Dead Birds

Seminal and highly controversial, Dead Birds portrays the lives, beliefs and ritual warfare of the Dani people in the Baliem Valley of Western New Guinea, now part of Indonesia. Both immediate and allegorical, the film reflects on violence, death, cosmology, remaining a cornerstone of visual anthropology and ethnographic cinema.

Robert Gardner: 'Dead Birds is a translation from the Dani term for weapons, ornaments, and other articles captured in warfare. They represent, magically, victims on the other side [... and are] sometimes referred to not as sué warek (dead birds) but ap warek (dead men). It is appropriate also to remember that Dani men take ardent advantage of the extraordinary variety of birds that dwell in or near their valley. A Dani is a plumed warrior in his most desirous state. What I have done is to acknowledge this indubitable fact and be glad for its wry, perhaps ironic, implications. [The Dani people] dressed their lives with plumage, but faced as certain death as the rest of us drabber souls. The film attempts to say something about how we all, as humans, meet our animal fate.’

— from Making Dead Birds: Chronicle of a Film, p. 114