True Films 3.0 - Kevin Kelly

Keep the River on Your Right
As he nears old age, a New York City artist decides to revisit the adventures
of his youth in distant lands. In the 1950s, while on an art fellowship,
Tobias Schneebaum walked alone and unguided into the Peruvian
Amazon rainforest to make first contact with some Indian headhunters.
He shed his clothes and old ways and went native with them. But after
his clan raided a neighboring tribe, murdered the villagers, and then ate
their enemies in a victory feast – and he ate too – Schneebaum decided
to return. Later he ended up collecting the art of headhunters in New
Guinea, where he lived with another tribe who were also cannibalistic,
and subsequently partners with one of the hunters. Forty years later he
is persuaded, despite having an artificial hip, to leave his now well-worn
routines in NYC to see if he can find the tribesmen in the Amazon and
New Guinea again. He gets them to talk about their former eating habits.
This is a complex weave of the weirdness of nostalgia, the subtleties of
cross cultural communication, and the attraction of Otherness.
By David Shapiro II and
Laurie Shapiro
2000, 94 min.
Available from Amazon
Rent from Netflix
96
Returning to old friends and lovers in
New Guinea (top left). Today one of the
Amazonian headhunters holds an old
photo of himself (top right) when he
wore no clothes and was nomadic, a lifestyle
he gave up decades ago. Rubbing
chins, a sign of affection. Tobias, on a
boat down the Amazon in the 1950s.