Fifo 2020: "Ophir", with the struggling people of Bougainville

Text by: Julien Sartre

"Ophir", in competition at the Oceanian Film Festival (Fifo), in Papeete, tells how the Melanesians led a revolution against the old and new forms of colonization. In December 2019, in a referendum, the population of the island of Bougainville voted 98% in favor of its independence from Papua New Guinea.

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" We want to live free in the shade of warriors ! Each word counts: in the film Ophir , by Alexandre Berman and Olivier Pollet, the words of the Melanesians, of the people of the island of Bougainville, are precise and strong. Before presenting their film at the International Oceanian Documentary Film Festival (Fifo), in Papeete, on the island of Tahiti, the two French documentary filmmakers spent years in the South Pacific and gathered the history and the verb of this little-known revolution . This war left nearly twenty thousand dead and very recently led to a referendum on self-determination.

" It is a story of the visible and invisible mechanisms of colonization," theorizes Olivier Pollet, co-author and co-director of this feature film. Bougainville is a special island. It has changed hands at least five times in 120 years : Germans, English, Japanese, Australians, Papuans. In 1975, at the time of Papua New Guinea's independence, the hold on Bougainville was Australian and the world's largest surface copper mine was established there. "

A struggle for independence

This mine is Panguna. Between the mountains, in the heart of the lush nature of the tropical island, an ecological and social rampage is carried out cynically by a subsidiary of Rio Tinto, the Australian giant mining group. While waging a struggle for independence since 1975, the Melanesian people launched an armed uprising against colonial extractivism and its disastrous consequences. From the end of the 1980s, the conflict lasted more than a decade and was the deadliest confrontation in the region since the Second World War. Papua New Guinea is supported, including militarily, by Australia.

" The Bougainville revolution, commonly called" the Crisis ", was based on three pillars : man, his culture and the earth, reveals Alexandre Berman, the other co-author and director of Ophir . The mine was exactly the opposite of that and the war left 20,000 dead, 10% of the population has disappeared. The mine closed and the peace agreements concluded that a referendum would be held between 2015 and 2020. "

This referendum is the most recent news in this history as painful as it is distant for Westerners. In December 2019, the Melanesian population voted 98% yes to the question: " Do you agree that Bougainville obtain independence ?" "

The legacy of the revolution

Telling this story on the big screen, in a sensitive film of great plastic beauty, took several years of work from Olivier Pollet and Alexandre Berman. The two thirty-year-olds now live in Europe, but they have spent time in Oceania and do not hesitate to make a personal commitment. " In 2013, I was at a conference in Australia where the government of the autonomous region of Bougainville joined forces with Australian advisers to explain that the people of the island wanted the reopening of the Panguna mine, recalls Olivier Pollet . This challenged me a lot, I wondered how the heritage of the revolution and the war could allow this. So I wanted to check and I started to go there. "

In reality, a new mining law was devised without the population being informed, particularly in the ravaged region of the Panguna mine. If it reopens, the war is likely to resume: " We will die for our lands " , confide in front of the camera of the inhabitants of Bougainville. "We are on sacred ground," add other inhabitants of the devastated regions. This is where the last battle for this world will take place. "

Alexandre Berman and Olivier Pollet, directors of "Ophir", at the International Oceanian Documentary Festival (Fifo), in Papeete, on the island of Tahiti. © Julien Sartre / RFI

" A little-known story "

A battle for the whole world, in the name of humanity and respect for the earth, the environment and life: the universal message of this struggle is very present in the film by Alexandre Berman and Olivier Pollet. The latter concedes that this is " a little-known story because no one goes to this region " . He adds: " I deeply believe that the history of the world is played out there, a universal history that goes beyond the borders of the Pacific because it tells the story of yesterday and today" hui. "

On the spot, in Bougainville, although it has not yet been broadcast - the two documentaries are looking for a distributor in France and abroad - the film has started to circulate informally. It will have effects and is an important testimony to the recent history of Oceania. Ophir is in competition with twelve other films at Fifo, in Papeete. The prize list of the event will be known at the end of the Fifo which is held until February 9, at the Maison de la culture de Tahiti.

► Read also: Fifo 2020: decolonizing Oceania thanks to documentaries

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