A new documentary, filmed single-handily by filmmaker David Fedele, covers the impact of industrial logging on a community in Papua New Guinea. Entitled Bikpela Bagarap (or ‘Big Damage’ in English), the film shows with startling intimacy how massive corporations, greedy government, and consumption abroad have conspired to ruin lives in places like Vanimo, Papua New Guinea.
Pressed to sign over forest land to foreign logging corporations, local communities soon see the natural resources, on which they have depended for centuries, destroyed for raw logs that are shipped to China and then processed, likely into furniture that is sold to places like the EU and the US. In return, lives are turned upside as ‘civilization’ comes to forest communities in Papua New Guinea.
To read an interview with David Fedele about his new film: Big damage in Papua New Guinea: new film documents how industrial logging destroys lives.
bikpela bagarap from David Fedele on Vimeo.
