L’evangile selon les Papous
France,
1999, 52 min
Shown in 2000
CREDITS
- dir
-
Thomas Balmès
- prod
-
Yves Jeanneau
- scr
-
Thomas Balmès
- cam
-
Thomas Balmès
- editor
-
Catherine Gouze
- source
-
Les Films d’Ici, 12, rue Clavel, 75019 Paris, France. FAX: 33-1-44-52-23-24. EMAIL: les.films.d-ici@wanuldo.fr
- gga award
-
Silver Spire, Society & Culture—International
- premiere
-
North American Premiere
-
COMMENTS
Thomas Balmès in person.
OTHER
“Does your god have any canned meat, canned fish or airplanes?” a Huli tribal elder asks a tribesman who is refusing to be baptized. The conversion of a Papua New Guinea tribe to Christianity is inspired less by spiritual commitment than by the desire for the goods white Christians enjoy. An added incentive is the missionaries’ claim that Jesus is coming back in the year 2000 to take the converted to heaven. The lush jungles of Papua New Guinea and the tribesmen’s feathered headdresses and painted faces are visually striking, but the film’s most vivid aspect is the ambivalence of its central character, the tribe’s chief and oldest member. He is converting because the Papuan gods “didn’t bring us anything new,” and he oversees the tribe’s preparations for a Christmas day baptism with a mixture of humor and resignation. This deceptively simple, sometimes funny film nevertheless raises troubling questions about the missionaries’ conversion methods and the way governments use them to control tribal populations. In one revealing scene, a megaphone-armed official interrupts a Huli celebration to announce that they will be arrested if they do not obey the Ten Commandments. The Gospel According to the Papuans may seem a bit off, but it’s exactly what the missionaries have taught them.
—Pam Troy
FACTOID #232
Our first seminar at the Festival was entitled Censorship and the Actor’s Art: A Symposium, featuring panelists Michael Mayer and Lou Greenspan at Grace Cathedral, October 24, 1966.
