KOBARWENG OR WHERE IS YOUR HELICOPTER?

This documentary deals with the history of a remote village in the highlands of New Guinea. The tape assembles archival footage and oral histories depicting the first encounter between the villagers and the outside world. 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 villager’s questions.