In response to my comment in a previous post about ethnomusicology a few people have been in touch with reccomendations and contacts and I’m meeting up later this week with one local who is very experienced in the field, Paul Wolffram, who has spent considerable time in Papua New Guinea. His PhD thesis in ethnomusicology involved 25 months of fieldwork among the Lak people of Southern New Ireland, PNG and it is so amazing to be able to share some of the results from his work and for us to experience a tiny fragment of his experiences.
“This is a short ethnographic film that I shot in the Duke of York Islands in Papua New Guinea in January 2010. This film will eventually be expanded into a feature length documentary that includes sorcerers from several regions in Island Papua New Guinea.”
“At this stage this short is a test screener to help me decide on and approach and style for the feature length ethnographic film. I want to allow the content to be impressionistic, for the sorcerers to speak for themselves, let the images and their words tell the story and leave the viewer with an impression and some mystery around these practices rather than a prescriptive account of what its all about.
Shot on Sony HDV Z1P and Canon 5D mark II.”
Paul Wolffram, Handmade Films
