Joe Leahy's neighbours

Film Review

THIS 90-minute gem of a documentary, set in tne Western

Highlands of Papua New

Guinea, is the work of husband and wife film-makers Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson. It is a slice of life, fly on the wall glimpse of the fractious no-man’s land between the Western capitalist world and a tribal community grappling to understand and acquire its material culture without discarding its own customs and beliefs.

Anderson and Connolly camped on the border of the two societies for 18 months, living in a bamboo and thatch house as they filmed the Ganiga peopie and their mixed-race kinsmen ineluding Joe Leahy the son of a local woman and Mick Leahy, one of the first white explorers to reach the Western Highlands, loe Leahy is a self-made man, a hard-working coffee planter who has prospered from his labour. He lives in a large house, drives a Mercedes and a Range Rover, watches Australian television via a satellite dish and sends his children to Australian schools.

Joe bears an uncanny resemblance to his father and reflects the pioneer-

ing spirit of the early Australian explorers in the Highlands. But he’s also

half-Ganiga: he speaks their language,

knows their customs and has turned the Ganiga’s claim of kinship to advantage, buying clan land on which he has built a thriving plantation. Now he walks the fine line between supporting the local community and suecumbing to blandishments to share all his wealth with his wantoks. The pressure is relentless: for money, cars, lifts to town, even for the return of his plantation land with all its improvements because his kinsmen feel they

cannot be adequately compensated by

Joe’s prosperity. Envy and avarice coalesce with bewilderment at his reluctance to share his largesse.

The mist-shrouded mountains and valleys, the red earth and undulating

grassland are the stunning backdrops

to Joe’s story. The pigs, clogs, women and children are background chargeters as the men, heirs to a warrior tradition, strut, threaten, plan intrigues and press their claims to power, money and authority.

Joe Leahy emerges as a shrewd and tough businessman, more than fair in

his dealings, at least by Western stan dards. His patience is sorely tried by the claims and expectations of his wantoks and he is a reluctant foil in their power struggles. He is a compell

ing figure, apparently free from the

identity crisis afflicting so many mixed-race people in the competing claims of disparate cultures,

Joe Leahy’s Neighbours is a signifi

candy better film than Anderson and

Connolly’s previous documentary,

First Contact, the story of Mick and Dan Leahy prospecting for gold in the Western Highlands in the 1930 s and the impact of their arrival on the local

people. Documentary makers attempt

to hold viewers’ attention by giving a dramatic form to otherwise shapeless material and thus giving a point of view. The temptation to go on from there and “play God” is not often re sisted. It is rewarding to see the mak ers of this documentary have resisted

the temptation.

The documentary is being screened across Australia this month and is available on video cassette through Ronin Films, PO Box 1005, Civic Square, Canberra, Australia, 2608.