THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – TO SEE
Some subjects, served by exceptional documentaries engraved in the history of the genre, are not easy to relaunch. This is the case of the first peoples of Papua New Guinea, to whom the Australian directors Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson devoted a trilogy appearing in a very good place in the history of direct cinema. First Contact (1982), Joe Leahy’s Neighbors (1988), and Black Harvest (1993), with their long-term deployment, their humor and their humanism, their cruelty too, in view of a process of spoliation which added cunning to violence, seemed to have exhausted the question.
On the strength of experience in the field acquired during numerous reports, the journalist and director Céline Rouzet nevertheless threw herself into this film, in which we will perceive, at the very least in terms of the motives, many echoes with said trilogy. The documentary focuses on the presence of the American oil and gas company Exxon, and the resulting relationships with the natives. Base drastically protected by the police and security behind barbed wire, the company is the object of a constant siege by the looted natives, under a scenario that was set up in the 1930s.
Eradicating capitalism
The natives sell their land to the occupier for profit-sharing promises that only bind those who believe them, and then understand that huge profits are being made. While they too want to take advantage of their sold-off property, the State, through the voice of visiting officials, berates them: they must stop fighting, give up marijuana, and, above all, continue to give away their land for the economy takes off. Exxon, installed in 2009practices on a large scale this aggressive policy of land purchase, without the promises of electricity, roads, running water having ever been kept.
The film, terrible and poignant at the same time, shows the misery and despair of these populations reduced to begging and killing each other.
As if that were not enough, deadly tribal conflicts are ravaging the country. Anchored in tradition, they have however lost the sense of proportion (stop fighting at first blood, respect for women and children) to turn to massacre without remission. In its turn corrupted, the old world, in reality, is dying under the battering of the conquering West and eradicating capitalism. Here, the villages have lost their names, they are now counted in as many “plots of exploitation”.
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