Black Harvest

Filmed in Papua New Guinea’s remote Highlands, Black Harvest examines the complex and ultimately tragic relationship between Joe Leahy—the mixed-race offspring of a tribal woman and a white Australian man—and his “neighbours” the Ganiga tribe, traditional owners of the land making up Leahy’s Kilima Coffee Plantation.

Kilima has made Leahy rich, and to placate the Ganiga he convinces them to contribute more land to a new, profit-sharing coffee venture called Kaugum—their ticket into the modern world of business and money, as Leahy puts it to them. The Ganiga eagerly agree, and Leahy borrows heavily to finance the project.

But on harvest eve the international coffee price collapses. Soon after, warfare erupts between two neighboring tribes, which forces the Ganiga to take sides. The results are catastrophic: by year’s end hundreds are dead, Kaugum is destroyed, and the banks strip Leahy of his assets to cover the defaulted loan, shattering his and the Ganiga’s dreams.

Shot over a year, this real-life drama (winner of the IDFA Special Jury Award in 1992) examines the collision between traditional tribal customs and the values imposed by Papua New Guinea’s former colonial rulers.