''Sky Above and Mud Beneath'' (french: Le Ciel et la boue), also released as ''The Sky Above –The Mud Below'',Daniel Blum, ''Daniel Blum's Screen World 1963'' (Biblo & Tannen Publishers, 1963), 185. is a 1961 French documentary film. It won the

Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature An academy ( Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosoph ...

and was entered into the

1961 Cannes Film Festival The 14th Cannes Film Festival was held from 3 to 18 May 1961. The Palme d'Or went to the ''Une aussi longue absence'', directed by Henri Colpi and '' Viridiana'', directed by Luis Buñuel. The festival opened with '' Che gioia vivere'', directed ...

. The film documented a 7-month, thousand-mile Franco-Dutch expedition led by Pierre-Dominique Gaisseau, into uncharted territories of what was then

Netherlands New Guinea Dutch New Guinea or Netherlands New Guinea ( nl, Nederlands-Nieuw-Guinea, id, Nugini Belanda) was the western half of the island of New Guinea that was a part of the Dutch East Indies until 1949, later an overseas territory of the Kingd ...

. The expedition began in the northern region of the Asmat. The group interacted with tribes of

cannibals Cannibalism is the act of consuming another individual of the same species as food. Cannibalism is a common ecological interaction in the animal kingdom and has been recorded in more than 1,500 species. Human cannibalism is well documented, bo ...

, headhunters and

Pygmies In anthropology, pygmy peoples are ethnic groups whose average height is unusually short. The term pygmyism is used to describe the phenotype of endemic short stature (as opposed to disproportionate dwarfism occurring in isolated cases in a pop ...

; battled leeches, hunger, and exhaustion; and “discovered” and named the Princess Marijke River, named after Princess Maria Christina (Marijke) of the Netherlands.Kenneth White Munden, ''The American Film Institute catalog of motion pictures produced in the United States, Issues 1921-1930'' (University of California Press, 1971), 999.

Cast

* Pierre-Dominique Gaisseau - team leader * Gérard Delloye - co-leader * Herve de Maigret - radio operator * Jan Sneep - liaison officer * Tony Saulnier-Ciolkkowski- photographer * William Peacock - Narrator (English version)

References

External links

* 1961 films 1960s French-language films French documentary films Best Documentary Feature Academy Award winners Films directed by Pierre Dominique Gaisseau 1961 documentary films Headhunting accounts and studies Western New Guinea 1960s French films Works about Western New Guinea {{France-documentary-film-stub

Cast

See also

References

External links