Founding father of Anthropology, Bronislaw Malinowski's work raises powerful and disturbing questions today. This is a look at his legacy and the imprints it has made on the generations that followed.
Savage Memory uses the controversies surrounding the legacy of the founding father of British Anthropology to explore powerful questions surrounding history and the ways in which it is created; memory and it's fluidity; and the imprints of the spirits of the dead. Told through the lens of Malinowski's great grandson, the film weaves familial and historical perspectives with rich verite moments in the site of Malinowski's field work - the Trobriand Islands, an archipelago off the coast of Papua New Guinea.—Anonymous
In 1915, Bronislaw Malinowski set out to document the exotic practices of a small group of islanders off the coast of Papua New Guinea. With extensive data on sex, magic and spirits of the dead, his work would set the stage for anthropologists for decades to come and bring him fame as one of the founding fathers of anthropology. Four generations and almost one hundred years later, his great grandson travels to Papua New Guinea and looks at the very controversial legacy he left behind - within the field of anthropology, within his own family and among the descendents of the people he studied.
