48 mins, colour, voice-over in English, with some post-synchronised sound.
Source : this film can be downloaded from the Digital Himalayas website here
This is a BBC television programme, jointly co-produced with the Bavarian television station, Bayarischer Rundfunk, that is extensively based on footage shot by Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf among the Konyak and Wanchu Naga of North East India (the former head hunters of the title) as well as among the Apa Tani of the same region (who did not hunt heads). It was “presented” for television – in effect, the editing of the footage was overseen – by Anne Winder, who would later become a leading BBC producer. An archival version of the BBC television schedule for 1972, available here, indicates that it was broadcast as part of The World About Us series in January of that year.
The film is structured around Haimendorf’s return visit in 1971 to a region that he had first visited in the 1930s and he provides a framing voice-over in his aristocratic Germanic accent. The film exudes the same general ethos as the early Disappearing World films that were being broadcast by Granada Television around the same time, though Haimendorf’s archival footage marks it out as distinctive.
Notwithstanding the prioritising of the Naga in the general story-line of the film as well as the title, the Apa Tani archival material is equally interesting, particularly the footage of the traditional aerial acrobatics performed on the occasion of the Spring Festival. Some of the Naga footage had previously appeared in Wanchu Nagas (1962).
Text : Macfarlane 2010
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