Ten Canoes
Ten Canoes is a 2006 Australian historical drama/docudrama film directed by Rolf de Heer and Peter Djigirr and starring Crusoe Kurddal.The film is set in Arnhem Land in northern Australia, before Western influence, and tells the story of a group of ten men doing traditional hunting in canoes.The film is set in Arnhem Land, in a time separate of Western influence, and tells the story of a group of ten men in a traditional hunting context.When he knows he is dying he performs a ritual dance and once dead his hair is cut and his body is painted to enable the ancestral spirits to guide him to the next world.The actors and actresses, mostly from Ramingining in East Arnhem Land, speak various dialects of the Yolngu Matha language family.[citation needed] The title of the film arose from discussions between de Heer and David Gulpilil about a photograph of ten canoeists poling across the Arafura Swamp, taken by anthropologist Donald Thomson[2] in 1936.The website's critical consensus states: "Ten Canoes combines adventure, comedy, and anthropology to explore an Aborigine folk tale both fallibly human and legendary.[citation needed] Ten Canoes was nominated for seven Australian Film Institute (AFI) Awards, of which it won six.