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 during its first free elec­tion the rural pop­u­la­tion of the young nation is intro­duced to the British elec­to­r­i­al system.
Since the local politi­cians do not dis­pose of an extend­ed media net­work they must exert all their inge­nu­ity to gain votes. One of them engages a noisy rock’n roll band, anoth­erone goes for tea with the prin­ci­pal of a British school. Yet anoth­erone makes a tour of the vil­lages – wear­ing tra­di­tion­al clothes and a head­dress of feath­ers – with a mega­phone, shout­ing a single message:«Forget the others!«

In ILEKSEN O’Rourke draws a hilar­i­ous, yet respect­ful pic­ture of the elec­toral con­test that may look chaot­ic to west­ern eyes but to which the inhab­i­tants of Papua New Guinea respond duly.

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 … read more