[Seth-Trips] anthropology movie night

[Praveen Sinha]

Hey you nerds,

So, not too long ago I received the somewhat hard to find (in the
states) 3 part documentary series about the first contact (filmed!)
with a completely isolated stone-age tribe in the Papua New Guinea
highlands with the outside world, and the plight of one of the tribes
over the course of 10 years or so as they struggle to hook up with
global capital.   The series is fairly fascinating and well put
together, and I acquired it at a bit of expense shipping from .au, so
I'm holding a movie night.  Anyone interested in the intersection of
culture, technology, and global capital will probably find it
interesting.

The 3 parts are:
    - First Contact (1 hour):  original pieced together film footage
and primary source stories about how a group of Australians
encountered a completely isolated civilization of several hundred
thousand people in the PNG highlands in the 30s.  The civ was
surrounded by enemies and thought the world basically ended on their
island.
    - Joe Leahy's Neighbors:  50 years later, one of the tribes, still
largely living on subsistence farming, gets a bank loan and tries to
start a coffee plantation (after oil, the second most traded
commodity) to sell on the global market...
    - Black Harvest:  +5 years from that, the coffee market collapses
hard and deep in the 90s [and actually this crisis is still going on
today] due to global overproduction.  The film crew revists the
plantation to see how the community is coping with market shock.

Each piece is about an hour long.

When:
    Tuesday Feb 13, 2007, 7:30 PM

Where:
    My house, 2976 23rd st
    (near the corner of 23rd+Harrison)

Contact:  Email or cell 650 714 9262

Movie review URLs:
  http://www.filmakers.com/indivs/FirstContact.htm
  http://www.filmakers.com/indivs/JoeLeahyNeighbours.htm
  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103817/

Let me know if you want to come!  Feel free to bring snacks or drinks!

xxx
DMH