First Contact
Both First Contact and A Wife Among Wives focus on the reactions of tribespeople to the outside world, specifically to the ethnographic filmmakers who are filming them. First Contact reveals amazing footage taken by the Leahy brothers when they penetrated the interior of New Guinea in 1930 in search of gold, carrying a movie camera. They captured on film their unexpected confrontation with thousands of primitive people who had no concept of human life beyond their own valleys. Fifty years later, some of these people, the Papuans, still vividly recall their unique experience. As they view their younger selves in the Leahy footage, they describe for filmmakers Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson their conceptions of the white men approaching them (they thought they were their ancestors returned to life, bleached from the sun) and their amazement (and amusement) at the artifacts of civilization which the Europeans brought with them. There is much humor and irony in their conversation; there is also a genuine sadness as they speak of the darker side of their relationship to these mysterious beings with devastating weapons. The Australian documentary was featured at the 1983 San Francisco and London Film Festivals, among others, and was a 1984 Academy Award nominee.