“The bird won, and from that time, all men, like birds, must die.”

DEAD BIRDS

“A cinematographic interpretation of the life of a group of Grand Valley Dani, who are mountain Papuans in West New Guinea (Irian Barat, Indonesia), studied by the Harvard-Peabody Expedition (1961-1963). This film was made by Gardner in 1961, before the area was pacified by the Dutch government. The film focuses on Weyak, the farmer and warrior, and on Pua, the young swineherd, following them through the events of Dani life: sweet potato horticulture, pig keeping, salt winning, battles, raids, and ceremonies.”

— Karl G. Heider

“When I walked away from watching Dead Birds I almost seemed to stagger inside myself! Today I am still jarred by it and still trying to understand the guilty significance of what it tells us about ourselves. The terrible thing is that they remind us so much of ourselves. It is unlike any other movie I have ever seen... Robert Gardner’s film is dazzling!”

— Robert Lowell

“The filming of Dead Birds is a genuine breakthrough in our capacity to record and communicate! It binds the distant past and the future towards which men are moving...”

— Margaret Mead

“Films like Dead Birds... ...are sublime and beautiful poems in which each society Gardner films becomes a metaphor for the tenderness and cruelty of all human existence, the tenderness and cruelty we are all capable of recognizing when we look deep into our own hearts. Gardner's “ethnographic” films are about people he does not claim to especially to love. The human need for love, which is the other face of the human resistance to loving and being loved, is the subject of his films...”

— William Rothman in Documentary Film Classics

“Life in the New Guinea highlands, including warfare, pig exchange, agriculture, and domestic life has been beautifully depicted.”

— Tom Driver in Liberating Rites: Understanding the Transformative Power of Ritual

ROBERTGARDNER.NET

La película fué rodada durante 5 meses. Gardner filmó todo lo que estaba pasando, enfocándose en 2 personajes; Weyak y Pua. En el equipo había 3 etnógrafos, un historiador, un botánico, un fotógrafo, psicóloga y otros.


Aunque se habla de que no se creo ningún personaje ni ninguna situación, la narración se da a través de Robert Gardner. Sin subtitular lo que los Dani dicen, nuestra percepción es guiada a través de la suya.
"Pua watches, thinking of the day when he himself will be a farmer”
Y talvez este sea el punto flojo de la película. Las imágenes por si solas cuentan una historia que bien podría ser entendida, la cultura bélica en la que viven desde chiquitos, la moneda (conchas), y los rituales. Pienso que talvez por ésto que a veces da la impresión de una visión superior del director. En vez de que él interprete y nos cuente, alguno de ellos hablando o explicando hubiera hecho un cambio.

La parte que no vemos es la de las relaciones entre ellos más allá de la guerra. Cómo son los matrimonios, si los niños reciben algún tipo de educación.

Es interesante el tema de la guerra; su vida gira en torno a ésta, la da sentido. "Heider called this the period of ritual war for the people emphasized that war was necessary to placate their own ghosts."

Dani warfare fits well into the four characteristics of war mentioned above:

If all societies practice war to some degree, the Dani are at the extreme end, for they were in a state of perpetual war with one or more other alliances.
War is carried out by men. Dani women work their gardens with very sharp digging sticks that would be of some use as defensive weapons, and although people sometimes suggested that women would fight off enemy raiders, Heider heard of no stories of women actually doing it. And there were certainly no stories of women joining in battles or raiding parties.
War results in homicide. Reliable data were hard to get, but from the genealogies that I collected, I figured that 28.5 percent of male deaths were due to war, and 2.4 percent of female deaths were due to war. Chagnon figured that 25 percent of Yanomamo deaths were caused by violence, but this figure included fighting within villages as well as raids between villages.
Dani warfare seemed to have restrictions, if not formal rules. As was mentioned above, the Dani did not shoot arrows in volleys, and there were no night raids.
http://www.larryjzimmerman.com/warfare/lec5.html




Gardner dice: “Octavio Paz es uno de los grandes escritores de todos los tiempos, pero también era un gran fugitivo de las cámaras, casi nunca se dejó grabar; estas viñetas que presentaré incluyen un paseo que me dio por el Centro Histórico de la ciudad y Mixcoac, el barrio donde nació”.

Gardner is a creative ethnographer who has a few traits throughout his films:

1. Language problem—he has never mastered the language of the people his has filmed, Dani, Nuer, Hamar.

2. Collaboration– his best work has been made with an equal partner, usually a sovereign

anthropologist, not as a collaboration of researchers. We see this in the way each of his films are signed “ . . . a film by Robert Gardner.” Here he takes full authoritative responsibility for what follows, even while acknowledging assistance of various kinds from others.

3. Titles — how he presents the films to the audience. It is not a traditional ethnographic title, rather he uses short, enigmatic phrases, more like poems. This is a clear signal of his intentions, but the implications have not yet been pondered by his critics.

http://www.tlc2.uh.edu/visualanthro/News/Dead_Birds_lecture.pdf

ON THE MAKING OF DEAD BIRDS Robert Gardner (link)

AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL CRITIQUE OF THE FILMS OF ROBERT GARDNER by Jay Ruby (link)

FRAGMENTO DE UNA ENTREVISTA

Con respecto a “Dead Birds”, ¿alguna vez arriesgó su vida por una secuencia en esta película?, es decir, algunas escenas se ven que fueron riesgosas de hacer.
“No, especialmente en esta película no corrí riesgos. En algún momento ellos, (los 'dani') intentaron matarme pero había escuchado algo al respecto y traté de evitarlo. Realmente no creó que me hubieran hecho daño”.

México es rico culturalmente, ¿ha pensado realizar una película sobre México?

“No, no tengo planes. Sólo he hecho algunas cosas sobre Octavio Paz. Hace algunos años iba a hacer una película con Luis Alcoriza. Realmente lo estimaba pero no pudimos obtener el financiamiento. También vi a Buñuel hacer una película en México: 'La joven'. De ahí en fuera no he tenido otros trabajos en México”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Birds_(1965_film)
http://www.der.org/films/dead-birds.html
http://astro.temple.edu/~ruby/ruby/gardner.html
http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/troufs/anth1604/video/Dead_Birds.html
http://www.vincentborrelli.com/cgi-bin/vbb/105157.html
http://www.larryjzimmerman.com/warfare/lec5.html
http://quetzalcoatl.presidencia.gob.mx/prensa/ultimasnoticias/?contenido=39123
http://www.filmeweb.net/magazine.asp?id=1722
http://cdermen.blogspot.com/2008/01/cinema-of-robert-gardner.html