Songlines on Screen: Naina Sen's 'The Song Keepers' and Aboriginal Histories

Song holds a special place among various Aboriginal communities, for whom it embodies a means of commemorating ties to culture and country. Nowhere is this echoing of past voices into the present more evident than in the work of the Central Australian Aboriginal Women's Choir, whose story is chronicled in 2017 documentry The Song Keepers. With reference to Paul Williams' contemporaneous Gurrumul, Felicity Ford examines the mastery and magnitude of Naina Sen's film.

Additional keywords:
Indigenous, music, Dr Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, Arrernte, Pitjantjatjara, Alice Springs, oral tradition.