Last modified on Wed 24 Feb 2021 20.58 EST
It is an odd sensation, feeling foreign in the place where you grew up.
Returning to Perth recently after seven years abroad, I found all the familiar markers of home: that enormous sky with its bursts of wattle and red gum, corrugated tin roofs, sunsets as rich as fresh cut jarrah and the howling sou-wester that rips across the Derbarl Yerrigan, the Swan River.
But my frame of reference, my interior terrain, had shifted so immensely in seven years that it was like searching the face of an old friend to see how we had both changed, whether we could still co-exist in the same way.
Fist of Fury is the classic 1972 Bruce Lee film that took the world by storm.
Tragically, Lee died a year after making it, aged just 32.
But his films have had an enduring global impact, not least on a family of Indigenous Noongar people in Australia.
And now, in a world first, Fist of Fury has been dubbed into the Noongar language.
“I love everything Bruce Lee stands for,” director Kylie Bracknell tells Al Jazeera. “As we say in our community, actions speak louder than words.”
A self-confessed Bruce Lee fan, Bracknell recalls watching his films with her brothers and having film posters on the bedroom walls at home.
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Kung Fu film star Bruce Lee was like a superhero to many Aboriginal people growing up in the 1970s, an underdog fighting for justice.
As part of the 2021 Perth Festival one of his best known films, Fist of Fury , has been dubbed in the Noongar language, as a tribute to that relationship and a vehicle to highlight the endangered Noongar language.
Guest:
Kylie Bracknell (Kaarljilba Kaardn) - Noongar actor and artist; creator of the Fist of Fury Noongar Daa project
Screenings of Fist of Fury Noongar as part of the Perth Festival:
UWA Somerville Auditorium - February 20
United Cinemas, Rockingham - February 27
How Bruce Lee classic Fist of Fury is helping a struggling Indigenous language kick on
FriFriday 18
Fist of Fury Noongar Daa is the work of partners Kylie and Clint Bracknell.
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A Noongar language dub of the Bruce Lee classic Fist of Fury aims to invigorate interest in the endangered language, telling a story with universal themes of fighting injustice and loyalty to community.
The Noongar language of the First Nations people of Western Australia is spoken by just two per cent of Noongar people, and just a few thousand words remain after decades of forced suppression.