Charlie's Country; Aboriginal Australia; Purbeck Film Festival

The one film I wanted to see at the Purbeck Film Festival, at the historic Rex Cinema in Wareham, was Charlie's Country.

An important and moving film, not helped by the fact that the subtitles were not turned on at the Rex.

So we missed quite a lot. But so do many non-Aboriginal Australians. I thought that this was in fact one of the points about non-communication and culture clash that Rolf de Heer and David Gulpili were trying to make, as I did not realise that there should have been subtitles. The Purbeck Film Festival has also been having problems with its website, which is bad luck.

YouTube excerpt

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Recreational shooter - excerpt

Trailer

Here's Jeremy Eccles' commentary on the film.

About the film

"Written by Rolf de Heer and David Gulpilil as a collaborative project,Charlie's Country stars Gulpilil as blackfella Charlie, who is getting older, and is out of sorts. The government’s intervention is making life more difficult in his remote community, what with the proper policing of whitefella laws that don't generally make much sense, and Charlie's kin seeming more interested in going along with things than doing anything about it. So Charlie takes off, to live the old way, but in doing so sets off a chain of events in his life that has him return to his community chastened, and somewhat the wiser".