Sky Above and Mud Beneath

Sky Above and Mud Beneath (French: Le Ciel et la boue), also released as The Sky Above –The Mud Below,[1] is a 1961 French documentary film. It won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature[2][3] and was entered into the 1961 Cannes Film Festival.[4]

Sky Above and Mud Beneath
Directed by	Pierre Dominique Gaisseau
Produced by	Arthur Cohn René Lafuite
Written by	Pierre Dominique Gaisseau
Cinematography	Jean Bardes-Pages Gilbert Sarthre
Edited by	Georges Arnstam
Distributed by	The Rank Organisation (France)
Release date	May 1961
Running time	92 minutes
Country	France
Language	French

The film documented a 7-month, thousand-mile Franco-Dutch expedition led by Pierre-Dominique Gaisseau, into uncharted territories of what was then Netherlands New Guinea.[1] The expedition began in the northern region of the Asmat. The group interacted with tribes of cannibals, headhunters and Pygmies; battled leeches, hunger, and exhaustion; and discovered and named the Princess Marijke River, named after Princess Maria Christina (Marijke) of the Netherlands.[5]

Cast

• Pierre-Dominique Gaisseau - team leader
• Gérard Delloye - co-leader
• Herve de Maigret - radio operator
• Jan Sneep - liaison officer
• Tony Saulnier-Ciolkkowski- photographer
• William Peacock - Narrator (English version)

References

1. Daniel Blum, Daniel Blum's Screen World 1963 (Biblo & Tannen Publishers, 1963), 185.
2. "NY Times: Sky Above and Mud Beneath". NY Times. Archived from the original on 2011-05-21. Retrieved 2008-11-08.
3. "The 34th Academy Awards (1962) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Retrieved May 24, 2019.
4. "Festival de Cannes: Sky Above and Mud Beneath". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 2009-02-20.
5. Kenneth White Munden, The American Film Institute catalog of motion pictures produced in the United States, Issues 1921-1930 (University of California Press, 1971), 999.

External links

• Sky Above and Mud Beneath at IMDb