In the Middle Sepik, radios are common, tape recorders exist, and, though I saw no cameras, I met would-be camera owners.

Movies are occasionally shown by the government in certain villages. Without exception, the most popular films are those on New Guinea life. Villagers are aware that cameras can record their daily activities.

In Kandangan village the people became co-producers with us in making a film. The initial proposal came from us, but the actual filming of an initiation ceremony became largely their production.

In this area of the Sepik, the male initiation rite is absolutely forbidden to women, in the past on penalty of death. Our chief cameraman was a woman. It never occurred to us to ask if she might film: we assumed such a request would not only be denied, it would offend. But the Kandangan elders asked if she was good, and when told, "Yes, better than any of us," they requested that she operate one camera. Not only did they permit her inside the sacred enclosure, but they showed her where to position her equipment, helped her move it & delayed the ceremony while she reloaded. I'm convinced she was allowed to witness this rite, not because she was an outsider, but solely because her presence was necessary for the production of the best possible film.

The initiates were barely conscious at the end of their ordeal, but they grinned happily when shown Polaroid shots of their scarified backs. The elders asked to have the sound track played back to them. They then asked that the film be brought back & projected, promising to erect another sacred enclosure for the screening.

Finally they announced that this was the last involuntary initiation & they offered for sale their ancient water drums, the most sacred objects of this ceremony. Film threatened to replace a ceremony hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years old.

Yet film could never fulfill the ceremony's original function. That function was to test young men for manhood & weld them forever into a closed, sacred society. Now the ceremony, and by an extension the entire society, could be put on a screen before them, detached from them. They could watch themselves. No one who ever comes to know himself with the detachment of an observer is ever the same again.

Postcript: When the film was not finished within the promised time & hence not shown in the village, involuntary initiations were resumed.