Naina Sen’s joyful, compassionate film about an Aboriginal women’s choir shows the complex, unexpected consequences of colonisation• Sign up to receive the top stories in Australia every day at noonThere is a scene about an hour into Naina Sen’s documentary The Song Keepers in which a woman in her 60s ascends a ridge.
The surrounding terrain is harsh desert, the red-hued country synonymous with the Australian outback.
Below, nestled among the green blooms of towering eucalypts, is a patchwork of corrugated tin roofing that is the small, remote township of Areyonga.
Visually the shot is sumptuous: a striking, sun-drenched panorama that alludes to the extent of isolation experienced by the Aboriginal communities that feature in the film.
But that’s not all it is.The woman is Theresa Nipper, a member of the Central Australian Aboriginal Women’s Choir that is the subject of The Song Keepers.
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