Paper short abstract:

In a once-remote Aboriginal community in northern Australia, personalised ringtones on mobile phones reveal surprisingly rich insights into lives and relationships.

Paper long abstract:

In a world where everyone has a mobile phone, a personalised ringtone says a lot about you.

Welcome to a once-remote Aboriginal community in northern Australia, where individual ringtones reveal rich insights into lives and relationships.

From animal calls and birdsong to 80s hip hop artists and gospel tunes, a Yolngu ringtone always comes with a great story. It might be the music a young woman dances to in a city nightclub, or a clan song invoking memories of ancestors and country.

Yolngu people are renowned as first-rate storytellers with a keen sense of humour. In this collaboratively-made film, various individuals talk directly to camera as they reveal the perils of their new connectivity.

It's all too familiar as they explain how easily mobiles get lost or broken and how they bring benefits as well as intrusions and demands.

A beautiful, funny and surprising film about the place of mobile phones in a contemporary Australian indigenous community.