Dead Birds

Robert Gardner's seminal 1964 film Dead Birds is a portrait of the lives, beliefs, practices and ritual warfare of the Hubula people of the remote Baliem Valley in western New Guinea, now part of Indonesia. In 1963 Dead Birds won the prestigious Robert Flaherty Award and in 1998 was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. Dead Birds is considered a pivotal work in the history of the discipline of visual anthropology and continues to be used frequently in university lectures and seminars to engage students in wider questions and debates.

Filmmaker Robert Gardner, in describing the experience making the film, comments, “Dead Birds is a film about the Dani*, a people dwelling in the Grand Valley of the Baliem high in the mountains of West Irian. When I shot the film in 1961, the Dani had an almost classic Neolithic culture. They were exceptional in the way they focussed their energies and based their values on an elaborate system of intertribal warfare and revenge. Neighboring groups of Dani clans, separated by uncultivated strips of no man's land, engaged in frequent formal battles. 

When a warrior was killed in battle or died from a wound and even when a woman or a child lost their life in an enemy raid, the victors celebrated and the victims mourned. Because each death had to be avenged, the balance was continually being adjusted with the spirits of the aggrieved lifted and the ghosts of slain comrades satisfied as soon as a compensating enemy life was taken. There was no thought in the Dani world of wars ever ending, unless it rained or became dark. Without war there would be no way to satisfy the ghosts. Wars were also the best way they knew to keep a terrible harmony in a life which would be, without the strife they invented, mostly hard and dull. 

Dead Birds has a meaning which is both immediate and allegorical. In the Dani language it refers to the weapons and ornaments recovered in battle. Its other more poetic meaning comes from the Dani belief that people, because they are like birds, must die. In making Dead Birds certain kinds of behavior were followed, never directed. It was an attempt to see people from within and to wonder, when the selected fragments of that life were assembled, if they might speak not only of the Dani but also of ourselves.”

Digitally Remastered 2-DVD Set

The special edition 2-disc DVD of Dead Birds includes the remastered film and the following extra features: 

• 6 sequences of edited scenes cut from the first answer print of Dead Birds with original narration and a commentary by Robert Gardner and Lucien Taylor
• An audio track of commentary by Robert Gardner and Ross McElwee
• A French language track narrated by Jean Rouch
• A gallery of photographs shot during the making of Dead Birds and accompanied by excerpts read by Robert Gardner from his field journals
• An excerpt from a television interview featuring a conversation about Dead Birds between Octavio Paz, William Alfred and Robert Gardner
• 2 sequences from a black and white print of Dead Birds made at the time of the film 's release. These are accompanied by a conversation by Robert Gardner and Lucien Taylor 
• Previously unreleased outtakes from the archive of footage shot for Dead Birds

*Note on term “Dani”

The preferred name for the community in this film is Hubula. The name "Dani" as used in this film is an exonym used by Moni, a neighboring group of people living west of the Baliem Valley. The name has been reproduced in many colonial and postcolonial texts, even until today.