The New Dress

The New Dress (2016)

Documentary

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.

Directors: Roy Villevoye, Jan Dietvorst.

Casts

Majella Hoppenbrouwers as

Crew