In the obscure churches that dot the arid outback of Central Australia, a legacy handed down the generations is one of a thriving 140-year-old choral music tradition. Its uniqueness may have worn off for the women artistes who have sung in it for decades, but left Naina Sen — and the viewers of her subsequent film — awestruck when her co-passenger on a flight told her about the Central Australian Aboriginal Women's Choir.

"Here was a group of women who had kept alive German hymns set to baroque music, given to their great-grandparents by German missionaries. And they sang these hymns in Aboriginal languages that are 40,000 years old!" says Sen, an Australia-based documentary filmmaker and video installation artist, as she recalls the flight she took in early 2014 to Alice Springs in Northern Territory. Having worked with indigenous communities since 2009, the idea of Aboriginal choral music still seemed like an anomaly to her — she had only heard music that was deeply ceremonial or at times, folk in nature.