Jedda Synopsis & Summary

Aborigine actress Ngarla Kunoth plays the title role in the Australian Jedda. Raised on a ranch in the north country, Jedda is more familiar with the customs and culture of the white man than she is with those of her own people. She receives a crash course in how the "other half" lives when she's kidnapped by a bushman and carried off into the wilderness. Jedda's half-caste lover Marbuck (Robert Tudawali) pursues the fleeing couple, with the authorities hot on his heels. Captured by the abductors' tribe, Marbuck is subject to the traditonal sentence of being "sung to death," a sequence that plays far more convincingly than it reads. Jedda was one of the first Australian films to present aboriginal life in a sympathetic light. - Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide