Matjemosh

As a staff member of the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden, Dutch scientist Adriaan Gerbrands, a fervent champion of ‘ethno-cinematography’, was introduced to film in the fifties. In 1960, he left for New Guinea to carry out fieldwork among the Asmat tribe for nine months. He collected woodcarvings, for which the community was famous, he set up a photo documentation and he shot film. Gerbrands made one woodcutter, Matjemosh, into a subject, showing him carving a drum. The soundtrack is a monologue intérieure in which Matjemosh comments on his activities. Gerbrands literally gives the woodcutter a voice and breached the notion that ‘the primitive artist’ is anonymous by definition.