Since the early 90s, Roy Villevoye has been making films in, and about, the Asmat region in the Indonesian part of New Guinea. In his work, he explores issues around anthropological representation and the conventions of documentary filmmaking. Through new narrative structures however, he distances himself explicitly from this genre.
This is what happens in his most recent film, aptly titled Voice-Over, where he overlays the construction of a traditional wooden sculpture with a phone call about a sales deal gone wrong. The death of Villevoye’s Papuan friend Omoma is the reason for the creation of the sculpture, a ritual that also functions as a memorial ceremony. In the phone call, reference is also made to a sculpture, in this case an artpiece and (expensive) commodity. A painful confrontation between two worlds with “the sculpture” as the transgressive symbol of life, death and legacy, on the one hand, and the art market on the other.
NL, 2014, 22 min
NL/Asmati spoken
EN subtitles
Director/ Producer/ Scenario: Roy Villevoye
Cast: Markus Semen Mbes, Yakobus Serambí, Welem Pupís
With voice of Peter Drost
Editing: Roy Villevoye
