David Gulpilil

David Gulpilil

Born: July 1, 1953
Died: November 29, 2021
in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia
David Gulpilil Ridjimiraril Dalaithngu AM, known professionally as David Gulpilil and posthumously for cultural reasons as David Dalaithngu for three days, was an Aboriginal Australian (Yolŋu) actor and dancer, known for the films Walkabout, Storm Boy, Rabbit-Proof Fence, and The Tracker.

Movies for David Gulpilil...

Title: Faraway Downs
Character: King George
Released: November 26, 2023
Type: TV
The story of an English aristocrat, Lady Sarah Ashley, who inherits a large cattle ranch in Australia after her husband dies. When Australian cattle barons plot to take her land, she joins forces with a cattle drover to protect her ranch.
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My Name Is Gulpilil
Title: My Name Is Gulpilil
Character: Self
Released: May 27, 2021
Type: Movie
Diagnosed with lung cancer, legendary Australian actor David Gulpilil boldly explains the journey that is his extraordinary, culture-clashing life.
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Cargo
Title: Cargo
Character: Daku
Released: October 6, 2017
Type: Movie
After being infected in the wake of a violent pandemic and with only 48 hours to live, a father struggles to find a new home for his baby daughter.
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Goldstone
Title: Goldstone
Character: Jimmy
Released: July 7, 2016
Type: Movie
Indigenous Detective Jay Swan arrives in the frontier town of Goldstone on a missing persons inquiry. What seems like a simple investigation unearths an intricate web of crime, corruption, human trafficking, and coordinated exploitation of indigenous people’s land. Jay must bury his differences with young local cop Josh, so together they can bring justice to Goldstone.
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MESSiAH
Title: MESSiAH
Released: June 1, 2016
Type: Movie
In a playful collision of cultures, a hapless Irishman and his Parisian girlfriend get more than they bargained for when they encounter a particularly mischievous stranger in the spectacular Australian wilderness.
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Another Country
Title: Another Country
Character: Self / Narrator
Released: July 29, 2015
Type: Movie
In this documentary companion to CHARLIE'S COUNTRY, Australian actor David Gulpilil tells the story of when his people's way of life was derailed by ours.
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Title: The Leftovers
Character: Christopher Sunday
Released: June 29, 2014
Type: TV
When 2% of the world's population abruptly disappears without explanation, the world struggles to understand just what they're supposed to do about it. The drama series 'The Leftovers' is the story of the people who didn't make the cut.
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Charlie's Country
Title: Charlie's Country
Character: Charlie
Released: October 12, 2013
Type: Movie
Blackfella Charlie is getting older, and he's out of sorts. The intervention is making life more difficult on his remote community, what with the proper policing of whitefella laws that don't generally make much sense, and Charlie's kin and ken seeming more interested in going along with things than doing anything about it. So Charlie takes off, to live the old way, but in doing so sets off a chain of events in his life that has him return to his community chastened, and somewhat the wiser.
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Satellite Boy
Title: Satellite Boy
Character: Jagamarra
Released: September 8, 2012
Type: Movie
When his grandfather's drive-in cinema and home in the outback town of Wyndham is threatened with demolition, a twelve-year-old Aboriginal boy must journey through Australia's bush country — equipped only with ancient survival skills — to stop the city developers.
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Australia
Title: Australia
Character: King George
Released: November 18, 2008
Type: Movie
Set in northern Australia before World War II, an English aristocrat who inherits a sprawling ranch reluctantly pacts with a stock-man in order to protect her new property from a takeover plot. As the pair drive 2,000 head of cattle over unforgiving landscape, they experience the bombing of Darwin by Japanese forces firsthand.
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Crocodile Dreaming
Title: Crocodile Dreaming
Character: Burrimmilla
Released: January 1, 2007
Type: Movie
Crocodile Dreaming is a modern day supernatural myth about two estranged brothers, played by iconic Indigenous actors David Gulpill and Tom E. Lewis. Separated at birth, they have different fathers. One is readily accepted as a full-fledged member of the tribe and is looked on to fulfill the duties of jungaiy, an important ceremonial role which obliges him to be caretaker for his mother's dreaming, the crocodile totem. The other, whose father was white, is younger and has had to struggle to fit into the tribe who see him only as a yella fella.
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Ten Canoes
Title: Ten Canoes
Character: The Storyteller
Released: June 29, 2006
Type: Movie
A story within a story within a story. In Australia's Northern Territory, an Aboriginal narrator tells a story about his ancestors on a goose hunt. A youngster on the hunt is being tempted to adultery with his elder brother's wife, so an elder tells him a story from the mythical past about how evil can slip in and cause havoc unless prevented by virtue according to customary tribal law.
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The Proposition
Title: The Proposition
Character: Jacko
Released: October 6, 2005
Type: Movie
In 1880s Australia, a lawman offers renegade Charlie Burns a difficult choice. In order to save his younger brother from the gallows, Charlie must hunt down and kill his older brother, who is wanted for rape and murder. Venturing into one of the Outback's most inhospitable regions, Charlie faces a terrible moral dilemma that can end only in violence.
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Following the Rabbit-Proof Fence
Title: Following the Rabbit-Proof Fence
Character: Himself
Released: April 15, 2003
Type: Movie
This documentary follows Phillip Noyce as he tries to find three aboriginal girls able to act in his film Rabbit Proof Fence. The film sees a cast of 100's whittled down to the eventual three girls and follows them through workshops and into the difficult shoot.
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Mimi
Title: Mimi
Character: Granddad
Released: November 1, 2002
Type: Movie
A white collector of Aboriginal art gets a shock when the Mimi sculpture she purchased comes to life.
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The Tracker
Title: The Tracker
Character: The Tracker
Released: August 8, 2002
Type: Movie
Somewhere in Australia in the early 20th century outback, an Aboriginal man is accused of murdering a white woman. Three white men are on a mission to capture him with the help of an experienced Indigenous man.
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Gulpilil: One Red Blood
Title: Gulpilil: One Red Blood
Character: Himself
Released: April 5, 2002
Type: Movie
An hour-long documentary on the life and career of actor David Gulpilil.
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Rabbit-Proof Fence
Title: Rabbit-Proof Fence
Character: Moodoo
Released: February 4, 2002
Type: Movie
In 1931, three Aboriginal girls escape after being plucked from their homes to be trained as domestic staff, and set off on a trek across the Outback.
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Serenades
Title: Serenades
Character: Rainman
Released: May 31, 2001
Type: Movie
Set in the 1890s in the central desert region of Australia, 'Serenades' tells the tale of Jila who is conceived when her Afghan cameleer father wins her Aboriginal mother in a card game.
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Dead Heart
Title: Dead Heart
Character: Second Man in Desert
Released: September 8, 1996
Type: Movie
Ray Lorkin, chief lawman in the tiny rural settlement of Wala Wala, Australia, fears that long-simmering tensions between the area's aborigine natives and white settlers are on the verge of erupting. When it's discovered that Kate, the white wife of local schoolteacher Les, has despoiled a sacred site by secretly meeting her aborigine lover, Tony, there, a shocking murder threatens to rip the small town apart.
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Title: The Man from Snowy River
Character: Manulpuy
Released: September 23, 1994
Type: TV
The Man from Snowy River is an Australian television series based on Banjo Paterson's poem "The Man from Snowy River". Released in Australia as Banjo Paterson's The Man from Snowy River, the series was subsequently released in both the United States and the United Kingdom as Snowy River: The McGregor Saga. The television series has no relationship to the 1982 film The Man from Snowy River or the 1988 sequel The Man from Snowy River II. Instead, the series follows the adventures of Matt McGregor, a successful squatter, and his family. Matt is the hero immortalized in Banjo Paterson's poem "The Man from Snowy River", and the series is set 25 years after his famous ride.
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Until the End of the World
Title: Until the End of the World
Character: David
Released: September 12, 1991
Type: Movie
In 1999, a woman's life is forever changed after she survives a car crash with two bank robbers, who enlist her help to take the money to a drop in Paris. On the way, she runs into another fugitive from the law — an American doctor on the run from the CIA. They want to confiscate his father's invention – a device which allows anyone to record their dreams and visions.
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Dark Age
Title: Dark Age
Character: Adjaral
Released: May 21, 1987
Type: Movie
In the Australian outback, a park ranger and two local guides set out to track down a giant crocodile that has been killing and eating the local populace..
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Crocodile Dundee
Title: Crocodile Dundee
Character: Neville Bell
Released: September 26, 1986
Type: Movie
When a New York reporter plucks crocodile hunter Mick Dundee from the Australian Outback for a visit to the Big Apple, it's a clash of cultures and a recipe for good-natured comedy as naïve Dundee negotiates the concrete jungle. He proves that his instincts are quite useful in the city and adeptly handles everything from wily muggers to high-society snoots without breaking a sweat.
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The Right Stuff
Title: The Right Stuff
Character: Aborigine
Released: October 20, 1983
Type: Movie
As the Space Race ensues, seven pilots set off on a path to become the first American astronauts to enter space. However, the road to making history brings forth momentous challenges.
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Walkabout to Hollywood
Title: Walkabout to Hollywood
Character: Self
Released: February 11, 1980
Type: Movie
Produced and directed this documentary for BBC in the 1980’s, about David Gulpilil, acclaimed Australian Aboriginal actor, dancer and musician. The film shows how Gulpilil is always working to bridge the gap between the tribal Aboriginal and Western worlds. He divides his time between a traditional tribal lifestyle and his artistic work, which has included major film roles, collaboration with contemporary dance and music groups and teaching Aboriginal dance and culture. Bill and David travel to Hollywood where David was the most popular Australian in the world at that time, with FOUR films playing in America – WALKABOUT, STORM BOY, THE LAST WAVE and MAD DOG MORGAN. After relating to both the black and native American cultures and filming a quick scene for a big Hollywood picture, he pines to head back through the Outback to his beloved Arnhem Land. Edited by Simon Dibbs and shot by Ray Henman.
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3 Dances Gulpilil
Title: 3 Dances Gulpilil
Character: Dancer
Released: June 6, 1978
Type: Movie
David Gulpilil performs three Aboriginal dances, Emu, Kangaroo and Fish. The first two are solo performances by Gulpilil and are closer to mime than dance. The third is a group dance with some of the children from Bamyili where Gulpilil lives in the Northern Territory.
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Walya Ngamardiki: The Land My Mother
Title: Walya Ngamardiki: The Land My Mother
Character: Self
Released: January 1, 1978
Type: Movie
Exploring the relationship between Aboriginal people and their land (including the Dreaming, sacred places), this film was inspired by Silas Roberts’ submission to the 1976 Australian Government inquiry on uranium mining - the Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry. Silas, whose tribal name is Ngourladi, is an elder of the Allawa clan and was the first chairman of the Northern Land Council, established to assist Aboriginal people make land rights claims based on traditional ownership. The film, which moves from Arnhem Land in the north to Yuendumu in the centre, examines the importance of maintaining Aboriginal culture and laws and explains the reasons why they object to the mining being carried out.
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The Last Wave
Title: The Last Wave
Character: Chris Lee
Released: December 15, 1977
Type: Movie
Australian lawyer David Burton agrees with reluctance to defend a group of Aboriginal people charged with murdering one of their own. He suspects the victim was targeted for violating a tribal taboo, but the defendants deny any tribal association. Burton, plagued by apocalyptic visions of water, slowly realizes danger may come from his own involvement with the Aboriginal people and their prophecies.
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Storm Boy
Title: Storm Boy
Character: Fingerbone
Released: July 28, 1977
Type: Movie
Mike is a lonely Australian boy living in a coastal wilderness with his reclusive father. In search of friendship he encounters an Aboriginal native loner and the two form a bond in the care of orphaned pelicans.
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Mad Dog Morgan
Title: Mad Dog Morgan
Character: Billy
Released: July 9, 1976
Type: Movie
The true story of Irish outlaw Daniel Morgan, who is wanted, dead or alive, in Australia during the 1850s.
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To Shoot a Mad Dog
Title: To Shoot a Mad Dog
Character: Self
Released: January 1, 1976
Type: Movie
A documentary about the making of the Australian feature Mad Dog Morgan (1976).
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The Rainbow Serpent
Title: The Rainbow Serpent
Released: July 13, 1975
Type: Movie
A timeless classic from the Dreamtime. there are innumerable names and stories associated with the Rainbow Serpent, all of which communicate the significance of this being within Aboriginal traditions.
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Showing Melbourne to Maningrida
Title: Showing Melbourne to Maningrida
Character: David Gulpilil
Released: January 1, 1973
Type: Movie
In 1973, fresh from his performance in Walkabout, a film that brought outback landscapes to urban audiences, Gulpilil returned the favour by paying a visit to Melbourne with camera in hand, shooting a wry fly-on-the-wall documentary that compares the sights and sounds of the city to those of his home in Arnhem Land.
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Walkabout
Title: Walkabout
Character: Black Boy
Released: July 1, 1971
Type: Movie
Under the pretense of having a picnic, a geologist takes his teenage daughter and 6-year-old son into the Australian outback and attempts to shoot them. When he fails, he turns the gun on himself, and the two city-bred children must contend with harsh wilderness alone. They are saved by a chance encounter with an Aboriginal boy who shows them how to survive, and in the process underscores the disharmony between nature and modern life.