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key indigenous australian issues
| home | news lGiving oxygen to tribal talesLenny Ann Low
30 September 2003 - Away from the chattering foyer crowd, David Gulpilil laughs and leaps across an empty stage at Belvoir Street Theatre. "I will dance, I will sing for you," he says, chuckling and jumping back to his seat . "No worries. I will make you laugh." The actor and Aboriginal elder is gleefully explaining his one-man show, a new collaboration called Gulpilil, written by him and playwright Reg Cribb and directed by Company B artistic director Neil Armfield. It will have its world premiere at next year's Adelaide Festival. "Sydney is my Hollywood. When I come here everyone knows that I'm David Gulpilil. But when I go back it's different, I stay with my reality. I gotta go back to the same spot." That "same spot" is the humpy house Gulpilil built at the Tank Camp in Ramingining Aboriginal community in Arnhem Land, where he lives with his wife and "really, really big" family. But it is also, metaphorically, an identity a million miles away from his film career. Gulpilil was one of the key works announced yesterday by Company B director Neil Armfield for next year's season at Belvoir Street Theatre. The play enables Gulpilil to tell the story of his extraordinary double life. It's an unlikely split between the glitz and celebrity of local and overseas film industries and his traditional base in Ramingining. "The main character is me, living off the land," he says. "Like a wanderer, like a forgotten generation. Me and my humpy house and my story of my life." Gulpilil, which will have seasons at the Brisbane Festival and Belvoir St late next year, comes a year after the biographical documentary Gulpilil: One Red Blood which was screened on Australian television. Directed by Darlene Johnson, the hour-long film showed Gulpilil traversing his worlds of ancient culture and Western fame. BELVOIR 2004
"But this one, I'm going to talk to all the people," he adds. "The picture screen is different to life. I'm going to walk around the stage with a real house, a fridge, a fireplace and show all my life." Since filmmaker Nicolas Roeg witnessed his traditional dancing and cast the teenager, who spoke no English, in the 1971 feature film Walkabout, Gulpilil has won copious awards, worked with Dennis Hopper and hung out with Marlon Brando and Bob Marley.
Gulpilil's life has seen its dips beside the highs. He has served time in jail following convictions on drink-driving charges. Throughout his career, he has continued to make a living working on fencing and cattle-mustering and he is now a licensed crocodile hunter. Armfield admits his role as director of Gulpilil will demand "an experience of surrender". "Reg Cribb said this wonderful thing to me, that 'once David is in front of an audience, that's going to be the oxygen'. He's going to breathe and it would be wrong to too highly controlling of that aspect of the event." Gulpilil will play alongside two other autobiographical shows featuring the stories of indigenous men, in a triptych called Life Times Three. Actor, singer and choreographer Noel Tovey's show Little Black Bastard returns after a season at Darlinghurst Theatre, and David Page will present Page 8, co-written with Louis Nowra and staged by his brother Stephen Page. Also programmed for next year is British playwright Joe Orton's subversive comedy What the Butler Saw, directed by Jim Sharman and starring Max Gillies, and Benedict Andrews's interpretation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Nigel Jamieson, director of the 2000 Olympic Games opening ceremony and The Theft of Sita, presents In Our Name, the true story of a family's struggle to escape from Iraq, survive in Australian detention centres and find a home here. "This is a season put together from what's alive in the air," Armfield said. Belvoir's much-anticipated Northcott project with Scott Rankin's Big hART has been postponed until 2005. Creative development of the work, being made in conjunction with Belvoir's neighbours in the Northcott housing estate, is under way. The work, initially planned for the 2004 season, had been delayed because of Armfield's and Rankin's hectic schedules, says Belvoir's general manager, Rachel Healy. "They have done a huge amount of work and we want to test out a particular [script] direction and the way to do that with integrity is with a workshop," Healy says. Source: The Sydney Morning Herald HOW TO SEE THE TRACKER Please note that ENIAR is not responsible for external links content and does not endorse a particular website The Tracker is not distributed for sale in Europe. ENIAR supporter Steve Lowman says that a double CD pack of The Tracker/Walkabout (another classic movie starring David Gulpilil) is now not on the list of the major online CD seller, CD-Wow - infact The Tracker is now on no UK list. However, it is possible to import the double pack from Australian DVD
sellers, and probably for a very reasonable price. The best search I have
found for this is at the following URL: I believe that, whatever the listings say about it being Region 4, all copies are actually Region 0, and will play on PAL Region 2 machines. This search result page can take you to any of a number of Australian DVD sellers, which generally confirm that this is a multi-region DVD pack, and perhaps it is up to individual purchasers to decide who they want to buy from. The search result page says that prices include delivery, but one cannot be 100% sure of that until the appropriate stage of the purchasing process at each individual seller site. Obviously, delivery from Australia will take a little more time than from UK.
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its one year on from the Australian Governments controversial intervention into NT Indigenous communities
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He is a Member in the Order of Australia and won best actor for his role in Rolf de Heer's film 
