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| Stori Tumbuna: Ancestors' Tales | |||
“This is a story of the Lak people. It‘s also a story of how I came to know the people of the region and how my story became forever woven into their own… I was to become enmeshed in events that resulted in bloodshed and death. What’s more, I was held responsible.” – Paul Wolffram “I know of no more successful or ingenious film that draws the viewer into another world while keeping faith with the tenor of its traditional narratives.”– Michael Jackson, anthropologist, Harvard University "Both a fascinating look at the lives and culture of a remote and isolated people and a surprising jungle adventure, Stori Tumbuna brings the customs and mythologies of the Lak people of the New Guinea islands to vivid life. In 2001 ethnomusicologist and filmmaker Paul Wolffram visited the remote southern region of the island of New Ireland to learn and record the music and dance traditions of the Lak. He spent over two years living and working there, adapting to village life, learning the language and rituals — and, as this film clearly testifies, becoming beguiled by the playful humour of the Lak men. However, the mysterious death of one of the village men led Wolffram to become entangled in village lore in ways he never intended. His Western curiosity got the better of him and he tried to find out more about the dreaded culprit, a monstrous wild man from the dense mountain jungles, known only as the “Song”." – New Zealand International Film Festival Filmmaker "Dr Paul Wolffram thought it would be fascinating enough just living and filming in a remote village in Papua New Guinea. But he hadn’t counted on the giant. A man from the village where Paul was living in the Lak community in Southern New Ireland went missing in the jungle, and the villagers’ explanation was he was taken by a giant man in the bush, known in mythology as “Song”. The oldest man in the village instructed the people to leave a female pig in a certain remote spot in the jungle every month to appease the creature, a big sacrifice to a community that places high value on a sow’s reproductive potential. The villagers took Paul to a cave in the jungle where they believed it lived and he set up his camera, leaving it pointing at the cave overnight. “At 35 minutes, a human figure comes out of the cave. This guy is bigger than any Papuan I’ve seen and on the film you can clearly see he’s huge and has really elongated fingers.” “So all this time I’ve been all rational, and all of a sudden here’s proof that the world is completely not as I understood it, and that in fact they actually have a much clearer grasp of what’s going on than I do.” – www.newswire.co.nz |
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| New Zealand 2011 | |||
Director/Producer/Photography/Editor: Paul Wolffram With: Paul Wolffram, Patrick Toarbusai, Kosmos Toalami, Bartholamul Toinniatwa, Brigata Apia, Nerus Toding, Toru Thadeus, Nerus Patrick, Leni Toarbusai 83 mins, DV In English, Tok Pisin and Siar, with English subtitles Wellington Film Society |
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