Sunset to Sunrise (ingwartentyele – arrerlkeme): Two Ways

Title:

Sunset to Sunrise (ingwartentyele – arrerlkeme): Two Ways

Year

2006

Warnings

WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that the following program may contain images and/or audio of deceased persons

Summary

Rupert Max Stuart, Arrernte Mat-utjarra Elder oversees the preparation of kangaroo by his two descendents. He tells us that he never ate white man’s food growing up and was taught by the old men and ladies. Max is teaching the younger people so that they can teach it after he passes away. As a young man, Rupert Max Stuart tells us, they would get their own meat, but the old men and women would always be fed first. Max tells us that the young fellas are learning two ways – whitefella way and blackfella way. The kangaroo is thrown onto the fire, its body singed.

Summary by Romaine Moreton

CURATOR'S NOTES

Elder Rupert Max Stuart discusses the importance of culture in the riverbed during a beautiful sunset; he gives instruction to two young fellas preparing kangaroo. The importance of continuing tradition is paramount, and being able to live in both blackfella world and whitefella world is very much about being able to live in the land of one’s Ancestors. Each person is a repository of knowledge, and Elder Rupert Max Stuart is a man who, having experienced Western culture, focuses on his responsibility as an Elder and a caretaker of Indigenous culture and knowledge. There is a whole way of being that is represented through the eyes of Max Stuart, and it fundamentally symbolises the cultural paradox that exists between Western and Indigenous cultures.

Sunset to Sunrise Synopsis

A documentary that carries the words of Rupert Max Stuart, Arrernte Mat-utjarra Elder, his philosophies and message about passing culture on and keeping it alive.

Sunset to Sunrise is part of the Nganampa Anwernekenhe series produced by Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA) Productions. Nganampa Anwernekenhe means 'ours’ in the Pitjantjatjara and Arrernte lanuages, and the series aims to contribute to the preservation of Indigenous languages and cultures.

Curator's Notes

Sunset to Sunrise is a yarn, a tale told by Rupert Max Stuart, an Arrernte and Mu-tujulu Elder. A gentle, moving film where we as the audience are asked, at the film’s urging, to listen to this Elder, his words of wisdom, of the experience of his childhood and into his older years. Stuart speaks directly to his people, and chastises them for the irresponsible nature of their lives, whereby the importance of culture is forsaken for white man’s poison, or alcohol.

Notes by Romaine Moreton