Panavision

Alice Springs director, Warwick Thornton, has won quite a few local and international awards for his ground-breaking film, ‘Samson & Delilah’ including the Cannes Camera d’Or. But then came news that the film had made it to the Oscars® short list and on top of that, Warwick has been named the Northern Territory’s Australian of the Year.

‘S & D’ is unique in many ways, the most obvious being that dialogue is in English and Warlpiri (an Aboriginal language of the region) and it stars two unknowns: first-time actors Rowan McNamara and Marissa Gibson. The central story deals with the love between a pair of troubled adolescents from a remote and impoverished Aboriginal community. It’s a road trip, spare of dialogue and big on pictorial beauty, but neither didactic nor polemical. Critics universally praise the honesty of the script and the director’s ability to get such moving performances from his cast.

Competing against ‘Samson & Delilah’ were eight other films on the Academy foreign language short-list: ‘El Secreto de Sus Ojos’ (Argentina); ‘The World Is Big and Salvation Lurks around the Corner’ (Bulgaria); ‘Un Prophête’ (France); ‘The White Ribbon’ (Germany); ‘Ajami’ (Israel); ‘Kelin’ (Kazakhstan); ‘Winter in Wartime’ (The Netherlands); and ‘The Milk of Sorrow’ (Peru). Although ‘Samson & Delilah’ were not selected for the final five we congratulate the cast and crew for making it to the shortlist of this prestigious award.

Film has almost certainly been in Warwick’s pedigree as he has strong familial links with CAAMA and Imparja Television, those backbones of Australian indigenous media. Born in Alice Springs, he was inspired by seeing the Imparja crews going off into the bush with their gear to shoot various productions and set his mind to study film. He is a cinematography graduate from the Australian Film Television and Radio School who writes, directs and composes the scores for his films with equal ability.