29a_garden

The film provides a record of domestic life in the Sepik area of Papua New Guinea, chiefly from the women's point of view. It describes their everyday activities, the environment in which they live, and their appreciation of some of the risks in it, including some associated with illness. At the time of the filming (done over a period of eighteen months in 1968-69), the Gnau people of Rauit were still separated from some of the social changes going on around them, partly by being off the beaten track, partly by being ambivalent about their wish to change. Local Government Council had just been introduced in that area, and it was five years before the independence of Papua New Guinea.

The film opens with the final stage of a ritual called malyi-, with a masked dancer performing and all the villagers gathered. Malyi is also the name of the spirit protecting gardening and hunting, who may cure or cause illness.

A description of some of the daily activities follows: in the morning the women sit together in the village, chatting and planning what to do that day before leaving for the `gardens'. The women do nearly all the work to produce the staple food (sago), but men and women share most of the gardening work, away from the village deep into the rain forest. Stages of the preparation of sago and cooking it at the end of the day are shown.

The village is not totally deserted during the day: older children stay behind taking care of the younger ones and the babies; sick and very old people may also stay behind; a woman falls ill in the sago grove and the men of her husband's group perform a ritual to beg the spirit Panu'et to leave her. The film ends with a young girl's puberty ceremony.

This film is recommended for courses on Melanesia, anthropology, gender relations, and women's studies. Catalogue number (VHS): RA/VHS187 £8.

J. La Fontaine, 1985. Initiation. Penguin, Harmondsworth.

G. Lewis, 1975. Knowledge of Illness in a Sepik Society: A Study of the Gnau, New Guinea. L.S.E Monograph on Social Anthropology No. 52, Athlone Press, London and New York.

G. Lewis, 1980. Day of Shining Red. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

G. Lewis, 1986. `The Look of Magic'. Man N.S., Vol. 21, pp. 414-37.

M. Mead, 1970. The Mountain Arapesh (Vol. 2). American Museum Science Books, American Museum of Natural History, New York.