The Song Keepers
Dir. by Naina Sen, Australia, 2017. 84 min | Documentary
Australia’s answer to The Buena Vista Social Club, The Song Keepers tells the inspiring story of an Aboriginal women’s choir and their first tour of Germany.
In the churches of remote Central Australia, a 140-year musical legacy of ancient Aboriginal languages, German sacred hymns and baroque music is being preserved by four generations of women that make up the Central Australian Aboriginal Women’s Choir. With their charismatic musical director Morris Stuart, the choir embarks on an historical tour of Germany, singing the baroque Lutheran hymns brought to their great grandparents by German missionaries in their own Western Arrarnta and Pitjantjatjara languages. Together these remarkable women take their music and stories of cultural survival, identity and cross-cultural collaboration to the world.
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Dir. by Naina Sen, Australia, 2017. 84 min | Documentary
Australia’s answer to The Buena Vista Social Club, The Song Keepers tells the inspiring story of an Aboriginal women’s choir and their first tour of Germany.
In the churches of remote Central Australia, a 140-year musical legacy of ancient Aboriginal languages, German sacred hymns and baroque music is being preserved by four generations of women that make up the Central Australian Aboriginal Women’s Choir. With their charismatic conductor, the choir embarks on an historical tour of Germany, to take back the baroque hymns brought to their great grandparents by German Lutherans but in their own Western Arrarnta and Pitjantjatjara languages. Together these remarkable women take their music and stories of cultural survival, identity and cross-cultural collaboration to the world.
“The Song Keepers is a remarkable and enormously enjoyable documentary” – The Age
“A tale of history and healing, The Song Keepers is perfectly pitched” – The Sunday Telegraph
“Naina Sen’s joyful, compassionate film about an Aboriginal women’s choir shows the complex, unexpected consequences of colonisation” – The Guardian