Retrospective, Dennis O'Rourke

»I wonder if their way of life is better than ours, truly living with nature?« »The experts say that they are happy, well-fed, satisfied.« »That’s right. The prob­lem is apathy … read more

Short­ly after the nuclear bomb­ing of Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki, the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary wanted to find a ‚suit­able’ site for fur­ther nuclear test­ing. They choose the Mar­shall Islands, a group of … read more

ILEKSEN (pidgin word for »elec­tion«) is sort of a sequel of Dennis O’Rourke’s first film YUMI YET in which he cap­tures Papua New Guinea’s cer­e­mo­ny of inde­pen­dence in 1975. Now … read more

For cen­turies the men of Kontu, a small island off the coast of New Ire­land, have caught sharks in a tra­di­tion­al way. After having under­gone exten­sive ritual purifi­ca­tion they go … read more

This film is a doc­u­men­tary about pros­ti­tu­tion, despict­ing the phe­nom­e­non as a metaphor for cap­i­tal­ism and for rela­tion­ships between men and women in gen­er­al, and as in this spe­cial case … read more

In 1975 a period of one hun­dred years of colo­nial­ism came to an end for Papua New Guinea. A pop­u­la­tion of three mil­lion people, speak­ing a total of about 700 lan­guages and living scat­tered on hun­dreds of islands, sud­den­ly con­sti­tut­ed one nation. Papua New Guinea got ready for demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions, joined the United Nations and pre­pared for taking part in a fast chang­ing world. YUMI YET is an account of the course of events on inde­pen­dence day in a coun­try that, within a cen­tu­ry, changed from a group of often hos­tile tribes to a modern democ­ra­cy. The radio­sta­tion calls upon the people to dress appro­pri­ate­ly on this mem­o­rable day. »Long sleeved white shirts and black trousers for the men, the women’s clothes should com­ple­ment the men’s.« But now­body both­ers about these pompous direc­tions. Every­body dress­es in tra­di­tion­al fash­ion, with paint, feath­ers and flow­ers. Dig­ni­taries from home and from abroad arrive by aero­plane. The cer­e­mo­ny is ready to start with Prince Charles stand­ing by to give his bless­ings to Inde­pen­dence. Although the rain­mak­er suc­ceeds in arrang­ing a down­pour, people are cheer­ful and opti­mistic when the flag of their new state is hoist­ed offi­cial­ly for the very first time.