Filmmaker Chris Owen receives an honour from the Papua New Guinea government.
6 September 2012
Now living in Canberra, filmmaker Chris Owen spent nearly 4 decades in Papua New Guinea making films and, in the last ten years of his working life there, was Director of the PNG National Film Institute, a film production, training and archival organisation in Goroka, in the Eastern Highlands Province. The PNG Government has conferred on Chris the "Officer of the Order of Logohu Award" (OL) for "service to the community through his significant contribution over 37 years in the documentation in films of PNG's rich cultural diversity and the social participation in the different levels of the country's traditional and modern values."
Chris's most recent film is the award-winning BETELNUT BISNIS (2004), an often humorous story of a "grass roots" family In the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, who make a precarious living by trading in betelnut, one of the world's most widely used narcotics. The film presents us with a vivid portrait of present-day life in Papua New Guinea - not the "doom and gloom" stories that dominate the media, but the day-to-day realities of life for "grass roots" citizens.
His earlier, much applauded and widely seen documentaries include MAN WITHOUT PIGS, BRIDEWEALTH FOR A GODDESS, THE RED BOWMEN, MALANGAN LABADAMA and GOGODALA: A CULTURAL REVIVAL? He also made the highly successful Papua New Guinea feature film, TUKANA, in collaboration with Albert Toro.