MARTIN JOHNSON’S HEAD HUNTERS

Rights Information
Year
1922
Reference
F13268
Media type
Moving image
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Rights Information
Year
1922
Reference
F13268
Media type
Moving image
Item unavailable online
Place of production
United States of America
Duration
0:11:05
Production company
Exclusive Movie Studios

Intertitle: “Among the hills of Malekula, in the far off South Seas, lives Nagapate, the chief of the cruellest and most savage tribe of cannibals in the South Pacific. Here life is lived as it was a thousand years ago; cannibals stalk their human prey in the jungles, human heads are the trophies of war, and they believe the world revolves about them. Only two years before Martin Johnston and his plucky wife were held captive by these savages and afterwards released through the timely arrival of a British patrol boat[....]”

The film shows Martin Johnson and his wife Osa as they travel through the Solomon Islands and contains footage of the various tribes from the islands in various states of objectification: dragging men from the trees to be filmed, forcing them to smoke/eat cigarettes.

Note: “In the first half of the 20th century an American couple, Martin and Osa Johnson captured the public's imagination through their films and books of adventure in exotic, far-away lands. Photographers, explorers, marketers, naturalists and authors, Martin and Osa studied the wildlife and peoples of East and Central Africa, the South Pacific Islands and British North Borneo.

“In 1917, Martin and Osa departed on a nine-month trip through the New Hebrides (later known as Vanuatu) and Solomon Islands. The highlight of the trip was a brief, but harrowing, encounter with a tribe called the Big Nambas of northern Malekula. Once there, the chief was not going to let them leave. The intervention of a British gunboat helped them escape. The footage they got there inspired the feature film Among the Cannibal Isles of the South Seas (1918).

“The Johnsons returned to Malekula in 1919 to film the Big Nambas once again, this time with an armed escort. The escort proved unnecessary as the Big Nambas were disarmed by watching themselves in Among the Cannibal Isles of the South Seas. Martin and Osa finished their trip in 1920 with visits to British North Borneo (now Sabah) and a sailing expedition up the coast of East Africa. After returning home, they released the features Jungle Adventures (1921) and Headhunters of the South Seas (1922).” - wikipedia.org; 16/11/2009