Samson and Delilah is a story about two Aboriginal teenagers who run away from their community and end up homeless on the streets of Alice Springs. Where did the idea for the film come from?
I grew up on the streets of Alice Springs and I’d started to see coverage of the problems these sorts of kids have, so I though it would be nice to make a teenage love story and humanise these children There’s a little bit of anger in there, too — you can’t make a love story about these teenagers without tackling issues like substance abuse and poverty, but at heart it’s a universal story.
Does a distinct storytelling culture survive in modern Aboriginal communities? How much, if at all, did that feed into the film?
Well, even in the [traditional] Dreamtime stories there are protagonists and three-act structures. That’s something universal that Hollywood doesn’t own. It’s come from oral history, if you trace it back you are indigenous from somewhere, indigenous storytelling is oral, we do have art that is a form of calligraphy in a sense.
Indigenous storytelling is still incredibly strong. In fact, it’s become stronger and more refined as we hold on to our culture, and look after our culture. It becomes more of an activist kind of thing, preserving a lost art for your children.
In one striking scene, the films shows Delilah being turned away by café customers as she tries to sell them her own paintings. Was that a comment on the way Aboriginal culture is treated in Australia?
I’ve been on both sides of that cafe, I’ve been the latte drinker and I’ve been the starving homeless person. In central Australia there are a lot of indigenous problems, so people buy their art and sell it on at vast prices. It’s quite a deep and dark place — you’ve got these incredible works of art and the people making it are living in squalor.
Films about indigenous peoples are sometimes accused of stereotyping their subjects. Was this something you sought to avoid?
It was on my mind when making the film. I am Aboriginal and I grew up on the streets of Alice Springs, but I’ve also been to film school, so I was best placed to make this film.
The community I chose to film in has a kind of war-torn look about it. It’s very poor. But for every war-torn community you see, there are ones with great schools, great houses. I did choose a dilapidated community when there was a utopian one 100km away, but I had to do that. I wanted to make a teenage love story but I wanted to talk about all of these issues as well.
The irony of it is that there are Samsons and Delilahs everywhere. They don’t have to be these two indigenous kids in Alice Springs, they could be two kids in Soho, or Notting Hill.
What did you make of the Australian government’s apology for past wrongs to Aboriginal communities in 2008?
It was quite a turning point in government but it doesn’t put food on tables. The irony of the apology is that it actually made the indigenous people feel strong but it’s sort of softened the reality — to [people like] Samson and Delilah it doesn’t mean shit, it doesn’t make them feel any safer.
The government thinks that now everything’s going to be OK, but an apology is really just the beginning.
“Samson and Delilah” is released on 2 April. Ryan Gilbey will review the film in next week’s New Statesman
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