Cannibal Tours

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Culture Documentary hosted by Dennis O'Rourke and published by Direct Cinema Limited in 1988 - English narration

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Cannibal Tours is a 1988 documentary film by Australian director and cinematographer Dennis O'Rourke. While it borrows heavily from ethnographic modes of representation, the film is a biting commentary on the nature of modernity. The film documents a cruise ship tour down the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea as wealthy European and American tourists go in search of “primitive” cultures. The film captures cross-cultural miscommunication as tourists and hosts misunderstand one another, usually comically, often disturbingly.

The film follows a number of European and American ecotourists as they travel from village to village throughout the Sepik River area in Papua New Guinea, driving hard bargains for local handcrafted items, paying to view formerly sacred ceremonies and taking photographs of every aspect of "primitive" life. With some prodding, the tourists unwittingly reveal an unattractive and pervasive ethnocentrism to O'Rourke's cameras. The tourists thus become somewhat dehumanized by the camera, even as the tourists themselves are busy exoticizing even the most mundane aspects of Sepik River life.

"Dennis O'Rourke's Cannibal Tours is simply (to be more precise, complexly) stunning. While the cameras snap, the tourists bargain, and Sonny and Cher sing 'I Got You Babe' over Radio Moscow, the Papua New Guineans try to hold onto their world. 'We sit here confused,' one laments, 'while they take pictures of everything' - while O'Rourke's camera shoots the whole of a social relation that is taking over the world, the relation between the seeing and the seen. This double anthropology subtly shows how connoisseurship and condescension are linked, and how little the Western tribe of tourists understand their own culture. Cannibal Tours succeeds in being both devastating and charming - an amazing combination." - Todd Gitlin, author of The Whole World is Watching, The Sixties, Inside Prime Time and The Twilight of Common Dreams

"A dryly funny, perceptive, and terribly disturbing documentary masterwork." - John Hinde, ABC Radio (Sydney)

"Cannibal Tours is two journeys. The first is that depicted - rich and bourgeois tourists on a luxury-cruise up the mysterious Sepik River, in the jungles of Papua New Guinea ... the packaged version of a 'heart of darkness'. The second journey (the real text of the film) is a metaphysical one. It is an attempt to discover the place of 'the Other' in the popular imagination. It affords a glimpse at the real (mostly unconsidered or misunderstood) reasons why 'civilised' people wish to encounter the 'primitive'. The situation is that shifting terminus of civilisation, where modern mass-culture grates and pushes against those original, essential aspects of humanity; and where much of what passes for values in western culture is exposed in stark relief as banal and fake." - Dennis O'Rourke, director of Cannibal Tours.

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  • Source: VHS Rip
  • Duration: 1h 6mn
  • Framerate: 29.970 fps
  • Dimensions: 656x400 (1.640)
  • Codec: XviD @ 1356 Kbps (BVOP)
  • Audio: MP3 @ 80 Kbps (VBR)
  • Language: Various spoken, English hardsubbed

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[ edit ] Related Documentaries

  • The Cannibal Next Door
  • Eaten Alive! the Rise and Fall of the Italian Cannibal Film
  • Keep the River on Your Right
  • Cannibal Island
  • Tribal Wives
  • Tribes of the Amazon
  • African Odyssey
  • Heavenly Hawaii
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  • Australia's Aborigines

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[documentary]cannibal.tours.1988.vhsrip.xvid.avi (698.85 Mb)

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Categories : Culture | Dennis O'Rourke | Direct Cinema Limited | 1988 | English | Name Dennis O'Rourke Direct Cinema Limited Language > English Name Subject > Culture Year > 1988

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cannibal tours 1988 summary

Cannibal Tours

cannibal tours 1988 summary

Dennis O'Rourke

When tourists journey to the furthermost reaches of the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea, is it the indigenous tribespeople or the white visitors who are the cultural oddity? This film explores the difference (and the surprising similarities) that emerge when "civilized" and "primitive" people meet. With dry humor and acute observation CANNIBAL TOURS explodes cultural assumptions as it provides a pointed look at a fabulous phenomenon.

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Dennis O’Rourke – Cannibal Tours (1988)

cannibal tours 1988 summary

Quote:Cannibal Tours is a 1988 documentary film by Australian director and cinematographer Dennis O’Rourke. While it borrows heavily from ethnographic modes of representation, the film is a biting commentary on the nature of modernity. The film follows a number of European and American ecotourists as they travel from village to village throughout the Sepik River area in Papua New Guinea, driving hard bargains for local handcrafted items, paying to view formerly sacred ceremonies and taking photographs of every aspect of “primitive” life. With some prodding, the tourists unwittingly reveal an unattractive and pervasive ethnocentrism to O’Rourke’s cameras. The tourists thus become somewhat dehumanized by the camera, even as the tourists themselves are busy exoticizing even the most mundane aspects of Sepik River life. The title of the film can be read in at least a couple of ways. At one point early in the film, a German tourist, clearly titillated, describes the bygone practice of raiding and cannibalism. Cannibalism, the viewer also learns, was highly symbolic and often involved taking and wearing the skins of the victims.

cannibal tours 1988 summary

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Language(s):English+commentary Subtitles:English (hardcoded for non-English parts)

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Cannibal Tours

Film details, brief synopsis, cast & crew, dennis o'rourke, laurence j henderson, tim litchfield, wolfgang amadeus mozart, technical specs.

A group of tourists traveling along the Sepik river in New Guinea explore both the land and exotic people.

Miscellaneous Notes

Released in United States 1988

Released in United States June 26, 1988

Released in United States March 1988

Released in United States Summer August 23, 1989

Shown at Margaret Meade Film Festival June 26, 1988.

Shown at Munich Film Festival June 25-July 3, 1988.

Shown at San Francisco International Film Festival March 19 & 20, 1988.

Released in United States 1988 (Shown at Munich Film Festival June 25-July 3, 1988.)

Released in United States March 1988 (Shown at San Francisco International Film Festival March 19 & 20, 1988.)

Released in United States June 26, 1988 (Shown at Margaret Meade Film Festival June 26, 1988.)

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Films in Review

Self and other, cannibal tours.

Dennis O’Rourke’s Papua New Guinea documentary is calm, controlled, courteous, doubly devastating. Some commentary on the film differs, but I think that he likes some of these tourists, and many, even most of them deserve to be liked. And just because you’re a native doesn’t mean you can’t be self-serving or plain unpleasant.

Having established this, what’s left is utter devastation, and an utter quandary. Cannibalism was no good, but Contact was still a disaster. “That’s close enough,” says the nice European woman who wanted a souvenir photograph, but not so much as to get any on her. The “second price” sequence, especially with the way these scroungers talk so smugly over the top of the people their bilking, encapsulates the whole colonial abomination with incredible, terrible efficiency.

  • Cluster: Self and Other
  • Country: Australia
  • Year Released: 1988
  • Directed by: Dennis O'Rourke
  • Film Review by: Dean Duncan

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Cannibal tours

It affords a glimpse at the real (mostly unconsidered or misunderstood) reasons why 'civilised' people wish to encounter the 'primitive'.

"Cannibal Tours" is two journeys. The first is that depicted - rich and bourgeois tourists on a luxury-cruise up the mysterious Sepik River, in the jungles of Papua New Guinea ... the packaged version of a 'heart of darkness'. The second journey (the real text of the film) is a metaphysical one. It is an attempt to discover the place of 'the Other' in the popular imagination. It affords a glimpse at the real (mostly unconsidered or misunderstood) reasons why 'civilised' people wish to encounter the 'primitive'. The situation is that shifting terminus of civilisation, where modern mass-culture grates and pushes against those original, essential aspects of humanity; and where much of what passes for values in western culture is exposed in stark relief as banal and fake.

The Movie “Cannibal Tours” Essay (Critical Writing)

Movie summary, west civilization, neocolonialism, race and gender, social organization, indigenous political systems, works cited.

The movie Cannibal Tours gives a visual ethnography of tourism in Melanesia. The tourist who plays a key role in the movie have travelled from different parts of the world to the Sepik Valley to experience the unique “ Primitive People ” whom they claim live in a state of nature and practices cannibalism (O’Rourke). The Movie presents tourists in an untested as neocolonial subjects. They offer stories about the simple people existing harmoniously with nature and who establishes viable social systems unmediated by modernism.

The movie seeks out the locals and stresses them to share about cannibalism, they do this even taking them to places where people have been sacrificed and consumed. The tourist in the movie desires for and obsessively gathers the relics and other palpable symbols of variance. With their extensive cameras, they determinedly try to seizure the locals and their strange world. The scenes combined with the reflections of the natives on tourists and their interfaces with them emphasize the importance of consumption, ethno-centrality and socio-political opportunity to cross-cultural tourist locations (O’Rourke).

Consequently, the Cannibal Tours also focuses on incorporation, consumption and appropriation. It implicitly argues that, the cannibals as asserted by the title are not the locals but the tourists. Transforming familiarities and personalities shaped out of the imageries and alteration of the Melanesians tourist develops cannibals, their dehumanizing practices mythical utilize the locals and their lives (O’Rourke).

According to Beatle, the tourists experience their myth as hysteria and signs, whereas, the New Guineans perceive it as an enduring experience of their culture (56). This can be illustrated in the book when an old man gives a story about the reactions of New Guineans to the arrival of the first ship carrying the Germans colonialists he says “ our dead descendants have come back!”, he also continues with a huge smile and says “.. when we watch the tourists…. We conclude the dead have resurrected”. The old man asserts that what they say. Although, in the real sense, they believe that they are not there dead ancestors (O’Rourke).

The Cannibal Tours focuses on two different cultures. The culture consists of a group of wealthy tourists who are able to meet affluent and elegant trip along River Sepik of New Guinea aboard a deluxe cruise ship, known as The Melanesian Explorer. This situation illustrates the power and social delineation present between the tourist, super culture and the natives or the primitive, who cannot afford the luxurious holidays because of economic condition. The movie critic the political nature of tourism, it brings out the ineffable and the conceptual aspects of tourism.

Political aspects of tourism are characterized with when the tourist returns, they carry along their experiences anchored on the photographs and artifacts they carry along. Consequently, on their mind, they have a sense of anomie i.e. no one can be linked in the sense that, people who survived in a pantheistic civilization are. Besides, we have seen the failure of Christianity, the holocaust. This can be argued that modernity and western civilization have had little effect in peoples mind. This is because they don’t understand what it means. The culture recognizes the ordinary people who don’t even think about it for living. This is illustrated by the River Sepik villages where the tourists visit. The movie depict the ecstatic moment when Iatmul village men paints tourists with designs conventionally used to sanctify the dead ancestors, moreover, tourist are seen dancing to slow music of Mozart while aboard a cruise ship (O’Rourke).

Culture has been closely linked with race and gender. Primitivism makes the community escape the state of sexual oppression in their own culture; this is the essence of primitivism. Consequently, the connection between the western fascinations with the primitive is how sex employed as a tool in handling fears arising from others i.e. the dread of conflict constituting psychosis. Hence, the society responds by either getting attracted by strategies in containing its misuse.

As illustrated in the Movie, child pornography is mildly explored. Sex connection establishes a test of how it can be confronted and subsumes the gap existing within the society, ourselves, sexuality and our connection with the next generation. Child pornography, which is a beast of all, makes the dark side of the society and “who we are”. The Cannibal Tour exposes compassionate exploration of child pornography.

Culture has endured to establish what Lewellen calls “basic Social organization” and “the evolution of political society (10). These descriptions stress on the physiognomies of distinct stages of sociocultural integration instead of the dynamics that trigger evolution from one level to the next. This form of assertions is drawn largely from archeology theories, rather than the cultural anthropology (Lewellen, 11). According to great archeologists, many efforts are involved in understanding the evolution occurring in state societies. Thus, the archeological and cultural aspects are linked to create “the origins of the State and Civilization” (Lewellen, 11).

Various archeologists such as Max Gluckman investigated the analysis of “situations”. These involved individuals rather than the traditional ethnographic concentration of given set norms and social norms. Consequently, Victor Turner in his book, Schism and Continuity in African Society traced a single individual through a chronology of social dramas in which individual and community influences of norms and morals were uncovered. Basing on their emphasis on the trend and conflict, a new form of political element was added; thus, individual decision making is evident in crisis situations (Lewellen, 11).

According to Beatle, indigenous people globally shares a particular political context, whatever their cultural specific (63). They endeavor to compete against the legacy of disenfranchisement of their; ancestral lands, culture and society by colonizing European societies. Thus, Beatle denotes that, this point to the struggle against colonialism i.e. the acquisition, management and exploitation of a country’s resources by European powers. This is one of the experiences shared by the indigenous people (Beatle, 63).

Beatle, Keith. Documentary Screens; Non-Fiction Film and Television , New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

Lewellen, Tedd. Political Anthropology , Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 2003.

O’Rourke, Dennis. Cannibal Tours . 1988. Web. .

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IvyPanda . 2020. "The Movie "Cannibal Tours"." June 6, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-movie-cannibal-tours/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Movie "Cannibal Tours"." June 6, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-movie-cannibal-tours/.

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Cannibal Tours

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Cannibal Tours is a 1988 documentary film by Australian director and cinematographer Dennis O’Rourke. While it borrows heavily from ethnographic modes of representation, the film is a biting commentary on the nature of modernity

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I wanted to see a mouthy tourist get eaten.

Reminds me of this http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/keep-the-river/

The director went on a tourist cruise in Papua New Guinea, pretending to make a documentary about the natives but actually filming the tourists. It is about tourists being condescending and horrible. I watched it after seeing the bizarre “cultural voyeurism” reality show, Meet the Natives. I thought it was a good counterpoint.

what the hell is this about?

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Review/Film; For Tourists and Papuans The Exploitation Is Mutual

By Caryn James

  • Aug. 23, 1989

Review/Film; For Tourists and Papuans The Exploitation Is Mutual

Among the many absurd images in ''Cannibal Tours,'' the most ridiculous is that of a European face elaborately painted in the ritual makeup of a Papua New Guinea tribe. The stark white face filled with swirling brown lines emerges from behind a Nikon camera, photographing similarly decorated Europeans and Americans dancing on a luxury cruise ship. They are touring an island where cannibalism has been replaced by commerce. As the director, Dennis O'Rourke, has described his documentary, these ''bourgeois tourists'' have bought ''the packaged version of 'Heart of Darkness.' ''

That description only hints at Mr. O'Rourke's gentle, witty and ultimately disturbing vision. In ''Cannibal Tours,'' which opens today for a weeklong run at Film Forum 1, he guides his audience not toward Conrad's horror, but toward a more mournful recognition. He discovers the odd congruities, as well as the predictable incongruities, between the villagers and the tourists, who treat the Papua New Guineans as if their daily lives were a Disneyland exhibition.

An Australian film maker who has spent years documenting the changing lives of Pacific islanders, Mr. O'Rourke lets his camera uncover meanings without narrative intrusions (except for the occasional off-camera interviewer's voice). Yet like all documentaries, his assumes a point of view.

Over a calm blue sea, with beautiful green hills in the background, we hear Mozart. Before long, the music is interrupted by a crackling radio news report detailing Henry A. Kissinger's views on arms control. The best and the worst of Western civilization intrudes on this glorious landscape.

The tourists' gawky voyeurism is embodied in a variety of ugly Americans, Germans and Italians. The typical German is a corpulent man in a silly-looking safari suit and hat. The Italians wear stylish jeans and talk about educating the natives. The Americans are uniformly coarse, tittering over their souvenir phallic objects. Mr. O'Rourke does not condescend to these condescending types, whose unsavory presence is predictable.

The film's surprising twist is its undercurrent of mutual exploitation. Like any good capitalists, the villagers sell things the tourists want to buy - wood carvings or the opportunity to photograph their ''spirit house,'' a place that once contained sacred objects long since removed by missionaries.

Though the foreigners undoubtedly introduced crass commercialism along with their religion, today's modern villagers accept the necessity of selling out. They simply want to do better at it. In an open-air market, villagers put price stickers on carved masks; a European woman holds up a straw object and wonders, ''Is this a skirt or a bag?''; and one Papua New Guinean woman complains vehemently that the tourists look but don't buy. How is she supposed to send her children to school? A middle-aged village man says, ''If they paid me more I could go on that ship with the tourists.''

But while he understands the commercial trade-off perfectly, other European customs baffle him. ''We don't understand why these foreigners take photographs,'' he says, when postcards of the spirit house are sold in the nearby town. His own son, in an act of ultimate absurdity, sent his father such a postcard.

Like his fellow tribesmen, this man sits bare-chested outside a hut and looks totally unaffected by Western influences. But his dialect is loaded with English words. ''Money,'' and the markdown terms ''No. 2 price'' and ''No. 3 price'' leap out from his speech.

An older man recalls that when the first German colonists arrived, his tribe said, ''Our dead ancestors have returned.'' They still say ''The dead have returned'' when they see the ghostly-white foreigners, he explains, but now they don't believe it. Today, the Papua New Guineans seem both wiser and more vulnerable than the tourists; they have been corrupted, yet are no longer innocent victims.

Beneath its always entertaining surface, ''Cannibal Tours'' raises provocative cultural questions in only 70 minutes and demonstrates what supurb documentary making is about. THE CONRAD PACKAGE TOUR - CANNIBAL TOURS, produced, directed and photographed by Dennis O'Rourke; in numerous languages with English subtitles; released by Direct Cinema Ltd. At Film Forum 1, 57 Watts Street. Running time: 70 minutes. This film has no rating.

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Cannibal Tours

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Cannibal tours.

Directed by Dennis O'Rourke

There is nothing so strange in a strange land, as the stranger who comes to visit it.

The film follows a number of European and American ecotourists as they travel from village to village throughout the Sepik River area in Papua New Guinea, driving hard bargains for local handcrafted items, paying to view formerly sacred ceremonies and taking photographs of every aspect of "primitive" life. With some prodding, the tourists unwittingly reveal an unattractive and pervasive ethnocentrism to O'Rourke's cameras. The tourists thus become somewhat dehumanized by the camera, even as the tourists themselves are busy exoticizing even the most mundane aspects of Sepik River life.

Director Director

Dennis O'Rourke

Editor Editor

Tim Litchfield

Channel 4 Television Institute of Papua New Guinea Studios

Australia Papua New Guinea

Primary Language

Spoken languages.

German Hiri Motu English

Alternative Title

Documentary

Releases by Date

14 jun 1988, releases by country.

72 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

George

Review by George

White People: The Movie

BrandonHabes

Review by BrandonHabes ★★★★★ 3

Within tourism, the primitive "other" occupies a magical position for neocolonial sightseers. The more exotic and detached the landscape is, the greater those wondering resources will be for the inexperienced globetrotter. It will be as two alien worlds colliding respectively on both ends, each with their own ethnocentric assumptions about the other. Some will seek to demystify the touristic attraction by making authentic contact, others will unknowingly exploit the experience by treating it as a Disneyland exhibition.

The opening epigraph of Dennis O’Rourke’s Cannibal Tours (1988) underscores the cross-cultural relations between European tourists and Papua New Guinean natives in a way that provides biting commentary on consumption, colonialism, modernization, ethnocentric stereotypes, and globalization of culture.

It reads: “There is nothing…

Graham

Review by Graham ★★★½

March Around the World 2024 #31 🇵🇬

There is nothing so strange in a strange land as the stranger who comes to visit it.

Award-winning Aussie Larrakin director Dennis O'Rourke spent time living in Papua New Guinea, and his film captures this ancient place as groups of ecotourists come to see the sights, the arts and local primitive locations. They just chew it up.

Watching these wealthy whities barter with the locals, most of whom are living day to day over a few Kina (the local currency), is really very sad. Ignoring inflation for a sec, the saving enjoyed by one woman was equivalent to $2 USD for a locally made piece of art that they'll likely flaunt to their…

Grégoire Canvel

Review by Grégoire Canvel ★★★★½

Horrifically uncomfortable, gorgeously observed. The kind of doc you dream of making but can't imagine shooting. So believable, no less jaw-dropping to watch. People are disgusting :/

Evan B

Review by Evan B ★★★★

“ We sit here confused while they take pictures of everything.. we don’t understand why these foreigners take photographs.”

a cringe-inducing study of white tourism in Papau New Guinea that captures the casually racist, paternalistic, dehumanizing attitudes among rich westerners who parade into a place that doesn’t belong to them and proceed to act as if it does. as they snap pictures of everything with fascination and pose with the native residents like exotic props, it’s impossible to ignore the profound disrespect and sense of arrogant superiority. 

“We have the good fortune of being born into a more evolved society...We must help them try to advance in the world.”

one thing that struck me in particular was the sheer AUDACITY of…

Eli Staub

Review by Eli Staub ★★★½

Wow! This is on Letterboxd! Yeah, the double meaning of the title is so fascinating. White tourists come to the tribes in hopes of seeing cannibals in a selfish voyeuristic way, while they are the real cannibals, eating away at the culture and life of the tribes.

Kyle Khang

Review by Kyle Khang ★★★★

Loses 1/2 a star for being a bit too long and another 1/2 star for some really weird booty shots of the tourist women

vi

Review by vi ★★★★ 1

the scene where the 2 boys were singing a song about Jesus was inexplicably heartbreaking

Reto Hochstrasser

Review by Reto Hochstrasser ★★★★

"If we play the drums, they give us a little money."

Impressive biting stuff, quite unmasking for both sides, although of course the racist and eurocentric tourists turn out to be much nastier and uglier. The locals simply fight for everyday survival and therefore do a lot with the travelers - but they are aware of their unfortunate situation on all levels and can also name it impressively. Also loved the ironic use of Mozart's music.

Joshua Bushman

Review by Joshua Bushman ★★★½

Everyone should see this at least once in their lifetime. I love how painfully aware the natives are of everything going on. Like that one carpenter saying the white tourists are only rich because their daddy’s were rich

The ending is just an actual fucking horror movie and could radicalize just about anyone

Doug Dillaman

Review by Doug Dillaman ★★★★

This G-rated film has no cannibalism in it, or any other gore, but this documentation of Americans and Europeans blissfully bumbling their way through Papau New Guinea in its own way as deeply savage as similarly-named counterparts. On one side you have tourists who want an "authentic experience", seemingly blissfully unaware of how their observed subject has already been changed not just by observation but by colonialism. On the other side, you have indigenous peoples who are fully entrenched in the mechanisms of capitalism, demanding the respect a participant in the economy deserves, while faintly mystified at what reason their offerings are even valued. A bit stately by present standards but by no means dated in a tourism world where the authentic is privileged but can never be attained. Viewable in full on YouTube .

C-nyborg (☉_ ☉)

Review by C-nyborg (☉_ ☉)

I guess the true cannibal is capitalism and western society

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Cannibal Tours (1988)

Genre: documentary, duration: 70 minuten, country: australia, directed by: dennis o'rourke, imdb score: 7,7  (306), releasedate: 14 june 1988.

This movie is not available on US streaming services.

This movie is not available on UK streaming services.

Cannibal Tours plot

"There is nothing so strange in a strange land, as the stranger who comes to visit it." In "Cannibal Tours" tourists discuss the life of the 'natives' of the Sepik River. They sail on a luxury river cruise through the jungle of New Guinea. This documentary explores the differences and the surprising similarities that come to light when so-called 'civilized' and 'primitive' peoples come into contact. Director and Joris Ivens jury member Dennis O'Rourke says about his film that two journeys are depicted: the cruise journey that is portrayed and a journey in the metaphysical sense of the word. It attempts to find an answer to the question of how people think about 'the other'. In a dry humorous way, O'Rourke observes the 'visitors' and the 'visited', giving both parties plenty of space to comment on each other's behaviour.

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Cannibal Tours

CANNIBAL TOURS

When tourists journey to the furthermost reaches of the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea, is it the indigenous tribespeople or the white visitors who are the cultural oddity?

Cannibal Tours (1988)

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"CANNIBAL TOURS"

"There is nothing so strange in a strange land, as the stranger who comes to visit it."

- Todd Gitlin, author of The Whole World is Watching, The Sixties, Inside Prime Time and The Twilight of Common Dreams

"A dryly funny, perceptive, and terribly disturbing documentary masterwork."

- John Hinde, ABC Radio (Sydney)

NOTES BY THE FILMMAKER

"CANNIBAL TOURS" is two journeys. The first is that depicted - rich and bourgeois tourists on a luxury-cruise up the mysterious Sepik River, in the jungles of Papua New Guinea ... the packaged version of a 'heart of darkness'. The second journey (the real text of the film) is a metaphysical one. It is an attempt to discover the place of 'the Other' in the popular imagination. It affords a glimpse at the real (mostly unconsidered or misunderstood) reasons why 'civilised' people wish to encounter the 'primitive'. The situation is that shifting terminus of civilisation, where modern mass-culture grates and pushes against those original, essential aspects of humanity; and where much of what passes for values in western culture is exposed in stark relief as banal and fake.

© Camerawork Pty Ltd

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IMAGES

  1. Cannibal Tours (1988)

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  2. Documentalandia: Cannibal Tours

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  3. Cannibal Tours (1988)

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  4. Cannibal Tours (1988) by Catalina Serrano

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  5. Cannibal Tours (1988)

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  6. canyonsofstatic: Cannibal Tours // Dennis O'Rourke (1988)

    cannibal tours 1988 summary

VIDEO

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COMMENTS

  1. Cannibal Tours

    Cannibal Tours is a 1988 documentary film by Australian director and cinematographer Dennis O'Rourke. While it borrows heavily from ethnographic modes of representation, the film is a biting commentary on the nature of modernity. The film is also widely celebrated for its depiction of Western touristic desires and exploitation among a 'tribal ...

  2. Cannibal Tours (1988)

    Cannibal Tours: Directed by Dennis O'Rourke. When tourists journey to the furthermost reaches of the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea, is it the indigenous tribespeople or the white visitors who are the cultural oddity? This film explores the difference (and the surprising similarities) that emerge when "civilized" and "primitive" people meet.

  3. Cannibal Tours (1988)

    Cannibal Tours (1988) - Plot summary, synopsis, and more... Menu. Movies. Release Calendar Top 250 Movies Most Popular Movies Browse Movies by Genre Top Box Office Showtimes & Tickets Movie News India Movie Spotlight. ... With dry humor and acute observation CANNIBAL TOURS explodes cultural assumptions as it provides a pointed look at a ...

  4. ‎Cannibal Tours (1988) directed by Dennis O'Rourke

    The opening epigraph of Dennis O'Rourke's Cannibal Tours (1988) underscores the cross-cultural relations between European tourists and Papua New Guinean natives in a way that provides biting commentary on consumption, colonialism, modernization, ethnocentric stereotypes, and globalization of culture. It reads: "There is nothing… more.

  5. Cannibal Tours

    Cannibal Tours is a 1988 documentary film by Australian director and cinematographer Dennis O'Rourke. While it borrows heavily from ethnographic modes of representation, the film is a biting commentary on the nature of modernity. The film documents a cruise ship tour down the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea as wealthy European and American ...

  6. Cannibal Tours (1988)

    This film explores the difference (and the surprising similarities) that emerge when "civilized" and "primitive" people meet. With dry humor and acute observation CANNIBAL TOURS explodes cultural ...

  7. Cannibal Tours (1988) directed by Dennis O'Rourke

    2 2,155. Quote:Cannibal Tours is a 1988 documentary film by Australian director and cinematographer Dennis O'Rourke. While it borrows heavily from ethnographic modes of representation, the film is a biting commentary on the nature of modernity. The film follows a number of European and American ecotourists as they travel from village to ...

  8. Cannibal Tours (1988)

    Cannibal Tours. 1h 10m 1988. Overview; Synopsis; Credits; Film Details; Notes; Brief Synopsis. Read More. ... Released in United States March 1988 (Shown at San Francisco International Film Festival March 19 & 20, 1988.) Released in United States June 26, 1988 (Shown at Margaret Meade Film Festival June 26, 1988.) ...

  9. Cannibal Tours

    Cannibal Tours. Dennis O'Rourke's Papua New Guinea documentary is calm, controlled, courteous, doubly devastating. Some commentary on the film differs, but I think that he likes some of these tourists, and many, even most of them deserve to be liked. And just because you're a native doesn't mean you can't be self-serving or plain ...

  10. Cannibal tours

    Dennis O'Rourke. 1988. 1 hour and 12 minutes. It affords a glimpse at the real (mostly unconsidered or misunderstood) reasons why 'civilised' people wish to encounter the 'primitive'. "Cannibal Tours" is two journeys. The first is that depicted - rich and bourgeois tourists on a luxury-cruise up the mysterious Sepik River, in the jungles of ...

  11. The Movie "Cannibal Tours" Essay (Critical Writing)

    Movie Summary. The movie Cannibal Tours gives a visual ethnography of tourism in Melanesia. The tourist who plays a key role in the movie have travelled from different parts of the world to the Sepik Valley to experience the unique "Primitive People" whom they claim live in a state of nature and practices cannibalism (O'Rourke).The Movie presents tourists in an untested as neocolonial ...

  12. Cannibal Tours

    Cannibal Tours is a 1988 documentary film by Australian director and cinematographer Dennis O'Rourke. While it borrows heavily from ethnographic modes of representation, the film is a biting commentary on the nature of modernity. Related Documentaries. 7.76 The Cannibal That Walked Free.

  13. Review/Film; For Tourists and Papuans The Exploitation Is Mutual

    Among the many absurd images in ''Cannibal Tours,'' the most ridiculous is that of a European face elaborately painted in the ritual makeup of a Papua New Guinea tribe. The stark white face filled ...

  14. Cannibal Tours (1988)

    Cannibal Tours is a Documentary directed by Dennis O'Rourke. Year: 1988. Original title: Cannibal Tours. Synopsis: This film explores the difference (and the surprising similarities) that emerge when "civilized" and "primitive" people meet.You can watch Cannibal Tours through on the platforms:

  15. ‎Cannibal Tours (1988) directed by Dennis O'Rourke

    The opening epigraph of Dennis O'Rourke's Cannibal Tours (1988) underscores the cross-cultural relations between European tourists and Papua New Guinean natives in a way that provides biting commentary on consumption, colonialism, modernization, ethnocentric stereotypes, and globalization of culture. It reads: "There is nothing…

  16. Cannibal Tours (1988)

    International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (1988) Festival International Du Film D'Amiens. (1985) A feature documentary which takes a critical and hilarious look at the phenomenon of wealthy Western tourists on a jungle tour up the mysterious Sepik River in New Guinea. The tourists express their views.

  17. Cannibal Tours (Movie, 1988)

    In "Cannibal Tours" tourists discuss the life of the 'natives' of the Sepik River. They sail on a luxury river cruise through the jungle of New Guinea. This documentary explores the differences and the surprising similarities that come to light when so-called 'civilized' and 'primitive' peoples come into contact.

  18. Cannibal Tours (1988)

    Cannibal Tours Directed by. Dennis O'Rourke. Awards & Festivals Show all (5) São Paulo International Film Festival. 1988. Göteborg Film Festival. 1989. International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. 1988. 1993. 2002. Cast & Crew. Show all (3) Dennis O'Rourke Director, Cinematography, Producer. Tim Litchfield Editing.

  19. Cannibal Tours (1988)

    Filter by Rating: 9/10. film review. terswutq 14 April 2011. Here's my reading of Dennis O'Rourkes excellent documentary.The film was made at a time 1987, released 1989, according to IMDb, when the Australian and western multinationals were making a presence into Papua New Guinea to exploit gold, copper, oil and mining interests among other ...

  20. "CANNIBAL TOURS"

    associate producers - L.J. Henderson & Chris Owen. 72 minutes 35mm/16mm/video Rated G 1988. "Dennis O'Rourke's "CANNIBAL TOURS" is simply (to be more precise, complexly) stunning. While the cameras snap, the tourists bargain, and Sonny and Cher sing 'I Got You Babe' over Radio Moscow, the Papua New Guineans try to hold onto their world.

  21. The Tourist Gaze in Travel Documentaries: The Case of Cannibal Tours

    A qualitative case study on the documentary Cannibal Tours (1988) was conducted to unravel the complexities of the tourist gaze and validate the concept of the gaze within theoretical frameworks. This film provided ample visual evidence of the gaze in tourism settings, illustrating the existence and mechanism of the tourist gaze, the local gaze ...

  22. Cannibal Tours

    Cannibal Tours is a 1988 quasi-documentary film by Australian director and cinematographer Dennis O'Rourke. While it borrows heavily from ethnographic modes ...