• Director(s):

    TRUFFAULT (PHILIPPE)

  • Producer(s):

    ARTE FRANCE

  • Territories:

    Worldwide.

  • Production year:

    2004

  • Language(s):

    German, English, French

  • Rights:

    TV, DVD, NON-THEATRICAL, INTERNET

This skull with a face superimposed on it comes from the Iatmul tribe who live beside the river Sepik in Papua New Guinea.

This skull with a face superimposed on it comes from the Iatmul tribe who live beside the river Sepik in Papua New Guinea. It is now belongs to the collections of the Musée de l'Homme ethnological museum in Paris.
The same ritual is observed for the skull of an ancestor or a vanquished foe. The aim is to take over the powers the dead person acquired during their lifetime. It is the Iatmul's way of confronting death via the natural process of dissolution which teaches us that everything which disappears also reappears.
The decorated skull is the condensed expression of the dialogue between the living and the dead, of a knowledge which goes back to the very beginning, to the myth collected in the field by ethnologist Christian Coiffier, the curator of the Oceanian collections at the Musée de l'Homme.