article courtesy of AFP
Aboriginal director Warwick Thornton's Samson and Delilah, a tale of young love in a troubled indigenous community, was Sunday awarded the Camera d'Or first film prize at the Cannes festival.
Thornton's feature takes an unflinching look at the problems facing Australia's remote Aboriginal communities: violence, substance abuse and poverty.
Shot in a derelict Aboriginal community near Alice Springs, it follows the slow, shy courtship between a boy who spends his time sniffing petrol and lost in music, and a girl forced to care for her ailing grandmother.
French actress Isabelle Adjani awarded the Camera d'Or of the 62nd Cannes film festival to what the jury described as "the best love film we've seen for many a year, 'Samson and Delilah.'"
Played by first-time Aboriginal actors Rowan McNamara and Marisa Gibson, both 14 at the time, the film is marked by long silences, and what little is spoken is mostly in the Central Australian language Warlpiri.
"Thank you for believing in our first born baby," Thornton said as he accepted the award. "I don't don't know what to say. Viva Cannes, viva le cinema."
The 38-year-old filmmaker drew on his own experience of growing up on the streets of Alice Springs when writing the screenplay, and approached local Aboriginal communities for help in finding his actors.
"It is about Aboriginal kids growing up and how incredibly strong and resilient and beautiful they are, and how they are neglected, not only by their own people and their own families but by the system."
In an interview with AFP, Thornton said a sense of his identity ran strongly through his work.
"I'm an Aboriginal and I will be all my life," he said. "The stolen generation, that's me. I'm actually not supposed to be here, it was actually government policy to breed us out and get rid of us."
"When you're writing your first feature you have to ask yourself, have you got something to say? Is there a fire inside of you, that you can translate to the film?"
"That's what it was. Everything that's in the film I've seen personally."
CONGRATULATIONS WARWICK!!!!
