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Australia 2002/8
Directed by
Darlene Johnson
80 minutes
Rated M

Reviewed by
Bernard Hemingway
3 stars

Gulpilil - One Red Blood

David Gulpilil, Australia’s best-known Aboriginal actor, became a film star after the international success of Nicolas Roeg’s 1969 classic (British) film, Walkabout. Darlene Johnson’s documentary is a comprehensive albeit quite conventional film portrait that mixes archival footage and clips from the actor's best-known films with a variety of talking heads, some well-known such as Phil Noyce, and some unknown, and interviews with and footage of Gulpilil himself in his home country of Arnhem Land. Gulpilil is, of course, a charismatic figure whose life has been quite extraordinary and his marvellous directness about it makes this a diverting 80 minutes.

FYI: Johnson’s documentary was originally released in 2002 with a run-time of 56 minutes. It has been updated to take account of the resurgence of Gulpilil’s career with Rolf De Heer’s The Tracker (2002) and Ten Canoes (2006).

 

 

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