CUNNAMULLA

Certain to provoke controversy, <i>Cunnamulla</i> is Dennis O'Rourke's most powerful and subversive work. It subverts the comfortable view of small, rural Australian communities by shining an unblinking torch into the eyes of one of them. It is not your standard documentary, except in the respect that it lacks a fictional story. Cunnamulla is a small place, populated by blacks and whites, living precariously on the edge of survival in every way - especially spiritually. It hangs in a vacuum, a kind of nothingness enveloping its inhabitants. Perhaps this happens in all small communities, but what O'Rourke does here is make the universal very specific. (Andrew L. Urban)