THE FACES OF WORLD CINEMA

Aboriginal Samson and Delilah

The paper explains the absence of Aboriginal feature film directors until the 1990s. Their arrival marks the beginning of subversions of the long tradition of Orientalist cinematic representations of Aboriginality in Australian cinema. The critically acclaimed film Samson and Delilah (Warwick Thornton, 2009) by the Aboriginal director Warwick Thornton also exposes the white ideological frame and paternalistic assumptions about acceptable representations of Aboriginal culture. This unpretentious film about everyday survival of the Aborigines in the Northern Territory is told via a fragile love story about two young Aboriginal teenagers, Samson and Delilah, who notwithstanding incredible hardships manage to find a silver lining.

Iva Polak