“OPHIR”, FSK 12, USA 2020, 97 Minuten, Einlaß 17.50 Uhr
From the Autonomous Region of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea
Alexandre Berman, Olivier Pollet – Color, 97 min, 2020
In English, Tok Pisin and Nasioi with English subtitles
Leo Hölscher aus dem Möckernkiez hat vor 40 Jahren als Entwicklungshelfer in Papua Neuguinea gearbeitet und wird vor der Vorführung einige einleitende Worte sprechen
Spende erbeten für die Vorführlizenz (Diese erteilte uns www.DER.ORG und sie kostet 50 US $ – GEMA-frei)
Ophir tells the story of an extraordinary Indigenous revolution for life, land and culture: a poetic and dramatic ode to the thirst for freedom, culture and sovereignty. The film sheds light on the biggest conflict of the Pacific since WWII, revealing the visible and invisible chains of colonisation and its enduring cycles of physical and psychological warfare.
Voiced entirely by the Indigenous people of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea, the film deconstructs the mechanisms of exploitation through the colonisation of land and its people, who at the end of the 1980s were left with no choice but to revolt for their right to exist. A small group of islanders first armed with bows and arrows fought helicopters and guns. They defiantly defended the core principles that formed the basis of their society, in the face of absolute destruction of their mental, physical, and spiritual conception of what it means to be human.
It was a decade-long civil war which killed around 20,000 Bougainvilleans, wiping out approximately 10% of the island’s population.
The people of Bougainville ultimately won in their fight against the colonial powers, in a bid to secede from their motherland Papua New Guinea, despite the government’s support from Australia and one of the biggest of the mining giants, Rio Tinto.