Ventura Film Society Season 7 Screening # 9 - "Charlie's County"

In Australian cinema the wilderness has long served as a rebuke to the primacy of Western civilization. For the Dutch-Australian director, Rolf de Heer, this wilderness is not an abstract arena for playing out alienation. It is a living, breathing land with deep, abiding significance for Blackfella Charlie (the legendary Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil) and his fellow native people. Casting us adrift in the scrawny, white-policed settlements which barely pass for a homeland, “Charlie’s Country” portrays the lived experience of people who are often treated as part of an exotic landscape. Using a combination of bleak realism, fatalistic humor and a healthy dose of sentimentality, de Heer traces the downward spiral of a man who has become a refugee in his own homeland. So Charlie takes off, to live the old way. In so doing he sets off a chain of events that leave him damaged, chastened,  and finally a great deal wiser.

VIEW TRAILER – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpcfNQ6tiiE