We Don't Need a Map

You've got to like Warwick Thornton sitting there thinking "please not me" when they announced Australian of the year 2009, getting flack for comparing the Eureka flag to the Swastika, punching holes in a sheet of cardboard with a pencil to make a Southern Cross background for the titles of his new film rather than commissioning high end lab work and figuring that a black feller (his choice of words) and producer Brendan Fletcher with a string of superior commercials would be a shoe-in for NITV's referendum anniversary funding.

Though the pair represent We Don't Need a Map as a chaotic endeavour it is actually remarkably well organised, pivoting around the inescapable new significance the Southern Cross has taken on since John Howard, Pauline Hanson and the Cronulla Riots. The rock singer interviewee comments "Someone who got a Southern Cross tattoo the week before Cronulla, must be spewing now". It's become like saying a swastika indicates a connection to Hindu philosophy or (and no one observes this) the Confederate flag.

Thornton visits a playground version of the Eureka Stockade, watches a traditional celestial aligned cross laid out on the yellow soil and erased, recalls the Southern Cross Company windmills which drained the aquifers the indigenous people relied on for water (a sculptor now recovers the steel for art works) and listens to the significance of rock art explained.

The director and the articulate observers he has sat in front of his camera establish a remarkable context for all this - pre-European arrival Australia a model of multi- culturalism with six hundred different languages, the time when the oral tradition was not dismissed as Chinese Whispers, because then the ones who didn't know the song cycles would not be able to find the food and water described in them and die, or the First Fleet, the aborigines and the boat people all using The Southern Cross to find their way here.

This is not however your usual polemic. Scenes of beach spear fishing, night time fire lit activities and accelerated shots of the stars filmed by Thornton's son Dylan River punctuate more conventional footage. The action is commented by shots of hands manipulating the Bush Toy Mob's salvaged-wire figures - Captain Cook's boat greeted by locals, Thornton in dialogue with the Bush Toy Cook telling him if he wants to stay he'll have to behave or a shot-down black man's grave marked with a toy Southern Cross windmill.

You can see the sensibility of Thornton's remarkable SAMSON and DELILAH at play finding jokey material in appalling happenings.

The film goes to air in July and the plan is to have this one shown in schools. Sound like a really good idea to me.

I was blessed to see a preview of this wonderful film focussing on the long history in Australia of the stars known as the Southern Cross. Of course Captain Cook and company navigated here by the stars a couple of hundred years ago, but long before that there was a close connection to the star formation for thousands of years. Different language groups had hundreds of different names and stories for the stars including of dreamtime emus.

More recently the Cross has been co-opted by the workers on the Eureka stockade, for the national flag, by the Socialist movement and most recently by white supremacists. The film questions the place of the Southern Cross constellation in the Australian psyche, as film maker Warwick Thornton did recently when he questioned whether it was becoming like the Nazi swastika.

From deep time to the current huge business in tattoo removal, master cinematographer, film director and all round good bloke Warwick Thornton wanders the continent uncovering our connection to the 5 stars that never dip below the horizon.

Thornton playfully and casually teases out the threads through exquisitely beautiful time-lapse sequences of the night sky with stars spinning & clouds on the move, to puppet animations, interviews and wry musings. It is a brilliantly made 'gonzo' doco with Thornton talking to elders, tattooists, musicians, intellectuals, historians and others about deep history, Cronulla, white supremacists, windmills and more. The parade of great characters include the rapper Briggs, Romaine Morton, Bruce Pascoe and Ken West of the BDO, recollecting his pillorying for banning Aussie flags at the event when it came to be used as a divisive weapon.

Warwick Thornton is a strong (and delightful) presence in the film himself, talking from behind the camera and often coming out, too. You can really see him making the film in a charming way. The result is novel and original in style, only comparable to Michael Moore at his best, cleverly juxtaposing ideas and images. One irony is that the defining cross is not even visible to most of the settler inhabitants because of light and other pollution in the most populous areas.

The film is full of great stories and it's all set to a rollicking soundtrack of Aussie pop, punk and hip-hop including The Saints, The Drones, Frenzal Rhomb, The Peep Temple and Briggs.

Thornton won best DOP for 'The Sapphires' and plenty of accolades for his feature dramas Samson & Delilah & Sweet Country. We Don't Need A Map is a diamond from a cinematic genius; a challenging and thrilling documentary, rich and rewarding. It is by turns, fun, informative, hilarious and sobering. I found it a mood-lifting experience and a foundation for true pride in and an appreciation of this country. It's an exhilarating, modern view of Australia. I'm giving it 5 stars (out of 5) which is fair and fitting!