There’s a pensive and ephemeral feeling to the film My Name is Gulpilil. This amazing film showcases David Gulpilil’s fifty-year screen career with snippets from many of his film appearances.
David talks candidly about his terminal illness and his life story in his own words. He is humble about his acting ability in some of Australia’s most loved films, including Crocodile Dundee, Australia, Walkabout, Storm Boy and many more.
Somehow, he manages to rub shoulders with many Hollywood greats, while maintaining his traditional Aboriginal practices and beliefs. His life is not without regrets and his honesty is courageous.
It would have been nice to hear other actors talk about him, but here David remains the storyteller of his life and acting career.
Produced and filmed on Ngarrindjeri, and Andyamathana Lands.
Release date of 27 May 2021.
About My Name is Gulpilil
In My Name is Gulpilil, David holds the camera figuratively in the palm of his hand. He performs directly for whoever might be out there in the future looking at him, to what is for him his final audience. He talks about what it is to stare down death, and what it was to live a life such as he did, a dizzying mix of traditional Aboriginal ways and modern Hollywood excess, and everything in between. It is pure, unmediated and unvarnished David Gulpilil, finally able to say in a film exactly what he wants to say.
But life interferes with David’s march towards his personal end…in his words, “I should have been dead long time ago!” Despite the diagnoses and the prognostications of finality, birthdays pass and David resolutely refuses to die. In this, his likely final film (although it may not be), the great Australian actor David Gulpilil shows what a survivor he is, and how he came to be the living legend we know him to be.
Directed by Molly Reynolds (Another Country and 12 Canoes) and produced by Rolf de Heer, Peter Djigirr, David Gulpilil and Molly Reynolds.
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