Aborigines tell their own tale in mystic film

CANNES, France, May 19 (Reuters) Director Rolf de Heer had to hire crocodile hunters and learn how to build canoes out of trees for his new film, which he made with Aboriginal actors speaking their own language.

Heer, born in the Netherlands but who moved to Australia as an eight-year-old, said he developed ''Ten Canoes'' with members of the Yolngu community in northern Australia because he wanted to let the indigenous people tell its own history.

''I think the greatest importance to them is to show their story and to have their culture valued by our culture,'' Heer told Reuters on Friday after he presented the film, which is showing at the Cannes festival outside the main competition.

''In the end, the film can, in Australia, provide some sort of little extra step in reconciliation and understanding -- and just enjoyment. I think if we can enjoy indigenous culture, that is more important than anything else.'' Heer's gentle parable on pride, love, jealousy, and tribal ties is set in an Australia of some 1,000 years ago.

Hunter Minygululu takes the young Dayindi on his first goose egg hunt into the marshland, where he learns that Dayindi fancies one of his wives.

To ward off the young man and to teach him how to respect tribal law, Minygululu recites the story of a similar incident involving their hunting ancestors centuries ago.

Heer said it was a challenge to film in the Yolngu languages -- the movie has English subtitles -- and to transfer the tale into a plot accessible to Western viewers.

''(The Yolngu's) storytelling is based on repetition and building in off-directions. We are more direct,'' Heer said.

Aborigine actor David Gulpilil, who starred in ''Crocodile Dundee'' and Heer's ''The Tracker'', takes on the role of ironic narrator.

Heer said his crew had demonstrated nerves of steel during shooting.

''If you stand in a swamp, up to your waist for 6 hours at a stretch, and leeches are getting at you from the waist down, and mosquitos from the waist up, and the local says there's a big one coming, a crocodile, then in the end you just have to say ... 'Tell me when it gets closer. Keep shooting','' he said.

Showing the film to the local community of Ramingining where it was shot was a moving experience, he said.

''They made so much noise, laughing and cheering, that they could understand perhaps only 30 percent of the dialogue. But it didn't matter because they understood what was going on. They were laughing at jokes that I didn't know were there,'' he said.

''It's the first time they have seen that sort of drama ...

that is their own story, with their own people doing it, particularly in their own language. So it's been fantastic.'' Reuters SK GC0158