Airdate: My Name is Gulpilil

Feature film My Name is Gulpilil profiling legendary David Gulpilil will screen this Sunday night on ABC.

Having premiered at the Adelaide Festival in March, this is produced by Rolf de Heer and directed by Molly Reynolds.

In what is very likely his final film, the great Australian actor David Gulpilil faces his own mortality: he is dying of lung cancer.

Holding the camera figuratively in the palm of his hand, David performs directly for whoever might be out there in the future looking at him, to what is for him his final audience. He talks about what it is to stare down death, and what it was to live a life such as he did, a dizzying mix of traditional Aboriginal ways and modern Hollywood excess, and everything in between. It is pure, unmediated and unvarnished David Gulpilil, finally able to say in a film exactly what he wants to say.

He reminisces about his films, and his fame, and the effects of both on a tribal boy from Arnhem Land. He talks about acting, and how his dancing in his own culture is really the basis of what made him famous. And now he looks toward going home, to his own funeral, the specifications of which he’s very particular about.

But life interferes with David’s march towards his personal end…in his words, “I should have been dead long time ago!” Despite the diagnoses and the prognostications of finality, birthdays pass and David resolutely refuses to die. In this, his final film although it may not be, the great Australian actor David Gulpilil shows what a survivor he is, and how he came to be the living legend we know him to be.

Production Credit: Presented by Screen Australia, South Australian Film Corporation and Australian Broadcasting Corporation in association with Adelaide Film Festival. A Vertigo Productions Film. Music and sound design: Tom Heuzenroeder. Cinematographers: Maxx Corkindale and Miles Rowland. Editor: Tania M. Nehme. Producers: Rolf de Heer, Peter Djigirr, Molly Reynolds and David Gulpilil. Director: Molly Reynolds.

8:30pm Sunday on ABC.