This is the sequel to an extraordinary 1988 film, Joe Leahy's Neighbors, which introduced Joe Leahy, a mixed-race Papua New Guinean owner of a coffee plantation located on land he bought from the Ganiga natives in the early 1970s. In the earlier film, the Ganiga awaken to their resentment over Joe's having grown rich at their expense. This has led to Joe developing a second plantation co-owned by himself and the tribe. But the resentment continues: in Black Harvest, coffee prices are down, the Ganiga realize they will never become rich, and a battle with a neighboring tribe keeps the workers off the fields until the ripe red beans have turned black. The filmmakers are absolutely in the fray of the battle of swords as they are in the battle of wills and cultures; Hollywood never could create the sense of engagement, and finally agony, we feel as observers of this no-win situation. Anderson and Connolly's films implicitly explore the passivity of filmmaker and viewer alike. Leahy weeps as he looks to the end of his albeit ambiguous relationship with the Ganiga, and perhaps with his black self. But the sadness is not all, or even mostly, Joe's: the Ganiga go to ruin in war. Having lost faith in the possibility of a capitalist future, they let tradition engulf them totally.