Tracy Moffat, Rolf de Heer
Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy and Ten Canoes
25
January 2024
25
Jan
2024
Seventh Gallery Lawn
Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy and Ten Canoes
Tracy Moffat, Rolf de Heer
25
January 2024
25
January
2024
Seventh Gallery Lawn
We are pleased to introduce Seventh Cinema, a free public cinema season spanning seven weeks. In collaboration with guest artist Kori Miles, we have curated a series of film programs on a temporary outdoor cinema on the gallery's adjacent lawn. In this inaugural season we have selected films that approach the intersections of neo/colonialism and global climate change, zooming in on global colonial expansion and its persistent effects on the environment, human rights, and cultural landscapes.
See the full Seventh Cinema Season 1 program here.
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Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy (1995) 19 minutes, directed by Tracy Moffat
Night Cries is the story of a white woman and her adopted Aboriginal daughter in a remote outback station. In part, the film is visual artist Tracey Moffat's response by to Charles Chauvel's celebrated Jedda (1955). In Night Cries, we leap forward to the white mother’s last hours, cared for, fed and washed, by the Aboriginal woman she had raised as her own.
The personal story is expressed with visual metaphors of extraordinary power, and is is staged entirely in a studio: the hills and the desert are gloriously artificial, studied and constructed. In the creation of its own hermetic world, Night Cries is enriched by Moffatt’s awareness of cinema history, beginning with a quotation from Picnic (1955), to Jedda and beyond. From this history, Moffatt draws a personal vocabulary with which she cuts deep into the crisis of Indigenous identity.
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Ten Canoes (2006), 90 minutes. Dir. Rolf de Heer.
It is the distant past, tribal times. Dayindi (played by Jamie Gulpilil, son of the great David Gulpilil) covets one of the wives of his older brother. To teach him the proper way, he is told a story from the mythical past, a story of wrong love, kidnapping, sorcery, bungling mayhem and revenge gone wrong.
Ten Canoes is a feature film that was shot on and around the Arafura Swamp in north-eastern Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia. It is unique in that it is the first feature film to be shot entirely in Aboriginal language (predominantly Ganalbingu).
The entire cast are people indigenous to the swamp region, mainly Ganalbingu and related clans, who are also responsible for the making of all the traditional artefacts needed for the film, such as the swamp-specific bark canoes, the spears and other weaponry and the dwellings. Indigenous people from the area were involved at most levels of the production, from input into and editorial control of the script to the casting and selection of locations.
Image Description: This image is a film still from Ten Canoes, and features the actor Jamie Gulpilil, an Indigenous Australian person standing tall in a bark canoe holding a long tree branch in a forested wetland.
We are pleased to introduce Seventh Cinema, a free public cinema season spanning seven weeks. In collaboration with guest artist Kori Miles, we have curated a series of film programs on a temporary outdoor cinema on the gallery's adjacent lawn. In this inaugural season we have selected films that approach the intersections of neo/colonialism and global climate change, zooming in on global colonial expansion and its persistent effects on the environment, human rights, and cultural landscapes.
See the full Seventh Cinema Season 1 program here.
ϟ
Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy (1995) 19 minutes, directed by Tracy Moffat
Night Cries is the story of a white woman and her adopted Aboriginal daughter in a remote outback station. In part, the film is visual artist Tracey Moffat's response by to Charles Chauvel's celebrated Jedda (1955). In Night Cries, we leap forward to the white mother’s last hours, cared for, fed and washed, by the Aboriginal woman she had raised as her own.
The personal story is expressed with visual metaphors of extraordinary power, and is is staged entirely in a studio: the hills and the desert are gloriously artificial, studied and constructed. In the creation of its own hermetic world, Night Cries is enriched by Moffatt’s awareness of cinema history, beginning with a quotation from Picnic (1955), to Jedda and beyond. From this history, Moffatt draws a personal vocabulary with which she cuts deep into the crisis of Indigenous identity.
ϟ
Ten Canoes (2006), 90 minutes. Dir. Rolf de Heer.
It is the distant past, tribal times. Dayindi (played by Jamie Gulpilil, son of the great David Gulpilil) covets one of the wives of his older brother. To teach him the proper way, he is told a story from the mythical past, a story of wrong love, kidnapping, sorcery, bungling mayhem and revenge gone wrong.
Ten Canoes is a feature film that was shot on and around the Arafura Swamp in north-eastern Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia. It is unique in that it is the first feature film to be shot entirely in Aboriginal language (predominantly Ganalbingu).
The entire cast are people indigenous to the swamp region, mainly Ganalbingu and related clans, who are also responsible for the making of all the traditional artefacts needed for the film, such as the swamp-specific bark canoes, the spears and other weaponry and the dwellings. Indigenous people from the area were involved at most levels of the production, from input into and editorial control of the script to the casting and selection of locations.
Tracey Moffatt
Tracey Moffatt (born 12 November 1960) is an Indigenous Australian artist who primarily uses photography and video.
In 2017 she represented Australia at the 57th Venice Biennale with her solo exhibition, "My Horizon". Her works are held in the collections of the Tate, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of South Australia and Art Gallery of New South Wales.
She lives in Sydney and has previously resided in New York City.
Though she is best known for her photographic works, Moffatt has created numerous films, documentaries and videos. Her work often focuses on Australian Aboriginal people and the way they are understood in cultural and social terms.
Rolf de Heer
Rolf de Heer is a Dutch-Australian film director, producer, and writer.
Born in Heemskerk, Netherlands, de Heer moved to Australia as a child. After studying at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School in Sydney, de Heer began his feature-length directing career with Tail of a Tiger in 1984. He is best known for the films Bad Boy Bubby, The Tracker, Ten Canoes, and Charlie's Country, all of which have been nominated for awards at Australian and international film festivals.
Lucie Loy
Lucie Loy is a multi-disciplinary artist, curator and writer (currently) based in Northern NSW and Naarm (Melbourne). Alongside her independent practice which spans visual art, publishing, writing and curating she has committed much of her professional capacity to platforming independent, artist-led and experimental practice. Through her work with artist-run projects locally and internationally, Lucie has explored notions of the ‘artist-led’, platforming the importance of art and artists critically and creatively addressing global and social struggles. Working with the aesthetics of hope, resistance and imagination, as well as through policy advocacy, activism and frustrating bureaucratic frameworks, Lucie’s practice and work seeks to explore the intersection of art, political ecology, social and environmental justice and postcolonial globalisation. Lucie is interested in collaboration, ideas of the commons and critical, transdisciplinary projects. Her recent research explores biopolitics, notions of power and the philosophies and contexts of post-truth.
Kori Miles
Kori is an interdisciplinary and process-based takataapui artist, currently working and living on sacred Wurundjeri land in Naarm/Melbourne. They are of Maaori (Ngaati Raukawa, Ngaati Ahuru, Tainui/Waikato), Italian, Scottish & Anglo-Celtic descent, but born and raised in so-called Australia. They predominantly utilise performance, installation, sculpture, photography, video and poetry as mediums to explore/articulate ideas, knowledge and stories.
Kori’s practice is guided by the stories of Maaui—the trickster demigod of Maaori mythology—and how Maaui’s clever wit combined with the powers of shape-shifting and interdimensional travel are used to undermine structural authority and cause a paradigm shift in power distribution - a social and systemic change that benefits those with less privilege and access. Kori’s practice manifests visions that confront the ongoing damage of colonial and heteronormative social structures, whilst concurrently fostering a space for contemplation on transgression, eroticism, liberation, humour, healing, regeneration and resilience.