the Cannes Film Festival Un Certain Regard section can testify to.

In devising the story, the director decided to invest the character with some of Gulpilil’s political engagement, one of the actor’s dominant features, thereby allowing it greater expression and visibility. The political engagement was well suited as the Australian aborigines are still suffering the injustices that Australia did alleviate but not entirely abolish after the genocide. Apart from the intolerant Australian society, their co-habitation is rendered more difficult also on account of the traditional Aboriginal relationships – there is no such thing as one Aboriginal society, it is rigidly divided into separated Aboriginal groups. 

Andraž Jež

Photo: Iztok Dimc
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