The Trobriand Experiment
In pubic leaf, warpaint and feathers, serried ranks of Trobriand islanders advance across a field with arms outstretched. They are about to play their extraordinary version of the Old English game of cricket-one where the players start by enacting the arrival of a visiting team by air. Sixty years ago, anthropologist
Bronislaw Malinowski predicted that the vigorous and distinctive culture of these ' savages' would die out quickly under Western influences. Instead, they borrowed and adapted our ideas. Then came famine, and this modified Garden of Eden faced its toughest test-the very survival of a society based on the giving and taking of food.
Horizon's camera observes the solution attempted by a young Trobriander who returns to his island with the greatest magic ever known to his people-a university education. If JOHN KASAIP -WALOVA succeeds, could his way offer a model for other peoples? Narrator PAUL VAUGHAN
Film cameraman JOHN ROOPER Editor PETER GOODCHILD
Written and produced by ALEC NISBETT