Dead Birds (1963)

Directed by

Robert Gardner

Genre

documentary film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 23m

Rating

6.0 of 10 from 10 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A documentary that observes the cycle of ritual warfare among the Dugum Dani people in a highland valley of New Guinea. It shows battle scenes, a boy's funeral, women at work, and the tense waiting for the enemy to appear.

observationalunhurriedseriouscontemplativeearthyaustereimmersive

What happens

Dead Birds is a 1963 American documentary film by Robert Gardner about the ritual warfare cycle of the Dugum Dani people who live in the Baliem Valley in present-day Highland Papua province (then a part of Papua province known as Irian Jaya) on the western half of the island of New Guinea in Indonesia. The film presents footage of battles between the Willihiman-Wallalua confederation (Wiligima-Alula) of Gutelu alliance (Kurulu) and the Wittaia alliance (Wita Waya) with scenes of the funeral of a small boy killed by a raiding party, the women's work that goes on while battles continue, and the wait for enemy to appear. In 1964 the film received the Grand Prize "Marzocco d'Oro" at the 5th Festival dei Popoli rassegna internazionale del film etnografico e sociologico ("International Ethnographic and Sociological Film Festival of the Peoples") in Florence, Italy, the Robert J. Flaherty Award given by the City College of New York, and was a featured film at the Melbourne Film Festival (now Melbourne International Film Festival). In 1998, Dead Birds was included in the annual selection of 25 motion pictures added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and recommended for preservation. Dead Birds has come to hold canonical status among ethnographic films. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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