Documentary ‘Nothing Rhymes with Ngapartji’
The multi-awarded documentary Nothing Rhymes with Ngapartji underlines the various temporalities in the contemporary Indigenous culture in Australia. The film project relates the touring of the awarded performance Ngapartji Ngapartji in the Central Desert. We follow the main comedian, Trevor Jamieson, who came back in his home country at Ernabella (South Australia) for a special event.
However the death of the Trevor’s father, the main character of the play, imposed the team to modify their performance. In these remote areas, the names of recent dead people are banned. The team has to find creative solution to present the show without transgressing some rules.
This connection between the temporal fiction and realities extends to the long time of History and the short time of the personal life of Trevor’s father. For instance, the departure of the Trevor’s father to his homeland dealt with the Maralwinga nuclear test in the end of the 50s. The highly emotive sequence of the play renew in the elders’ memory therefore the individual story becomes the collective history. Moreover, the montage with archives and video record links the past and the present, the fiction and the reality.
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Documentary Nothing Rhymes with Ngapartji, 2010, Directed by Suzy Bates, Produced by Alex Kelly, Michael Watts, Shannon Owen. Distributed by Ronin Film