Ring of Fire: An Indonesian Odyssey

The Ring of Fire: An Indonesian Odyssey is a series of five documentary films following the decade-long Wanderjahr[1] of the filmmaker/sibling partnership Lorne and Lawrence Blair.

Ring of Fire: An Indonesian Odyssey
Remastered DVD cover
Written byLawrence Blair
Directed byLorne Blair
Narrated byLorne Blair
Lawrence Blair
ComposerMason Daring
Country of originUnited Kingdom
Original languageEnglish
No. of episodes5
Production
Executive producersDavid Fanning
ProducersLorne Blair
Lawrence Blair
Production locationIndonesia
Running time50 minutes
Production companyWGBH-TV
Release
Original networkPBS (US)
BBC (UK)
Original release13 June (1988-06-13) –
18 July 1988 (1988-07-18)
External links
www.indonesianodyssey.co.uk Website

The five films
  1. Spice Island Saga: The Blair brothers follow the footsteps of naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace on a Bugis sailboat in search of the bird of paradise to the Aru Islands near New Guinea.
  2. Dance of the Warriors: The brothers sail to the islands of Komodo where they encounter the Komodo dragon, Sumba where they witness human sacrifice, western New Guinea where they meet the Asmat, and finally Bali where they build a home in a village.
  3. East of Krakatoa: The Blairs descend into the active volcano Anak Krakatoa and meet the legendary 116-year-old artist Lempad. They also meet the neigong master known as “Dynamo Jack” and witness the funeral rites of the king of the Toraja people of the Celebes.
  4. Dream Wanderers of Borneo: The brothers go in search of the nomadic Punan Dayaks.
  5. Beyond the Ring of Fire: Lawrence Blair returns to a lost paradise at the outer edge of the known world eight years later in a retrospective voyage to many of the islands first visited and others never previously filmed.

The making of the films

With financing from investors including the BBC and Ringo Starr, the Blair Brothers arrived in Indonesia from England in 1972. Then the Indonesian archipelago offered isolation for neolithic cultures and their indigenous beliefs. The Blair Brothers spent over two decades documenting the relationships of island ecology and their peoples. One result of the Blair's work was a PBS-distributed multi-media package- an oversized picture book, alongside the Emmy-nominated BBC/PBS television series Ring of Fire. A book of the television series was published in 1988 and republished in 2010. A digitally remastered DVD was released in 2003.

Production details

Cut from 80 hours of 16mm film in co-production with WGBH-TV, Boston, Ring of Fire was produced, directed and photographed by Lorne Blair[2] and co-produced and written by Lawrence Blair. Executive producer was Frontline's David Fanning. The films have since been shown in more than 60 countries.

References
  1. Blair, Lawrence; Lorne Blair (1 April 1988). Ring of Fire. Bantam Books. p. 272. ISBN 978-0-553-05232-9.
  2. "Lorne Blair in Bali". Sophia Anastasia (his life partner). 2011. Retrieved 8 December 2012.


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