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Kobarweng or Where is Your Helicopter?
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Kobarweng or Where is Your Helicopter?
IDFA 1994

Kobarweng or Where is Your Helicopter?

Johan Grimonprez
United States, Belgium
1993
25 min
Festival history

In 1959 a helicopter landed in a remote village in New Guinea. The small group of anthropologists and other scientists that got out represented the first contact the villagers had ever had with the outside world. Johan Grimonprez reconstructs this historic experience of the local population on the basis of anthropological archive material and interviews. "Where is your helicopter?", was the first question the villagers put to Grimonprez when he visited them. Apart from a reconstruction, the film is also a reflection on the consequences the cultural clash had on the villagers. The encounter overturned their concept of the world and forced them to formulate a new attitude towards reality. The film also speaks out on the limitations of the western, objective-scientific approach of other cultures. Johan Grimonprez distances himself from the accepted objectifying view, for he calls his personal presence in the local community into question.

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