The Second Journey (To Uluru)

As the camera moves gently from afar into the very heart of the monolith, the magic of the holiest site of the Aborigines unfolds in shimmering nuances of light. Shot at different times of day, the close-up and panorama shots of this more than 500-million-year-old stone formation combine silence and acoustically altered birdsong to convey a feeling of timelessness into which a sense of loss is also inscribed. The somnambulistic moonrise in the great sky seems almost like an abstract painting and yet it is real. The areas of discolouration in the film material caused by problems in the developing process were deliberately left in the film as a metaphor for the looming threat to this natural environment through bushfires and tourism. The Second Journey (To Uluru) is a continuation of the Touching the Earth films, in which Arthur and Corinne Cantrill turned their full attention to the Australian landscape. The films found little resonance at the time they were made, with this tribute to the outback coming across as too disconcerting and unsettling, both formally and thematically: an indication of the political dimension of the film. (Berlinale)