by Annette Basile
Worth: $17.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Mark Coles Smith
Intro:
… entrancing …
With its striking cinematography, this three-part documentary series is nothing less than entrancing. Guiding us through the unique Kimberley landscape is actor and musician Mark Coles Smith (Mystery Road: Origin, Apple Cider Vinegar). A Nyikina man, Smith was raised under the Kimberley’s stars – it’s his mother’s country and his connection to the land and the Martuwarra (Fitzroy River) is deep and real. The river, he says, keeps the Nyikina alive, and the Nyikina return the favour. It’s an unbreakable pact.
The series is told from a First Nations perspective and is all the stronger for it. Smith proves the perfect guide – he not only hosts The Kimberley, but co-wrote the script and provides the haunting, original score (under the name of Kalaji, along with Petris Jinunyili Torres and Hylton Mowday).
While only the first episode is reviewed here, the series charts the six seasons that the people who have lived here for tens of thousands of years have observed. The seasons, says Smith, “are less tied to the time of year and more so to what’s happening on country itself”.
Roughly three times the size of England and spanning 400,000 square kilometres of northern Western Australia, the Kimberley is home to wildlife not seen anywhere else on this blue-green earth. But all this stunning land and life faces threats from mining, fracking and profiteers.
Amid the deserts, savannas and mountain ranges there are countless creatures, and nature is revealed in all her beauty and brutality … Wallabies dare to drink from the river where a saltwater croc prowls – it’s tense, dramatic and rather stressful viewing as one young wallaby, trying to escape from the croc, slips down a cliff, while a white-bellied sea eagle circles above, sensing an opportunity for a free lunch. Later, we go deep inside a frill-necked lizard nest, an eggshell fragment falling off a little lizard’s head. It’s wildlife cinematography at its finest and most intimate.
Director/co-writer Nick Robinson – who’s also a marine biologist – has directed several wilderness documentaries, including Kakadu and Life on the Reef. He is also the chief cinematographer and has employed various techniques – time-lapse, slow motion and drone photography – to stunning effect (the time-lapse electrical storm is amazing).
The visuals are so clear and beautiful that if you don’t have a home theatre, you’ll wish that you did.
