Lords of the Garden

Documentary film about Smithsonian anthropologist Paul Taylor's expedition to document the lives of the Korowai people of Irian Jaya (western New Guinea, now the Indonesian province of Papua). The Korowai are known for building very tall treehouses up to 90 feet in the air without nails or metal tools. This film, which aired in the U.S. and Europe, documents for the the first time the life of the Korowai. Taylor follows the construction of a tree house and delves into their culture and extraordinary tribal laws, which at one time included cannibalism as part of a system of criminal justice.