Highlands Trilogy, The

Written by Cool Hand Luke

Sunday, 25 September 2005

Sometimes you're better off watching a decent documentary rather than a celluloid concoction with all the conviction of fairy floss ...

At some point it would be worth conducting a raspberries award for the worst Australian feature film. On the other hand, it could take a life time of effort, given there are so many worthy contenders.

And then you have to think about the fact that so many of them are unkown these days. Do you have to factor in the way some achieved a decent burial without any headstone or marker? (Can you remember Frog Dreaming? Have you forked over $4.95 at JB Hi Fi for Sample People? Sucker!! The market is always right.)

Are Turkey Shoot, Fantasm and Fantasm Comes Again in special Troma exempt categories where the dedicated pursuit of awfulness rises to camp). Should there be a special award for Tony Ginnane, or are his genre (and tax) rip offs the one true highlight of the tax rort years.?

Should there be a bonus for having had a terrible film inflicted on the many rather than the few? (Strange Bedfellows) What about true turkeys that have been given many awards? (Somersault) Should there be a special category for feminist art house product designed to make male audiences addicted to Jerry Bruckheimer suffer? (Japanese Story, Somersault again, but let's not forget Little Fish out there right now in the special category of 'why you should care about junkies in Cabramtta played by Hollywood super stars'). What about Australian film-makers who have gone overseas to make their turkeys then had them shipped back here (Sliver, L'Idol)?

Should there be a special prize for worst production house? Who could stand in the way of Mac Flop, aka Mac Dud, aka Macquarie Bank, which financed a whole slew of slops under the special Federal government FLIC dispensation? Too many slop flops to list here, but mostly domestic comedies where the chuckles are as rare as a cheap toll on a Macquarie road, or decent security at a Macquarie airport, at least not without bleeding the punters dry as they try to get in and out without various tolls, fees, and orifice searches. Mac the Ripper even make the FFC look like a force for market good, the rough equivalent of a flea hoisting an elephant to take out a weightlifting championship. On the other hand, the FFC did finance The Honourable Wally Norman.

So many questions, so little time. Fortunately there are all sorts of obscure shows rising out of the woodwork courtesy of DVD - including such oddities as Jim Sharman's take on Patrick White's screenplay for The Night the Prowler.

And the really good news is that amongst the many curiosities waiting release (stop slobbering all you fans demanding the collected works of Michael Thornhill, there'll come a time), there are actually a few good documentaries making the rounds again.

Chief amongst them is The Highlands Trilogy, put together by Bob Connolly and his now unhappily dead partner Robin Anderson, out September 05 on DVD.

The three films - First Contact, Joe Leahy's Neighbours and Black Harvest - are amongst the finest examples of ethnographic/historical/sociological film-making put together anywhere any time. They achieved an international reputation, and they suggest why it's worth having a local film industry.

First Contact starts with the story of the penetration of the Nw Guinea highlands by whites in the 1930's (even Erroll Flynn claims to have made the trek in search of gold). It features some rare footage shot at the time, as well as many interviews with people - black and white - who could remember the early encounters, and how the tribes people explained the arrival of whites as the return of tribal spirits from over the hills - not having any conception of life beyond their valleys.

The sequel, Joe Leahy's Neighbours, tracks the mixed fortunes of Joe Leahy, the son of Australian explorer Michael Leahy and a highland woman. Joe runs a coffee plantation, but has an uneasy relationship with his tribal neighbors the Ganiga because of his western affiliations. While First Contact is perhaps a more conventional 'made for television' documentary, Joe Leahy's Neighbours saw Connolly and Anderson spend some 18 months in New Guinea tracking the story, and filming observationally as conflicts arose. By being 'camera on the spot' in a communal context, they captured many moments in Joe's conflicted life, and evoke all kinds of issues (a technique they also used to great effect in their other masterpiece, Rats in the Ranks, an observation in microcosm of the absurdity known as the Leichhardt Council).

The third show, Black Harvest, uses the same non judgmental observational low key narrative to track Joe Leahy as things go from bad to worse for him. Coffee prices collapse, the Ganiga tribes people get restless, and tribal warfare breaks out. In a few startling moments, Connolly and Anderson are caught up in the fray as spears fly.

This time Joe begins to think about emigrating to Australia, and there's also a sense that Connolly and Anderson thought that they'd gone as far as they needed to in terms of observational filming.

But the result is worthwhile, especially if you run all three shows together in an epic orgy of documentary viewing, so you can track the changes in filming style, along with the many challenging issues facing Joe Leahy, New Guinea and its highland people. There's the tang of truth - and troubled lives lived - in Anderson and Connolly's image taking.

The DVD's are not the greatest since sliced bread. Filmed on 16 mm, and in the cloudy, misty highlands, much of the footage looks raw and inclined to softness and to signs of age (amazingly First Contact first came out way back in 1983). But you can always forgive documentaries technical issues if they're the real deal, and this trilogy is worth viewing by any one interested in our northern neighbor, a prime example of how Australia as a colonial power proved as inept and destructive as any other coloniser around the world.

There are a few nondescript extras - mainly interviews and footage from TV shows conducted around the time of release - and amazingly there are no subtitles on any of the discs. Roadshow only subs ABC released product, but both they and the ABC deserve a good whipping - especially as the ABC is supposed to show some sort of care towards minority and hearing impaired folk.

The slicks also cheat the timing - for example First Contact only runs a TV hour, but by counting in the extras Roadshow clocks it up to 92 minutes. It's the sort of casual cheating that requires a good spearing in the leg. If you take a look at the trilogy you'll know what I mean.

Apparently you can also only buy the shows in a price gouging box set - luckily I picked up mine as cheap second hand review copies, and felt cheerful about it as these are four plus stars out of five as shows for earnest ethnographers.

Meantime, the hunt for the worst Australian drama will continue.

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