NET Festival; Margaret Mead's New Guinea Journal. Part 2

Educational Broadcasting Corporation. NET Division · November 17, 1968

The fortieth anniversary of Dr. Margaret Mead's first expedition to New Guinea is commemorated in this ninety-minute documentary. The anthropologist is shown at work among the villagers of Peri on the New Guinea island of Manus. Their forty-year transition from Stone Age to the twentieth century is also documented. The project was additionally supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Old Dominion Fund, and J.M. Kaplan Fund, Inc. In 1928, early in a long and distinguished career as an anthropologist, Margaret Mead made her first expedition to the village of Peri on Manus, one of the Admiralty Islands in the Australian Trust Territory of New Guinea, and later wrote the classic study "Growing Up in New Guinea." In May 1953 Dr. Mead left once again for New Guinea to do a restudy of the primitive community which she had visited a quarter of a century before. She found the village intact and the children she had studied grown to adulthood, ready to go over the past, reconstruct the intervening years, and let her share in their present struggles to understand how Peri had become a modern community. This restudy is published in "New Lives for Old." In 1964 and 1965 she returned for two further studies of the same village. The film "Margaret Mead's New Guinea Journal" is a film about change. It concentrates on the tiny village of Peri, which, between Margaret Mead's first visit in 1928 and her second in 1953, moved from the Stone Age to the twentieth-century. "Margaret Mead's New Guinea Journal" describes the factors personal and historical which made this enormous cultural leap possible in such a short time. In the process the film draws some conclusions about change itself why it occurs, how it occurs, and its effect on the people caught up in it. Finally, through the eyes of Margaret Mead on this her final visit to the village of Peri, the film records how the role of the anthropologist has changed in the forty years since 1928. The film is a visual record of change using the following resources: the extensive footage shot on location in New Guinea with Dr. Mead, archival material, such as still photographs and films taken by Dr. Mead and her colleagues on various expeditions to Manus, Australian missionary footage from the 20s, and films of the wartime period when more than 1 million Americans disembarked in the Admiralties. It shows the teenage boys of 1928 now as established leaders of a community that has undergone great change since their childhood. Dr. Mead talks with them about making room for younger men and further change. We see Pokanau, oldest man in Peri, as he was in 1928 and now, reminiscing with Dr. Mead. We see Paliau, the remarkable political leader, now a member of the Papua-New Guinea House of Assembly, who guided the people of Manus into the twentieth century. He is seen in a confrontation with the District Commissioner and also making an election campaign speech. The film records advances in political sophistication, showing footage of the first territorial election held in Papua-New Guinea in 1964. And it also shows two activities that have remained unchanged the way the people fish, and the way the staple food, sago (a starch made from palm), is prepared. Dr. Mead is seen at the new University of Papua-New Guinea in Fort Moresby, before going to Peri. A girl called Niandros, Peri's first student at the university, returns home with Dr. Mead's party for her vacation. In Peri, Dr. Mead talks to the school children on the importance of learning English. We see the villagers in church observing their own form of Christianity. We see the birth of a baby and the traditional last rites for an old woman. We witness a crisis in the village between Peranus, young elected head of the village, and the older established leaders, over the location of Peranus ' house. The quarrel is diplomatically settled, and the house is moved to a new location. Having seen Dr. Mead's arrival on the island, we see her farewell party and departure on this, her final visit to Peri. NET Festival "Margaret Mead's New Guinea Journal" is a National Educational Television production. The program was made possible in part by grants from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, The Old Dominion Fund, and the JM Kaplan Fund, Inc. This 90-minute piece was recorded in color on videotape. (Description adapted from documents in the NET Microfiche) NET Festival is an anthology series of performing arts programming.