The New Dress

In their films about the Asmat people, Roy Villevoye and Jan Dietvorst move beyond familiar colonial narratives of exploration, conversion and domination. In Dutch-ruled New Guinea, where the Asmat long maintained a traditional hunter-gatherer life, they focus on personal history rather than grand historical accounts. Every History Also Exists in a Micro-Version portrays missionary Majella Hoppenbrouwers, now 86, who arrived in Papua in 1956 as a 21-year-old novice with little life experience. While she calmly recounts her years among the Papuan people to the filmmakers, a seamstress recreates the dress she once wore in the tropics. Detached and matter-of-fact throughout her story, Hoppenbrouwers only shows emotion when she finally puts the dress on again.