The Tracker | |
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![]() Theatrical film poster | |
Directed by | Rolf de Heer |
Produced by | Rolf de Heer Julie Ryan |
Written by | Rolf de Heer |
Starring | |
Music by | Graham Tardif |
Cinematography | Ian Jones |
Edited by | Tania Nehme |
Distributed by | Umbrella Entertainment |
Release date | 2002 |
Running time | 98 minutes |
Country | Australia |
Language | English |
Box office | A$818,388 (Australia) [1] |
The Tracker is an 2002 Australian drama film directed and written by Rolf de Heer and starring David Gulpilil, Gary Sweet and Damon Gameau. It is set in 1922 in outback Australia where a racist white colonial policeman (Sweet) uses the tracking ability of an Indigenous Australian tracker (Gulpilil) to find the murderer of a white woman.
In film and television, drama is a genre of narrative fiction intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular subgenre, such as "police crime drama", "political drama", "legal drama", "historical period drama", "domestic drama", or "comedy-drama". These terms tend to indicate a particular setting or subject-matter, or else they qualify the otherwise serious tone of a drama with elements that encourage a broader range of moods.
Rolf de Heer is a Dutch Australian film director. De Heer was born in Heemskerk in the Netherlands but migrated to Sydney when he was eight years old. He attended the Australian Film, Television and Radio School in Sydney. His company is called Vertigo Productions and is based in Adelaide. De Heer primarily makes alternative or arthouse films. According to the jacket notes of the videotape, de Heer holds the honor of co-producing and directing the only motion picture, Dingo, in which the jazz legend Miles Davis appears as an actor. Miles Davis collaborated with Michel Legrand on the score. He is the subject of the book Dutch Tilt, Aussie Auteur: The Films of Rolf de Heer by Dr D. Bruno Starrs. A comprehensive study of his films to date, Dancing to His Song: the Singular Cinema of Rolf de Heer by film critic Jane Freebury, is published in ebook and print.
David Gulpilil Ridjimiraril Dalaithngu AM, is an Australian traditional dancer and actor.
1922, somewhere in Australia. An Aboriginal man is accused of murdering a white woman, and three white men (The Fanatic, The Follower and The Veteran) are on a mission to capture him with the help of an experienced indigenous man (The Tracker).
As they travel through the rugged Australian outback, each suffers under the stern hand and racist attitude of The Fanatic, who will stop at nothing to bring the accused to justice, even if that means sacrificing the others to reach the goal.
The Outback is the vast, remote interior of Australia. "The Outback" is more remote than those areas named "the bush" which is any location outside the main urban areas.
Meanwhile, the motives of the tracker remain elusive, and despite their relentless pursuit the men always seem to be a half-day behind their quarry.
After the death of one of the men, and a surprise mutiny, what endgame awaits for the group, and the enigmatic Tracker to which they have entrusted their survival.
Gary Sweet is an Australian film and television actor known for his roles in Alexandra's Project, Police Rescue, Cody, Big Sky, Bodyline, Stingers and House Husbands.
Damon Gameau is an Australian television and film actor who is the director of, and lead role in, That Sugar Film. Gameau also appeared in the Australian series Love My Way, the 2002 Australian film The Tracker, and in a small role in the US series How I Met Your Mother.
Grant Page is an Australian stuntman who worked mostly during the seventies and eighties. Page was the stunt coordinator for the popular Australian action movies The Man from Hong Kong (1975) and Mad Max (1979), as well as other Australian and overseas films including the cult horror flick Death Ship (1980). He starred in the 1970s Australian TV series Danger Freaks, which, while ostensibly a documentary of his professional work with various stunt performers, emphasized the spectacular visual results from these collaborations. Grant featured in a cameo appearance in the Blur music video M.O.R.
The film was shot in the semi-arid, rugged Arkaroola Sanctuary, in South Australia's Flinders Ranges. De Heer used an intentionally small film crew, saying that “It's all a much better process ...”. [3] The film is intercut with paintings by Peter Coad which portray brutal actions not shown, while the lyrics of the soundtrack (written by De Heer) form part of the narrative, and are sung by Archie Roach with music composed by Graham Tardif. [4]
South Australia is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of 983,482 square kilometres (379,725 sq mi), it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories by area, and fifth largest by population. It has a total of 1.7 million people, and its population is the second most highly centralised in Australia, after Western Australia, with more than 77 percent of South Australians living in the capital, Adelaide, or its environs. Other population centres in the state are relatively small; Mount Gambier, the second largest centre, has a population of less than 30,000.
The Flinders Ranges are the largest mountain range in South Australia, which starts about 200 km (125 mi) north of Adelaide. The discontinuous ranges stretch for over 430 km (265 mi) from Port Pirie to Lake Callabonna.
Archibald William "Archie" Roach, AM is an Australian musician. He is a singer, songwriter and guitarist, as well as a campaigner for the rights of Indigenous Australians.
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes the film has a score of 88% based on reviews from 33 critics, with an average 7.1/10 rating. [5]
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang. The name "Rotten Tomatoes" derives from the practice of audiences throwing rotten tomatoes when disapproving of a poor stage performance.
Film critic Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four calling the film "haunting" and the performances "powerful". [6] David Stratton described the film as "remarkable". [7]
Awards | Category | Subject | Result |
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AACTA Awards (2002 AFI Awards) | Best Film | Julie Ryan | Nominated |
Rolf de Heer | Nominated | ||
Best Direction | Nominated | ||
Best Original Screenplay | Nominated | ||
Best Actor | David Gulpilil | Won | |
Best Editing | Tania Nehme | Nominated | |
Best Cinematography | Ian Jones | Nominated | |
ARIA Award | Best Original Soundtrack Album | Graham Tardif | Nominated |
ASSG Award | Best Sound | Won | |
AWGIE Award | Best Film - Original Screenplay | Rolf de Heer | Won |
Cinemanila International Film Festival | Best Actor | David Gulpilil | Won |
FCCA Awards | Best Film | Julie Ryan | Won |
Rolf de Heer | Won | ||
Best Director | Nominated | ||
Best Screenplay | Nominated | ||
Best Actor | David Gulpilil | Won | |
Best Editing | Tania Nehme | Nominated | |
Best Cinematography | Ian Jones | Won | |
Best Music Score | Graham Tardif | Won | |
Ghent International Film Festival | Grand Prix Award | Rolf de Heer | Nominated |
Best Screenplay | Won | ||
Inside Film Awards | Best Feature Film | Julie Ryan | Won |
Rolf de Heer | Won | ||
Best Direction | Nominated | ||
Best Script | Nominated | ||
Best Actor | David Gulpilil | Won | |
Best Music | Graham Tardif | Won | |
Best Cinematography | Ian Jones | Nominated | |
Best Sound | Nominated | ||
Paris Film Festival | Press Award | Rolf de Heer | Won |
Screen Music Award | Best Original Song | Graham Tardif | Won |
Valladolid International Film Festival | Jury Special Prize | Rolf de Heer | Won |
Golden Spike Award | Nominated | ||
Venice Film Festival | SIGNIS Award - Honorable Mention | Won | |
Golden Lion | Nominated | ||
The Tracker | ||||
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Soundtrack album by Archie Roach | ||||
Released | August 2002 | |||
Genre | World, folk | |||
Label | Mana Music, Mushroom Records | |||
Archie Roach chronology | ||||
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A Soundtrack was released in August 2002. The album is credited to Australian musician Archie Roach. The soundtrack won best soundtrack at the 2002 Film Critics Circle of Australia. [8]
At the ARIA Music Awards of 2002, the album was nominated for ARIA Award for Best Original Soundtrack, Cast or Show Album [9]
Country | Date | Format | Label | Catalogue |
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Australia | August 2002 | Mushroom Records | 334932 | |
Rabbit-Proof Fence is a 2002 Australian drama film directed by Phillip Noyce based on the book Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington Garimara. It is loosely based on a true story concerning the author's mother Molly, as well as two other mixed-race Aboriginal girls, Daisy Kadibil and Grace, who ran away from the Moore River Native Settlement, north of Perth, Western Australia, to return to their Aboriginal families, after being placed there in 1931. The film follows the Aboriginal girls as they walk for nine weeks along 1,500 miles (2,400 km) of the Australian rabbit-proof fence to return to their community at Jigalong, while being pursued by white law enforcement authorities and an Aboriginal tracker.
Walkabout is a 1971 British-Australian survival film directed by Nicolas Roeg and starring Jenny Agutter, Luc Roeg, and David Gulpilil. Edward Bond wrote the screenplay, which is loosely based on the 1959 novel Walkabout by James Vance Marshall. Set in the Australian outback, it centres on two white schoolchildren who are left to fend for themselves in the Australian outback and who come across a teenage Aboriginal boy who helps them to survive.
The 16th Annual Australian Recording Industry Association Music Awards were held on 15 October 2002 at the Sydney SuperDome.
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Bart Willoughby is an Indigenous Australian musician, noted for his pioneering fusion of reggae with Indigenous Australian musical influences, and for his contribution to growth of Indigenous music in Australia.
Ten Canoes is a 2006 Australian drama film directed by Rolf de Heer and Peter Djigirr and starring Crusoe Kurddal. The title of the film arose from discussions between de Heer and David Gulpilil about a photograph of ten canoeists poling across the Arafura Swamp, taken by anthropologist Donald Thomson in 1936. It is the first ever movie entirely filmed in Australian Aboriginal languages. The film is partly in colour and partly in black and white, it is in docu-drama style largely with a narrator explaining the story. The overall format is that of a moral tale.
8 Mile is a 2002 American biographical drama film written by Scott Silver, directed by Curtis Hanson, and starring Eminem, Mekhi Phifer, Brittany Murphy, Michael Shannon, and Kim Basinger. The film is based loosely on Eminem's actual upbringing, and follows white rapper B-Rabbit (Eminem) and his attempt to launch a career in a genre dominated by African-Americans. The title is derived from 8 Mile Road, the highway between the predominantly black city of Detroit and Wayne County and the predominantly White Oakland County and Macomb County suburbs. It was filmed mostly on location. 8 Mile was a critical and commercial success. Eminem won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for "Lose Yourself".
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Graham Tardif is an Australian composer.
John Clifford White is an Australian composer. His film credits include Romper Stomper. The Heartbreak Kid, Metal Skin, and Macbeth.
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