5½ mins., b&w, silent – titles and intertitles in German.
Production: Encyclopaedia Cinematographica
Source: IWF collection at the TIB, details here
Background
This film was edited by Carl August Schmitz (1920-1966), a Melanesianist anthropologist based at the University of Basel, and Werner Rutz of the Institut für den Wissenschaftlichen Film (IWF), Göttingen. The original material was shot in November 1930 under the direction of the leading Swiss anthropologist, Felix Speiser. According to some accounts, it was filmed by a zoology student, Heini Hediger (1908-1992), whereas according to others, it was Speiser himself who did the shooting.
A study guide written by Schmitz and published by the IWF in 1964 is available here.
At some point after the Second World War, this material also appears to have been incorporated into Mystères du Pacific, a longer film of 24 mins., aimed at more general audiences and produced by the Swiss producer, Max Linder. This carries a voice-over commentary by the Genevan anthropologist Marc-Rodolphe Sauter (1914-1983) and is reported to have been screened to the Société de géographie of Geneva.
Film Content:
Note: it was not possible to view this film for the Silent Time Machine project. The description below is based on the IWF/TIB catalogue entry.
This film shows the last phase of a boys’ initiation ceremony in the village of Kambrambo, on the lower Sepik River, in Papua New Guinea.
After an establishing shot of men and women in ceremonial dress on the verandah of the men’s house, the Sepik river in the background, the film opens with a sequence of men playing elaborately decorated sacred flutes as they dance around a long line of initiands.
It then shows the two ‘crocodile’ models, constructed on a bamboo frame and covered with painted palm leaves. The neck of each ‘crocodile’ features a skull, which is reminiscent of Sepik canoe shields.
The crocodiles are then shown being carried on the shoulders of a number of senior men. One of the initiands, gripped with fear, tries to escape, but the senior men grab him and force him into the wide-open mouth of the crocodile and then lift it up. Eventually, the initiand climbs out of the crocodile and sits astride it.
The next scene involves the ritual blood-letting of the intiands by rubbing their bodies with thorny vines. The intiands are considered dead at this point and cannot walk themselves, so they have to be carried on the shoulders of their godparents. A close-up shows the parallel scars that typically appear on the back on an initand as result of this blood-letting. A young initiate is then lifted up by several men and his skin scratched with the lower jaw of a crocodile.
The concluding part of the film shows the destruction of the symbolic crocodiles. The painted palm leaf coverings are taken into the men’s house and the bamboo frames are burned. The final sequence shows the swinging of a bull-roarer, the beating of a water drum and once again, dancing with the sacred flutes.
Texts: Cosandey 2002-03.
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