Night cries: a rural tragedy

In the red glow of the outback an Aboriginal woman nurses her ill white mother. As we watch the old woman dying her daughter confronts the finality of death; the bitterness of memory. Shot entirely in a studio “Night cries” uses a stark set-design, a palette of colours as from a dream, and a haunting soundtrack: of bush noises, gasping breath, the wail of a dingo, to suggest a world that combines the frightening distortion of a nightmare and the painful isolation of human loss. Subtitled “a rural tragedy” the film’s portrayal of a personal agony illuminates and exposes the general horror of Australia’s race history. With Marcia Langton, Agnes Hardwick and Jimmy Little.