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First Contact (1983)
Production company: Arundel Productions
Producers: Bob Connolly, Robin Anderson
Associate producer: Dick Smith
Directors: Robin Anderson, Bob Connolly
Music: Ron Carpenter
Cast: Richard Oxenburgh
Made in association with The Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies and with the assistance of Dick Smith.
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'We believed our dead went over there, turned white, and came back as spirits. That's how we explained the white man: our own dead had returned.''
In 1930, one million people were living in the Highlands of New Guinea.
Despite comprising the most diverse language and cultural groups in the world, the existence of these people was until then completely unknown to the outside world.
It was in that same year they were discovered, not by anthropologists, but by independent Australian gold prospectors.
This Oscar nominated film uniquely contains important archival footage of these first interactions between Europeans and the people of the New Guinea Highlands.
When it was released in 1983, most of the people on both sides of this unique cultural collision were still alive, their interviews retell the story of these fascinating encounters between the traditions of a 50,000 year old culture and that of direct European descent.
Together, this combination of first-hand accounts and original recordings of the first encounters results in a compelling experience that has not and will never be equalled in anthropological terms.
First Contact won 10 international awards, including the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Documentary in 1983, the Grand Prix at the prestigious Festival Cinéma du Réel in Paris in 1983 and was nominated for an Academy Award in 1984.
Anderson and Connolly co-wrote a book about their experiences, also called First Contact (1987, Viking Penguin).
