Papua New Guinea

For the past few years, an eth­nol­o­gist has been return­ing reg­u­lar­ly to a vil­lage in New Guinea. He speaks the lan­guage of these people who go about naked car­ry­ing their bows and who live by hewing out gar­dens from the forest. He knows them well but his rela­tion­ship with them remains uneasy. They only seem inter­est­ed in his tooth­brush; too often they take him for a cash box. As he films his finan­cial deal­ings with them, he comes to real­ize that all this (which he didn’t want to acknowl­edge and which fills him with shame) is in fact what binds him to them. With a half smile, we watch the eth­nol­o­gist and these people who don’t blame him for trying so hard to build a friend­ship with them. 

The Maden family has a look at con­tem­po­rary Papua New Guinea through its per­son­al mem­o­ries. The father was a sor­cer­er and the mother, a devout Catholic. The chil­dren are vil­lager, … read more