First Contact (1983 film)

First Contact is a 1983 Australian documentary film by Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson which recounts the incursion of gold-prospecting Australians into the unexplored interior highlands of New Guinea in 1930, then inhabited by a prosperous native population numbering in the region of one million. It is based on the book of the same name by the same authors. Inhabitants of the region and surviving members of the Leahy brothers' gold prospecting party recount their astonishment at this unforeseen meeting. The film includes both moving and still pictures taken by Michael Leahy, leader of the party, and contemporary footage of the island's terrain.

First Contact
Directed byRobin Anderson
Bob Connolly
Produced byRobin Anderson
Bob Connolly
CinematographyDennis O'Rourke
Tony Wilson
Edited byMartyn Down
Stewart Young
Production
company
Arundel Productions
Release date
7 December 1983
Running time
58 minutes
CountryAustralia
LanguageEnglish

The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.[1] It won Best Feature Documentary at the 1983 Australian Film Institute Awards.[2]

The Highlands Trilogy

First Contact is the first documentary in what later became known as The Highlands Trilogy. The other two films are Joe Leahy's Neighbours (1989) and Black Harvest (1992). These three films, between them, have won some thirty major awards, including each film winning both the Grand Prix at the Festival Cinéma du Réel in Paris and AFI Award for Best Documentary.[3]

Joe Leahy's Neighbours and Black Harvest pick up the Leahy story started in First Contact but in the next generation with Michael Leahy's mixed-race son, Joe Leahy, and his family. These two films document Joe Leahy's life as owner and manager of two coffee plantations on land acquired in controversial circumstances from the Ganiga tribe. Much of the drama in the two films stems from the implications and expectations of these two plantations, that is, from conflicts about ownership both within the Ganiga people and between the Ganiga and Leahy. The films chart a society in transition from a tribal life to a Western capitalist one.

Box office

First Contact grossed $120,000 at the box office in Australia.[4]

See also

References
  1. AMG. "First Contact". The New York Times. Retrieved 15 April 2010.
  2. AACTA. "Past WInners: 1983 Winners & Nominees". Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts. Retrieved 27 June 2014.
  3. Michael DVD Reviews
  4. Film Victoria - Australian Films at the Australian Box Office Archived 23 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine

Further reading


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.