Cannibal Tours is a 1988 documentary film by Australian director and cinematographer Dennis O'Rourke. While it borrows heavily from ethnographic modes of representation, the film is a biting commentary on the nature of modernity.
The film follows a number of European and American ecotourists as they travel from village to village throughout the Sepik River area in Papua New Guinea, driving hard bargains for local handcrafted items, paying to view formerly sacred ceremonies and taking photographs of every aspect of "primitive" life. With some prodding, the tourists unwittingly reveal an unattractive and pervasive ethnocentrism to O'Rourke's cameras. The tourists thus become somewhat dehumanized by the camera, even as the tourists themselves are busy exoticizing even the most mundane aspects of Sepik River life.
The title of the film can be read in at least a couple of ways. At one point early in the film, a German tourist, clearly titillated, describes the bygone practice of raiding and cannibalism. Cannibalism, the viewer also learns, was highly symbolic and often involved taking and wearing the skins of the victims. The film closes on a group of tourists who have painted their faces in "native fashion" and ape fierce gestures at one another as they dance.
Couldn't Be Fairer reveals how Australia's first people are still suffering from social oppression, with many living on reservations where alcoholism is rampant and unemployment the major occupation. Aboriginal land rights are a central theme: Miller clearly demonstrates the contrast between the attitudes of European Australians, who see the land only as a resource to be mined, farmed, grazed and built upon, and Aboriginal Australians, who regard the land as sacred. Archival footage compares the original lifestyle of Aboriginal Australians to their current pitiful condition, and shows how European settlers attempted to "civilize" mixed blood children by taking them away from their parents and enrolling them in boarding schools.
, 1h53 Réalisé parSusanne Bier OrigineDanemark GenresDrame, Documentaire, Romance ActeursMads Mikkelsen, Sonja Richter, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Paprika Steen, Ulf Pilgaard, Ida Dwinger Note74% Cecilia et Joaquim, jeune couple d'amoureux, sont sur le point de se marier quand Joaquim est renversé par une voiture. Le diagnostic des médecins est sans appel : le jeune homme restera tétraplégique. Cecilia se prépare à affronter l'avenir avec son mari paralysé. Mais ce dernier sombre dans la dépression et préfère couper les ponts. De son côté, Marie, mariée depuis quinze ans et mère de trois enfants, est rongée par un sentiment de culpabilité : elle conduisait la voiture responsable de l’accident. Elle demande alors à Niels, son mari médecin, de se rapprocher de soutenir la fiancée de Joaquim pour la soutenir dans cette épreuve.