Review of “Kanyini”
What is most extraordinary about this beautiful and gracious film is that we have never heard this word before. Kanyini – or the complex interconnectedness that underpins aboriginal culture – is such a simple and powerful idea, and so sublimely explained by Bob Randall, the wise old narrator of the film, that all Australians should be aware of it. It helps us understand what it means to be part of the land and, more significantly, part of the 40,000-year-old culture that has developed on that land.
Director Melanie Hogan, realizing she had no contact with, nor understanding of the traditional people of the nation, traveled to the desert “to learn about Indigenous Australia – in a blackfella way – through communication and relationship.” There she found Bob Randall, or Uncle Bob as he is more fondly referred to, who becomes the narrator of this documentary. Uncle Bob tells us his personal story and explains the significance of Kanyini. In doing so, he also tells us the history of the aboriginal people - covering some familiar ground, but always in very personal and very calm way.
We are slowly seduced into the storytelling world with some exquisite photography from the red centre of Australia, and with Uncle Bob’s magical voice. When combined with historical footage of aboriginal people living around Uluru, a sense of wisdom and authority emerges. We learn, as if from a great sage speaking the truths of an old culture that has much to tell us.
Yet Bob is too close to the pain that has been inflicted on Aboriginal people to remain the impartial guru for long: once he has us listening to him carefully, he tackles issues of the Stolen Generation, aboriginal massacres, and contemporary policy. There are some confronting moments when polarities are foregrounded: white/black, rich/poor, wealthy tourists/petrol sniffers, you/me. Whatever our position, we have no space to escape in this dialogue and, despite Bob’s ironic laughter, it is impossible not to see the anger and sadness in his old eyes.
But before the film becomes another sad profiling of the current state of aboriginal affairs and before the narrative is lost to divisiveness, Hogan and Uncle Bob bring us back to Kanyini, and the concept of a oneness that could provide us with a different, shared future. Uncle Bob explains how Kanyini makes us all brothers and sisters, all part of the same oneness, all with the same mother – Australia. For this reason alone, this is an really important and compelling documentary.
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