Faces of the Spirits: The Sulka People of Papua New Guinea

The film assumes a chronological structure: the first part looks at "traditional" masks and ceremonies in Taimtop village; then, with a brief nod to Papua New Guinea's colonial history as a source of change, it segues into part two in Wawas village, where the opening of a new church and a mortuary ceremony exemplify "contemporary" syncretic expressions of masks and Sulka identity. The syncretism of traditional beliefs and Catholicism, of supernatural beings and Catholic saints, bishops, and priests, is beautifully depicted as the hemlaut masks celebrate the opening of a new Catholic church concurrent with a village leader's mortuary ceremony. No longer representing spirit beings such as the masalai, these masks symbolize other powers in the shape of Catholic bishops with white faces, white mitres, white robes, and shepherd's crooks; of the Archangel Michael displaying the severed head of Satan; of the Last Judgement of God the Father and the Holy Spirit with two angels holding scrolls inscribed with the life of the deceased.