approx. 250 min., b&w, original silent, English voice-over added later.
Production : Smithsonian Institution.
Source : HSFA, Smithsonian (OC-87.4.1) Approx. 120 mins. available on-line here.
Footage shot by cinematographer Richard Peck and/or anthropologist Matthew Stirling, leader of a large multidisciplinary Dutch and American scientific expedition in 1926-27 to what was then Netherlands New Guinea (and is now Papua or West Papua).
This footage was used to cut a free-standing film with the title By Aeroplane to Pygmyland (or some slight variation, e.g. Airplane, Pigmy Land etc.), which Stirling used to support his lecture tours in the years following the expedition. Unfortunately, this was irreparably damaged in a flood.
A copy of the Dutch version of the film with the title Wonderen Uit Pygmyland( Marvels from Pygmyland) is held by the Netherlands Film Archive in Amsterdam and an interpositive copy of that surviving film has also been deposited in the HSFA. An abridged version, entitled Expeditie door Nieuw-Guinea 1926 (80 mins.) was released by the Netherlands Film Museum in 1995.
Although this footage is readily accessible on-line, with excellent additional material, including a commentary by Stirling himself recorded in the 1960s, the sequences of ethnographic interest are clearly based on no more than superficial acquaintance with the indigenous Papuan subjects, the supposed ‘pygmies’ of the title.
Text: Taylor 2006