Kobarweng Or Where is Your Helicopter?

How it feels

A short documentary about a remote New Guinea village and their first encounter with outsiders from a Dutch expedition. It uses archival footage and oral histories to show how the arrival of a helicopter changed the local people's worldview and even their language.

thoughtfulreflectivehistoricalunsettlingcontemplativeslow-pacedintriguingmeditative

What happens

Kobarweng or Where Is Your Helicopter? (1992) is a short documentary directed by Johan Grimonprez that deals with the history of a remote village in the highlands of New Guinea. The videotape assembles archival footage and oral histories depicting the first encounter between the Irian Jaya people and the scientific crew, including anthropologists, of the Dutch Star Mountains Expedition. The confrontation with the crew and their helicopter caused a shock that threw the worldview of the villagers upside down. The event even entered their Sibil-tongue language; literally translated, "weng" means language, whilst "kobar" airplane. Kobarweng's title is an ironic reference to a question first posed to Grimonprez by a local man named Kaiang Tapor, who, upon Grimonprez's arrival in the village of Pepera after a three-day hike, asked him where his helicopter was. The footage in the film is traversed by a running band of script, reporting observations and remarks culled from anthropologists' interviews, eye-witness reports, and the reminiscences of those highlanders who recall those moments of 'first contact' between the white intruders (missionaries, prospectors, anthropologists, adventurers) and the local inhabitants: "We never tell everything, we always keep something for the next anthropologist" they are candid enough to admit to Margaret Mead, while another wit remarks: "We called the whites 'people of soap', but their shit smelled the same as ours." Switching the roles of observer and observed, the relation implied in the anthropological representation is reversed: the desire of the observing anthropologist itself becomes “other”, “exotic”, an object of curiosity destabilised by the villagers' questions. According to Grimonprez: "Kobarweng critically considers the myth of objectivity, the pretence of an epistemic and scientific detachment maintained not just by the anthropologist, but throughout the discourse of western science, where the observer finds himself caught in an alienated position of transcendence over his/her subject." (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

• The Eternal Springtime (2021)
• New Guinea Patrol (1958)
• Between the Scenes (2014)
• Heaven in a Garden (2004)
• নীল মুকুট
• Le Royaume de la lumière
• Mémoires
• A River Runs, Turns, Erases, Replaces (2021)