Black and white in color
(DVD)

Black and white in color: Originally produced as a French motion picture in 1976. The sky above, the mud below: Originally produced as a French documentary in 1961.

Special features: Interview with the filmmakers [director Jean-Jacques Annaud and producer Arthur Cohn] (14 min.); Arthur Cohn: Producer's perspective (5 min.); Filmographies [text feature]; essay by film historian Ronald Falzone [insert].

Black and white in color: Editing, Françoise Bonnot, Michele Böehm ; original music, Pierre Bachelet ; camera, Claude Agostini ; subtitles, Liliane Strauss. The sky above, the mud below: cameraman, Gilbert Sarthre ; editor, Georges Arnstam.

Black and white in color: Jean Carmet, Jacques Dufilho, Catherine Rouvel, Jacques Spiesser, Dora Doll, Maurice Barrier, Benjamin Memel Atchori, Peter Berling, Marius Bengre Boignan, Claude Legros, and the inhabitants of Niofouin, Cote d'Ivoire. The sky above, the mud below: narrator, William Peacock.

Black and white in color: A French colony in Africa's Ivory Coast discovers months after the fact that World War I has begun. Spurred on by a capricious patriotism, they figure they'll do their part by attacking the German colony up the river. After all, they have six rifles, and one of them is an automatic. So off to war they march -- or rather, their servants do, carrying the white folk on palanquins. They soon stop for a lovely picnic. When machine gun fire is heard in the distance, they run back to the safety of the colony. All goes well until a young geographer becomes the key strategist for the French, working with the local tribal chief and turning the old colonial social hierarchy on its head.

The sky above, the mud below: Long before PBS, National Geographic, and the Discovery Channel made documentaries ubiquitous, films like this seminal if straightforward work were only available via local art house theaters. One of the earliest looks into native life on Papua New Guinea, this documentary follows a group of Europeans on a seven-month trek to bisect the island. During the perilous expedition (450 miles, as a crow flies) through jungle and across high altitudes, the group encounters tribes of headhunters and cannibals, observing and filming their rituals and ceremonies.

DVD, Region 1, mono, widescreen presentation aspect ratio 1.66:1.

Black and white in color: In French, German, and English with optional subtitles in English. The sky above, the mud below: Narration in English.

Academy Award Winner 1976 Foreign Language Film.