FILMS, PRESS, AND RADIO ON THE EXPEDITION 



291 



In the dark-room. 



The photographic department 



had plenty 



to do between ports. 



the border-line of the plane's performance, we flew over a dense jungle 

 where there are tribes which to this day have never seen a white man. 

 We saw the smoke from their fires and knew that a forced landing would 

 bring us face to face with cannibals, if we survived it. Two hours later 

 we landed on a bumpy lawn at a Government outpost, where they are 

 endeavouring to lead a population of 40,000 from the Stone Age to the 

 Atomic Age with the minimum of mental disturbance. It is only a score 

 of years since they encountered civilization. 



We became bosom friends with a chief who smelt of rancid lard, that 

 being the day cream of the natives hereabouts. I shall never forget the 

 cordiality with which he rubbed noses with me, transferring the blue and 

 green pigments with which his cheeks and nose were smeared to my face. Or 

 how, the next moment, he threw his ape-like arms around me and lifted 

 me up to show his strength, ruining my brand-new khaki suit because his 

 chest and stomach and thighs were .smeared in a thick layer of rancid 

 grease. 



But the friendship bore fruit. We had had the good luck to land right 

 in the middle of the annual sacrificial feast, at which some fifty pigs 

 met their deaths by clubbing in honour of the gods, while dancing to 

 the rhythm of the drums was so intense that the camera tripod began 

 dancing in step. And we got it all. 



This film took three days. A short about rice-growing in Indonesia was 



