Yum! Yum! Eat’em Up!

The Cambridge Dictionary definition of a tourist is “someone who visits a place for pleasure and interest, usually while on vacation.” That doesn’t have to have negative connotations but it usually does because most tourists in holiday mode are totally focused on their own enjoyment. As a result, they might not fully appreciate or understand the culture they are encountering and Cannibal Tours (1988), a documentary by Dennis O’Rourke, is an excellent example of this. The film follows a chartered river cruise of the Sepik River in Papua, New Guinea in which the travelers – mostly from Germany, Australia, Italy and the U.S. – disembark at several villages along the way and interact with the local residents while visiting nearby tourist attractions. The title may be facetious – there are no cannibals on display in the film – but cannibalism was practiced in the region up to 1960 when it was outlawed by the Australian government, which was in control of Papua, New Guinea at the time.

Continue reading

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Ghana

“The camera eye is more perspicacious and more accurate than the human eye,” French filmmaker Jean Rouch once said, and his idiosyncratic documentaries, which were often fusions of reality and fiction, bear this out. Jaguar (1967) is a perfect example of this duality.

Continue reading