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Dead Birds is a 1963 American documentary film by Robert Gardner (1925-2014) about the ritual warfare cycle of the Dugum Dani people who live in the Baliem valley in present-day Irian Jaya province.Today, this area is called  Papua province). It is located on the western half of the island of New Guinea that is part of present-day Indonesia.  The film presents footage of battles between the Willihiman-Wallalua clan  and the Wittaia clan with scenes of  the funeral of a small boy killed by a raiding party.  The women's work that goes on while battles continue, and the wait for enemy to appear.  Dead Birds has been taken to exemplify the approach of anthropological holism as it knits together small and seemingly insignificant moments and actions, with those of great cultural significance. In 1964 the film received the Grand Prize "Marzocco d'Oro" at the 5th Festival dei Populi  rassegna internazionale del film etnografico e sociologico (Festival of the Peoples International Film Festival) in Florence, Italy, the Robert J. Flaherty Award given by the City College of New York  and was a featured film at the Melbourne Film Festival (now Melbourne International Film Festival). In 1998, the film was added to the National Film Registry listing of significant films held by the Library of Congress. Dead Birds has come to hold canonical status among ethnographic films.

Synopsis
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The film's title is borrowed from a Dani fable that Gardner recounts in voice-over. The Dani people, whom Gardner identifies mysteriously as "a mountain people," believe that there was once a great race between a bird and a snake, which was to determine the lives of human beings. Should men shed their skins and live forever like snakes, or die like birds? The bird won the race, dictating that man must die.

The film's plot revolves around three characters, the man Weyak, the woman Laca, and the boy Pua. Weyak is a warrior who guards the frontier between the land of his tribe and that of the neighboring tribe. Pua is a young boy whom Gardner depicts as weak and inept.

The film's theme is the encounter that all people must have with death, as told in a Dugum Dani myth of the origins of death that bookends the film. The film uses a nonlinear narrative structure of parallel or braided narrative that traces three individuals through a season of three deaths and one near-death as relayed by an expository voiceover that describes scenes and the thoughts of the film's protagonists. The film's establishing shot, an extreme long shot, tilts and pans over the Baliem valley from left to right, following the flight of a bird across the village, its cultivated fields, and the fighting ground. A voiceover describes the great race between a bird and a snake which was to determine the lives of human beings: Should men shed their skins and live forever like snakes, or die like birds? The bird won: the fate if humans is death. Abruptly the sounds and sights of a funeral envelope the screen. Weyak, an adult man, farms, guards the frontier, and creates a complex knotted strap that will be presented to another at a funeral. Laca (or Laka), his wife, harvests sweet potatoes  and goes to make salt with other women of the community, while the small boy Pua  tends pigs, explores nature, and plays with his friends. Enemy announce their intentions and the men come to the fighting ground, while the women continue to the salt grounds and Pua plays and tends his pigs. One fighter is wounded, it begins to rain, and the battle ends for the day and the screen fades to black.

Dead Birds now focuses on the relationship of the living to the ghosts and the rituals that placate them and keep them away from the village. As a pig ritual is planned and pigs are slaughtered, news comes that Pua's small friends Weyakhe has been killed. Freeze frames and a rapid montage of shots of the river, the guard tower, and the fighting ground as the film fades to black. The next sequence details Weyakhe's funeral ceremony. Laca receives the funeral strap: Weyak does not want to touch it. He heads to his guard tower. In the distance, the enemy dance to celebrate this victory over Weyak's group.

In the last sequence, an adult man has been killed. The camera follows a trail of blood to the dance ground where people dance to celebration.Later, the body will be taken to a place where his village can retrieve it and perform the funeral rituals. Scenes of the celebration are braided with scenes of Weyak completing his weaving. As dusk closes in the camera and voiceover lingers on the celebration, on birds, and death.

Production
Robert Gardner sought to film the last days of indigenous warfare in western New Guinea and accordingly organized the Harvard-Peabody Expedition(1961-65) which brought together a multidisciplinary team to collect data on various aspects of war and culture in the Baliem Valley of western New Guinea. In addition to filmmaker Gardner, team members included Jan Broekhuijse (anthropologist), Karl Heider (anthropologist), Peter Matthiesson  (naturalist), and  Michael Rockefeller  (sound). Gardner carried out the filming from the team's arrival in early 1961 while Rockefeller captured samples of wild sound for later use in the film, as the filming did not use the then-new synchronous sound technology. Gardner edited the raw footage into the film after his return to the United States in August, 1961. The sound used in the film was post-synchronized from Rockefeller's samples along with the added voiceover and composed narrative of the film. Peter Matthiessen separately wrote about the Dugum Dani and Baliem Valley in his book Under the Mountain Wall: a Chronicle of Two Seasons in the Stone Age Karl G. Heider  produced several works on the film, including a companion work The Dani of West Irian: an Ethnographic Companion to the Film Dead Birds, two ethnographic monographs on the Dugum Dani people, and two film shorts on aspects of Dani technology and production.

Background
The film fits within anthropology's theoretical concerns relating to the practice of warfare. Underlying Dead Birds is the model of structural-functionalism that was a key approach of anthropology at the time of the film's release that sought to see how even individual psychological qualities fit into the larger pattern of the culture. . At the fime of its release, documentary filmmakers were debating how to represent the real world. The question of a poetic vs. scientific lens energized debate.

Release
The film was first shown at an evening meeting of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences held at the Cohen Arts Center at Tufts University, Boston, on Nov. 13, 1963. It was first distributed by Contemporary Films located at 267 West 25th Street, New York, NY.

Reception
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Since the film's release, reviewers have alternately praised or criticized filmmaker Gardner's presentation as poetic and cinematographic, while others criticized it as lacking a clear scientific and ethnographic focus. Reviewers who praised the film responded to its evocation of the theme of life and death, such as exemplified in the long take that is the film's establishing shot. Though stylistically impressive, Dead Birds has been criticized with respect to its authenticity. The characters who speak in the film are never subtitled, and even then the voice itself is not always what it seems. What the audience perceives as Weyak's voice is actually a post-filming dub of Karl G. Heider speaking Dani. Gardner himself did not speak Dani, and so all his interpretations of events are second-hand. The battle sequences are made up of many shots taken during different battles and stitched together to give the appearance of temporal unity. The apparent continuity stems from the post-synchronized sound, and in fact all the sound in the film is post-synched. Heider, himself, admits in his book Ethnographic Film, that some of the battle films were edited out of sequence, intercut with scene from the women at the salt pool, which was also taken at a different time.

edits contemplated:

Since the film's release, reviewers have alternately praised or criticized filmmaker Gardner's presentation as poetic and cinematographic, while others criticized it as lacking a clear scientific and ethnographic focus. Reviewers who praised the film responded to its theme of life and death and poetic use of visuals, such as in the long take of a bird soaring over the Baliem Valley that is the film's establishing shot. Notice is also given to how filmmaker Gardner built scenes to emphasize different points of view within the film. Others complained that the film gave short shrift to data on the culture such as the kinship system and food production. Subsequently, some have argued that filmmakers in the 1960s found the film to be innovative in its "matter-of-fact" representation of the Dugum Dani and their way of life. Charles Musser has pointed out the film can be taken as reacting to ....

Controversies Associated with the Film
The view of war promoted is very different than that by Ferguson at Rutgers University.

Dead Birds is prominently associated with debates between depictions of cultures in an artistic or poetic fashion, and those that advocate a scientific view of cultures.

====  Dead Birds' win of the Grand Prize at the Florence Film festival divided proponents of "scientific" and "humanistic- storytelling" styles of ethnographic film to such an extent that the Festival organizers split. REF. ====