12 Canoes | ONLINE
October 8th 2008 00:35
AN indigenous community from ARNHEM LAND has gone world wide via an innovative website 12canoes.com.au.
12canoes.com.au, the new website from Arnhem Land’s Ramingining community together with filmmakers Molly Reynolds and Rolf de Heer has had visitors from 128 countries covering all 5 continents since going live on September 8. A huge success to date, the website project initiated by the Ramingining community to share their culture with the world and record it for future generations, has had over 25 900 unique visits, with the majority of hits from countries including Australia, the US, Canada, Germany and visits from countries as far afield as Uzbekistan, Uganda, Greenland, the Dominican Republic, Mongolia, Iran and Kuwait.
Twelve Canoes introduces a uniquely Australian window into a way of life that the majority of the Australian population has never previously had the opportunity to experience and rightly so, visitors are coming in their thousands even though the website has relied more on word of mouth than a huge press campaign.
The Ramingining community of Arnhem Land lies in the remote north of Australia, part of an area recently named as the largest intact wilderness in the world in a study by international conservation organizations.
Filmmaker Rolf de Heer collaborated with the Indigenous community of Ramingining to make the feature film Ten Canoes, which was released in more than 13 countries, the collaboration between storytelling filmmaker and storytelling culture brought to light far too many stories to be able to fit into the narrative of a feature film. So as the film won recognition all over the world the community continued to work on this, greater project. I interviewed Rolf at the time of the release of Ten Canoes and he was, in many ways, more excited by the enthusiasm expressed by the Ramingining community than anything else.
While the experience of the film making sounded like a Boy's Own Adventure and I'm certain it was to an extent, the opportunity for the community to interact with the world via the internet was a riveting development. Sure the internet has been around for a time, not as long as the community up North, but they basically discovered these news means of communicating, telling stories, and how wonderful is that?
The idea was born to create the website as a way of sharing with the world the stories and the culture, past and present, of the Yolngu people of the Ramingining community and the heritage-listed Arafura Swamp in central Arnhem Land and the site is a work of art in itself; honoring the people of the Arafura Swamp, and built around twelve filmed visual poems describing and illustrating many aspects of Yolngu history, life and culture.
These twelve stories can be viewed with Yolngu or English dialogue. Other features of the site include galleries which showcase Ramingining art and artists, music and songmen, language and common terms, and photographs that capture the essence of life in the area.
12canoes.com.au is being hosted by the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia through their website. The National Film and Sound Archive is Australia's national cultural institution committed to safeguarding and making as accessible the national collection of audiovisual cultural heritage to the widest possible audience.
from the movie 10 Canoes by Rolf de Heer
12canoes.com.au, the new website from Arnhem Land’s Ramingining community together with filmmakers Molly Reynolds and Rolf de Heer has had visitors from 128 countries covering all 5 continents since going live on September 8. A huge success to date, the website project initiated by the Ramingining community to share their culture with the world and record it for future generations, has had over 25 900 unique visits, with the majority of hits from countries including Australia, the US, Canada, Germany and visits from countries as far afield as Uzbekistan, Uganda, Greenland, the Dominican Republic, Mongolia, Iran and Kuwait.
Twelve Canoes introduces a uniquely Australian window into a way of life that the majority of the Australian population has never previously had the opportunity to experience and rightly so, visitors are coming in their thousands even though the website has relied more on word of mouth than a huge press campaign.
The Ramingining community of Arnhem Land lies in the remote north of Australia, part of an area recently named as the largest intact wilderness in the world in a study by international conservation organizations.
the isolated top end of Australia
While the experience of the film making sounded like a Boy's Own Adventure and I'm certain it was to an extent, the opportunity for the community to interact with the world via the internet was a riveting development. Sure the internet has been around for a time, not as long as the community up North, but they basically discovered these news means of communicating, telling stories, and how wonderful is that?
The idea was born to create the website as a way of sharing with the world the stories and the culture, past and present, of the Yolngu people of the Ramingining community and the heritage-listed Arafura Swamp in central Arnhem Land and the site is a work of art in itself; honoring the people of the Arafura Swamp, and built around twelve filmed visual poems describing and illustrating many aspects of Yolngu history, life and culture.
These twelve stories can be viewed with Yolngu or English dialogue. Other features of the site include galleries which showcase Ramingining art and artists, music and songmen, language and common terms, and photographs that capture the essence of life in the area.
12canoes.com.au is being hosted by the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia through their website. The National Film and Sound Archive is Australia's national cultural institution committed to safeguarding and making as accessible the national collection of audiovisual cultural heritage to the widest possible audience.
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