Black

Films

Black Harvest

IT’S not often that a film made in Papua-New Guinea, or one about grow ing coffee, is shown in New York, but Black Harvest fits both of those descrip tions, and has secured a rave review from the New York Times.

The film deals with what at first happens to be an example of appropriate economic development in the Highlands, a joint venture between Joe Leahy, “half white, half-aboriginal owner of a flourishing coffee plantation” and the Ganiga tribe, that once owned the land.

Together they are to grow coffee, with Leahy to get 60 per cent of the profits for his $300,000 investment, and with the tribe gettiing the other 40 per cent for their labour.

But world coffee prices collapse, the tribe refuses to pick the coffee, and Leahy’s efforts to get the harvest com pleted, by staging a ritual depicting the death of the farm, offends the tribesmen who, coincidentally embark on a war with a neighboring tribe.

“The film’s most remarkable scenes were shot in the thick of a battle waged with spears and bows and arrows,” writes Times reviewer Stephen Holden. “There are close-up shots of the long-term agon) endured by warriors who have arrow heads lodged in their flesh. Although the arrowheads could easily be removed in z hospital, the nearest facility demands $lOO in advance (money that the Ganiga don’t have) to treat the wounded.”

Holden found the film, which is onl) 75 minutes long, “a documentary o extraordinary resonance ... so rich thai watching it feels like taking an inspirec crash course in economic and cultura

anthropology.”

He goes on to say: “Black Harvest is al the more remarkable for not having a narrator. Letting the individuals and the events speak for themselves, it presents a disquieting microcosm of civilizatior coming apart. Its saddest sight is the crumbling of an opportunity that seemec genuinely golden and based on mutua

good will.”

The film was shown at New York’: prestigious Museum of Modern Art, a: part of the New Directors/New Film Series of the Film Society of Lincob Center and the Department of Film a the Museum. In addition to the Time! review, the arrival of the film was alsc noted by the New Yorker magazine. C