Sky Above and Mud Beneath

8/2/2025

There is a scene towards the end of this documentary that shows a woman with a baby suckling on one breast and a piglet on the other. That is just one of the many bizarre images that this really quite fascinating film delivers as it follows a team trying to cross the narrowest part of Dutch New Guinea. Assembling a small team, some bearers and half a dozen soldiers, three intrepid Europeans start off to cross four hundred-odd miles of dense, seemingly impenetrable, jungle where the white man has never been before. Initially using the navigable rivers, they meet villagers who are friendly enough to their visitors and who show them many of their festivals, religious and fertility ceremonies adorned with shrunken heads, human bones, tattoos and ancient mysticism. As the column moves inland, t