Old Images Come Back to Kiribati – and New Ones Emerge:

Film Documents Archived in Germany and Their Value as Cultural Heritage for a Pacific Atoll Country in an Age of Climate Change

The project is pursuing two aims:

• To digitalize and then hand over some 70 ethnographic film documents, recorded by the German Oceanist Gerd Koch in the 1960s on the Gilbert Islands of Tabiteuea, Nonouti, and Onotoa. The plan is to hand back these old films, in digitalized form (DVD), to the State of Kiribati as well as to those island communities whose cultural heritage is thus documented.
• To hold a two-part workshop over a period of several weeks, providing both basic and advanced training to local filmmakers. The latter would be inducted into the techniques of making their own documentary films.

Direction: Prof. Dr. Andrea Lauser
Consultation: PD Dr. Elfriede Hermann
Visual Ethnography: Dr. Rolf Husmann
Cultural Anthropology: Dr. Wolfgang Kempf

Sponsored by The Federal Foreign Office’s Cultural Preservation Programme
http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/diplo/de/Aussenpolitik/KulturDialog/ZieleUndPartner/Kulturerhalt.html