by Wanda Waterman
Voice Magazine, Volume 22 Issue 43 2014-10-31

Film: Cargo Cult
Director: Bastien Dubois

“The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich.”
– John Berger

“Avarice is fear sheathed in gold.”
– Paul Eldridge

This animated short film is set during World War II, and touches on how a native of Papua New Guinea might view the spectacular plenty of the Americans and the Japanese as it falls unbidden from airplanes flying overhead. Naturally these drops from the sky look like the beneficence of some higher power, some distant source of love.

This is the first time the Mindful Bard has devoted an entire article to one short film, but this one warrants it; it’s so well made and the subject matter so relevant that it deserves exploration. It’s no surprise that this little animated piece has won awards and nominations at film festivals the world over; it presents the extremely intriguing fact of the cargo cult phenomenon, reframing it to show its poignancy and its significance to the world at large. The film is also sublimely beautiful and a pleasure to watch. (Read the rest here.)