The Rise of Film Authorship in Papua New Guinea. A personal Journey

Abstract

This paper is based on my experience of “direct cinema”, and the ethics and pedagogy from which I have taught Direct Cinema workshops in Papua New Guinea, the Pacific and internationally. Drawing on my own journey as a png filmmaker, and my training in the Ateliers Varan school of documentary cinema, this paper retraces the emergence of film authorship in Papua New Guinea since the 1970s in the wake of the country’s independence. It finally turns on my own practice and on process films, a method of filmmaking I have developed in rural communities which articulates cinematic democracy and social interventions towards restorative justice.