Robert Gardner



This evening I saw a film at the Film Forum that was such a perfect extension of recent personal research that I had to remind myself that the opportunity was a COINCIDENCE, one of the benefits of living in New York City, not part of a larger plan. My friend Sam invited me to see the Robert Gardner documentary Dead Birds tonight, a day after I went to youtube for videos on an old interest, the writer Tobias Schneebaum. Also, I just finished reading the book Child of the Jungle by Sabine Kuegler. What ties the film, videos, and book together? They are all about West Papua, formerly Irian Jaya.

Dead Birds was filmed about 50 years ago in a Dani village in West Papua. The landscapes, the people, and Gardner's narration are beautiful and moving. Gardner spoke after the screening and it was exciting to hear and see the man responsible for recording these scenes of life and death in a culture that still used stone tools. Michael Rockefeller was the film's sound engineer and he disappeared mysteriously in New Guinea shortly after working on the film (while studying the Asmat tribe, with whom Tobias Schneebaum lived), and the titles are by Peter Chermayeff, architect and brother of graphic designer Ivan Chermayeff.