Filmmaker Rolf de Heer on telling Indigenous stories and dodging claims of cultural appropriation

Filmmaker Rolf de Heer on why he’s compelled to tell Indigenous stories, dodging claims of cultural appropriation and directing jazz legend Miles Davis.

Artistic vision: Rolf de Heer

You’ve made three films – The Tracker, Ten Canoes and Charlie’s Country – that take on racism and oppression in Australia. Why does a Dutch-born white Australian feel compelled to tell Indigenous stories? It’s been a process of evolution. I had contact with First Nations peoples, and then more contact – and the more I had, the more I learnt, and the more pleading there was for me to make films in this area by the people themselves. I can’t solve anything, but it has satisfied something in me to try to make this tiny bit of difference to the debate.

Can you see an end to the debate? Do I think that we’re ever going to completely eradicate racism? No. Is it capable of an extraordinary amount of improvement? Yes. The first thing that needs to be done is for the major and minor political parties to come to an understanding that this issue is going to take many elections worth of Parliament to solve. The problems are so deep and endemic that if we keep pursuing it along party-political lines, it’s going to stagger from one catastrophe to another.

Your new film, The Survival of Kindness, also deals with issues of race but broadens its scope. How is it different? It’s a fable, a sort of mythical story, so everything looks a little otherworldly, or it’s intended to. It’s as much about what’s happening in the UK, the US or Africa as it is Australia. It’s anywhere; it’s all those things.

How have you managed to dodge charges of cultural appropriation? Because I’ve avoided doing it. With Ten Canoes, for example, I was the means by which the mob there could make the film they wanted to make. What is set up is trust, and everybody then has a very positive experience. Charlie’s Country was the same: I was the means by which David [Gulpilil] could finally make his film.

The late David Gulpilil starred in three of your films and you grew close. What are your memories of him?The Tracker was the first time I worked with him, and that was a revelation into his genius and his extraordinary skills. Different films revealed different sides to him, and when he got sick he was dependent in a way he’d never been, so that was different again. We would go for long drives and not need to say anything and he was comfortable with that. That was a very different David to the wild man of The Tracker.

As an eight-year-old, you spent time in Western Sydney’s Scheyville migrant camp after your family moved from the Netherlands, via Sumatra. What was that like? It was very rural and I remember a sort of freedom, being able to wander widely with my brother. The Australian bush was so much safer than the jungle; there was the odd poisonous snake, but in Sumatra our neighbour lost his dogs to a tiger. In a peculiar coincidence, I was conscripted [for national service] at 20 and ended up at an officer training unit at Scheyville, in the same room I had occupied 12 years before.

You are the only person to have directed jazz legend Miles Davis (in 1991’s Dingo). Was it a good experience? My introduction to him didn’t bode well, but towards the end of the shoot his manager said to me, “I have never, ever seen him so cooperative.” Just before he died, we’d been discussing doing another film together, with him in the lead, not as a musician but as an actor. Because he had something as an actor. It would have been extraordinary.

The Survival of Kindness opens in cinemas on May 4