Challenging the limits of Australian cinema has been Rolf De Heer's modus operandi for his career to this point, but his seminal 2006 work Ten Canoes has, like indigenous storytelling, taken on a new direction of its own - this time on the internet.

Rolf De Heer, writer/director of such films as Bad Boy Bubby and The Tracker, has collaborated with new media practitioners Molly Reynolds and Marshall Heald to create a website experience that operates as something of an extension to his AFI award-winner, Ten Canoes. As De Heer had discovered, the wealth of material contributed by the Yolngu people for that film's production proved considerable. "There were far too many ideas coming forward," says De Heer, "People wanting stuff in the film, so that's where the idea of doing a web project came from, where anything that didn't go in the film could go on the website."

De Heer, a seasoned filmmaker in the traditional sense, found himself in somewhat unfamiliar territory with the 12 Canoes project. "My new media knowledge is not great - I had met with Molly Reynolds and Marshall Heald, and the three of us then worked quite diligently over a period of time to raise the money to do this... more than half, came from The Christensen Fund; an American philanthropic organisation, they support projects that are, basically, to do with indigenous people and their environment. The rest of the money came from the AFC and the South Australian Film Corporation plus in kind support from Museum Victoria, Bula'bula Arts and my film production company, Vertigo Productions."

Once funding was set in place, the real work began: "The driving creative force behind it was really Molly Reynolds; it ultimately became more her vision than anybody else's and it was really Molly and I who worked closely with the mob up north and an editorial committee up there, who has complete right of veto. We had shot stuff during Ten Canoes but more was shot after that and last year we had quite an exhibition out there for a couple of weeks in order to gather the remaining content." On July 1, The National Sound and Film archive screened a presentation comprised of 12 short films gleaned from the soon-to-be-launched website's core materials. These shorts focus on a variety of aspects in the Yolngu tribe's history, culture and everyday lives. This unexpected cinematic treatment of the material was primarily at the instigation of the Director of the National Film and Sound Archive, Dr Paolo Cherchi Usai. "Paolo got the idea to screen it [at the NFSA in Canberra] and it surprised us, what it did, what you got from that world and what you learnt about it - but we're still working on it."

De Heer is hesitant to refer to the screening as a finished work by any means - nor does he believe there will be any repeat screenings of the piece: "It is a web-based project and what was screened is the core of it, not all of it by any stretch of the imagination."

The reaction to the impromptu screening was entirely enthusiastic but De Heer prefers to keep things fluid: "This has been so unexpected. All we were doing was making a web project and now suddenly there is this cinematic version. There's a recognition that because the video component of the website is quite high, that the web [infrastructure] in Australia isn't up to speed to allow people to adequately access this stuff, so then we're thinking about getting a DVD release and as a consequence of [the screening] there was a direct approach to us to ask about doing a DVD release, so it's moving pretty rapidly. Where it ends up I don't know, but it'll be multi platform by the sound of things."

The website will be launched in September.