Cinema in the Bush

Abstract

During fieldwork among the Karawari-speaking people of Papua New Guinea, I used a variety of audiovisual devices to explore people's sociocultural perception and expression. Numerous public screenings of documentary and feature films were organized. In this way the ethnographic research has become an exchange of sensory experiences between one world, characterized by an abundance of new audiovisual technology, and the other by its virtual absence. These new audiovisual media assumed a mediating role between the living and the dead. The latter were closely associated with the world and wealth of “White people.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I want to express my gratitude to all Ambonwari people for their enthusiasm and engagement in our collaborative audiovisual project. My biggest debt is to my “sister” Augustina Awsay and her many children and grandchildren, who put up with the excitement and disturbances caused by our nightly projections in their home. I would also like to acknowledge the ongoing support of anthropologist Dr. Borut Telban. His companionship in the field was very important and his knowledge about the Karawari people continues to inspire my work. Gary Gulliford, the audiovisual expert at James Cook University in Cairns, helped me with technical preparations for the field and even sent two used projectors to Ambonwari when my own had broken down. The Amboin Parish priest, Fr. Piotrek Wasko, unexpectedly became not only a good friend and host but also a provider of films. I would also like to thank The Cairns Institute and JCU for a tuition-fee scholarship, a Ph.D. scholarship and additional funds which enabled me to conduct my fieldwork. The grant from Firebird Foundation for Anthropological Research also covered some of the field expenses and enabled me to secure additional audio equipment. I would also like to thank the Institute of Anthropological and Spatial Studies, Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts for the HDV camera, which I have used in the field since 2007. For comments on the previous drafts of this article I thank Elizabeth Brouwer, Dawn Glass, Allison Jablonko, Ton Otto, Borut Telban and Michael Wood. I dedicate this article to Jack Amun, Augustina's firstborn son, who died suddenly on December 24, 2011.

Notes

My research in Ambonwari village spanned a period of 17 months in total. Ambonwari (Angoram District, Amboin Sub-district and Parish) is one of eight Karawari-speaking villages. It takes some 10–14 hours by motor-canoe to reach Angoram. The Ambonwari live there without electricity or mobile phone connection. Their cosmology, social organization and ritual life were studied by the Slovenian anthropologist Borut Telban [1997, 1998, 2008, 2009, etc.]. My M.A. thesis [Vávrová 2008] was based on several short field trips to Ambonwari in 2005, 2007 and 2008. In Dec. 2010, I embarked on long-term fieldwork as a part of my Ph.D. research at The Cairns Institute, James Cook University, and stayed in the field till December 2011.

A couple of accounts addressed Rambo, gender and power relationships in the PNG context [Kulick and Willson 1994; Wood 2006].

The movie Avatar [2009] was directed by James Cameron, known for his Titanic [1997] and Terminator [1984 and 1991]. Avatar tells a science- fiction story of the Na'vi people and their land. “The lush primal world of Pandora and the exotic culture of the Na'vi revealed in the film include many of the basic elements of what used to be called “primitive” societies—animism, a coming-of-age ceremony and test of manhood, a religion based on a supreme (maternal) tree spirit. It is truly a 21st-century elegy to a lost world—as well as Cameron's warning to our own” [Lutkehaus 2009].

For the curious, human tails, though very rare, are illustrated in Klaatsch [1923].

It happened that in Kungriambun, a Karawari-speaking village, I recorded a man telling his child: “She [Daniela] is an Ambonwari woman. She is from Ambonwari. Don't be scared! She died and has returned back.” In the middle of fieldwork my camera's tape-deck got stuck and it needed repair. A young village healer tried to “heal” the camera, unsuccessfully. He told me: “Your camera did not break down. It will work. It's just that the Man [the spirit of the village] holds his hand over it.” Apparently I had recorded the village spirit with my camera and it was time to talk about it with the spirit.

In Luria's “little book about a vast memory” [1975], the main protagonist Mr. S appropriates all the words, verses and numbers to inner images. Through these images he remembers things indefinitely. He cannot forget easily. The words, which do not sound as they “look like,” are hard to understand.

“The only short film ever to win an Oscar for best original screenplay, Albert Lamorisse's little wonder, tells the story of young Pascal (Lamorisse's own son Pascal), a nine-year-old Parisian boy living an ordinary life in a sketchy but absolutely gorgeous and cinematic Parisian neighborhood until the day that a large red balloon mysteriously floats into his life … and stays” [Willmott 2008].

Ngat is Dead [2009] was made by Christian Suhr, Steffen Dalsgaard and the anthropologist Ton Otto. Distribution by Documentary Educational Resources: http://www.der.org/films/ngat-is-dead.html.

Tinpis Run [1991] is a film by Penagau Nengo in co-operation with the late Severin Blanchet. Other films screened about PNG, beside those already mentioned in the text, were Cowboy and Maria in Town [1991], and Mist in the Mountains: HIV-AIDS in Porgera [2006].

This short experimental portrait was produced by the Institute of Anthropological and Spatial Studies, Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Ljubljana. It is available on order from the Royal Anthropological Institute, London: http://www.therai.org.uk/fs/film-sales/enet-yapai-an-ambonwari-girl/.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Daniela Vávrová

DANIELA VÁVROVÁ was awarded an M.A. in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Vienna in 2008. Two years later she began Ph.D. studies at The Cairns Institute, James Cook University, in Australia, and conducted a long-term project in Papua New Guinea with a focus on visual communication and ethnographic filmmaking. She is a founding member of reflectangulo 361° [rachel.reflectangulo.net] and the author of a book of poetry, Dream of My Life [1998].