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 to sea in frag­ile canoes and rit­u­al­ly call the sharks, to whom they believe to be relat­ed. Once the fish appears, they catch and kill them with their hands and rit­u­al­ly announce their suc­cess by blow­ing a shell­trompet. Now after 100 years of col­o­niza­tion, eco­nom­ic exploita­tion and intense activ­i­ties by the mis­sion­ar­ies, only a hand­ful of men is left who still master the ancient ritual skill. A skill which con­sti­tutes the most tan­gi­ble link with their cul­tur­al past. Dennis O’Rourke lived on Kontu for six months and was allowed to record the ritual shark call­ing on film. Besides he tried to analyse the way in which west­ern influ­ences will even­tu­al­ly destroy this ancient culture.

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