"Bruno Manser - Laki Penan" is a 2007 film written, directed and narrated by Christoph Kühn from Switzerland. His voice occasionally reminded me of Werner Herzog's. It runs a bit over 90 minutes and deals with the lifetime achievements of the Swiss Bruno Manser, who fought for the rights of Malaysian natives and possibly paid with his life for it as he was not seen again when he movie back to the forests with the natives roughly almost 15 years ago. He was declared dead 10 years ago and would be 60 in the unlikely event that he is still alive somewhere.
The film is obviously full with jungle recordings, beautiful animals and an insight given into Manser's world mostly through interviews with the natives. That makes sense as they were the ones who possibly knew him the most. Anyway, I was surprised to see so little interviewees from his life in Switzerland. I liked the audio recordings included here that come from Manser himself. These help in understanding him better, especially with Swiss German being a language not too easy to comprehend. The film is on youtube with English subtitles and you may want to give it a go.
All in all, I recommend the movie. Apart from Manser's life and fate, it is also an interesting insight into the eternal battle between industrial progress and tradition.
The film is obviously full with jungle recordings, beautiful animals and an insight given into Manser's world mostly through interviews with the natives. That makes sense as they were the ones who possibly knew him the most. Anyway, I was surprised to see so little interviewees from his life in Switzerland. I liked the audio recordings included here that come from Manser himself. These help in understanding him better, especially with Swiss German being a language not too easy to comprehend. The film is on youtube with English subtitles and you may want to give it a go.
All in all, I recommend the movie. Apart from Manser's life and fate, it is also an interesting insight into the eternal battle between industrial progress and tradition.
