Documentary

Les Esprits du Koniambo - En terre kanak

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Alban Bensa and Jean-Louis Comolli

Koné, New Caledonia. Alban Bensa, an ethnologist, returns to the tribe where he has been working for the past thirty years. His main Kanak collaborator, Antoine, died two years ago. Samy, Antoine’s son, aged 33, discovers the notebooks and recordings left behind by his father… Before dying, Antoine engaged in great customary and political activity to assert the rights of his clan on the Koniambo massif. It turns out that the Koniambo is rich in nickel and that the leaders of the Northern Province Independence Party have handed its exploitation over to a multinational company, Falconbridge, based in Toronto. Save that, well before the arrival of White people (1853), Kanak clans had inhabited the massif. Their paths had crossed there, their dead had found refuge there, the spirits of the Ancients haunted this sacred place. Alban and Samy will follow in Antoine’s footsteps to understand how the old and wise Kanak had managed to make the multinational recognise his clan. It is the entire contemporary history of New Caledonia: the era of colonisation, the ensuing uprisings, and the difficulties of attaining independence all appear in the mirror around Antoine’s shadow.

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