By Stephanie Bunbury
Berlin: Watching the world premiere of Gurrumul at the Berlin Film Festival was a slightly dislocating experience.
Outside, the last snows had just melted on Berlin's wide, busy streets. On the screen, we watched young Yolngu boys on remote Elcho Island in north-east Arnhem Land doing traditional dances under a scorching sun, then heard the late, great musician Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu sing songs of the Dreaming in the Galpu and Gumatj languages. It felt much further than 13,000 kiilometres away, but the audience was riveted.
Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu in a still from the documentary film ''Gurrumul''.Credit: MADMAN ENTERTAINMENT
Gurrumul was blind from birth but, according to his producer, bandmate and close friend, Michael Hohnen, he could play any instrument he picked up. He played with Yothu Yindi, then with his own group Saltwater Band before releasing a self-titled solo album in 2008. It went triple platinum in Australia and charted all over the world. He won ARIAs; he played for the Queen and for Barack Obama, continuing all the while to live on Elcho Island, hunting and fishing.
The film makes it clear this wasn't always an easy mix.
Elders agreed to show Gurrumul in the film in order that his music be remembered and shared.Credit: MADMAN ENTERTAINMENT
"It is one culture laid over the top of another and they are not similar," says Hohnen. "How people deal with money and obligations, the way they prioritise cultural stuff over work or income – the difference is enormous and the film explores that."
Paul Williams had made dozens of short films in Top End communities, many of them for Indigenous producers Skinnyfish Music, by the time he started working on Gurrumul four years ago. He knew the peculiarities of working with traditional communities.
"Filmmaking is an endeavour that really requires clockwork timing," he said in a question-and-answer session after the festival screening. "Things happen in a certain way. You need to book a crew and make up a schedule, but these rules didn't necessarily work in the Yolngu world. But we were very conscious we were operating outside our world – and that we had to go with it or go mad."
Gurrumul himself said he wouldn't be interviewed. As Hohnen says during a concert shown in the film, he never talked much: "in fact, he hasn't spoken today." He also didn't want to mention in the film the fact that he was ill. He died of kidney failure just three days after signing off on the finished film.
Gurrumul's friend, bandmate and producer, Michael Hohnen, right.Credit: MADMAN ENTERTAINMENT
That was last July; he was 46. Tradition dictates that his name now should not be spoken for years, but clan leaders have agreed to a special dispensation of the rule so the film can be shown. There is a sense, says Hohnen, that a film that shows the Yolngu as strong and dignified will in turn strengthen the community.
"And the music Gurrumul has produced and that has gone into this film will actually extend the life of that culture," he says. "I know, because thousands of Yolngu kids will grow up listening to it all, hearing these ancient ancestral words that he's sung, replaying the dances hundreds of times."
Gurrumul passed away just three days after signing off on the documentary.Credit: MADMAN ENTERTAINMENT
Some of the songlines that Gurrumul adapted go back 10,000 years. "That still flummoxes me when I think about it," says Williams. "That some of it has been passed down like that from father to son; how many people are being lined up through history? It's incredible."
Gurrumul is in selected cinemas from April 26.
Some of the songlines that Gurrumul adapted go back 10,000 years.Credit: MADMAN ENTERTAINMENT
It is one culture laid over the top of another and they are not similar.
Michael Hohnen, producer