Gibban

The 2006 movie Ten Canoes by Rolf de Heer is a mesmerizing look at the pre-European-contact culture of Australia and well worth viewing even if it didn't feature indigenous boats. A story-within-a-story within yet another one, they're all set in the Arafura Swamp in Arnham Land, in what is now the Northern Territory, on the northwestern shore of the Gulf of Carpentaria. Director de Heer's inspiration for the movie came from a 1936 photograph by anthropologist Donald Thomson, that showed 10 solo bark canoes being poled through long grass in the swamp. The story was built around that image, but when he showed up there to film, seeking local craftspeople to make the props, and local residents -- all of them Australian Aborigines -- to fill all the movie's roles (none of whom had any acting experience), de Heer found that knowledge of the swamp's indigenous canoe had disappeared from the region. de Heer was able to recruit one individual with some bark canoe building e...