Relaxing at a Sogeri picnic spot called Wild Track Orchid in March this year, Sine Boboro reflects on his hectic time in August last year shooting the Papa Buka film over 18 intense days. Photo: Adhya Prasad “Somehow maybe the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels were with him – but he was not sick for the whole time”
wakes to find him gone, she must navigate her grief and fulfil Papa’s final wish to return home, refusing to leave the side of the man who is now the closest person she has to a grandfather. Although highly emotional to film these scenes at times, Noelene says there were lighter moments. One was that Sine gave them a bit of a shock while filming the death scene as he made it look so realistic! “They all woke up and he didn’t wake up, it’s going towards the climax of the movie now,” she said. “But then he (Sine) was sleeping and not breathing out. We were thinking, ‘oh please, it’s just a movie don’t make it real!” [Bursts out laughing] Another funny moment was when Sine, acting as the dead man, is lying face up with his eyes closed in the back of a 10-seater vehicle being driven back to the haus krai (mourning house) in his home village. But when they played back the day’s footage, one of Sine’s hands can be clearly seen gripping on to the seat!
“We said, ‘If people see the movie they are going to really laugh! They’ll say, ‘Hey, how come this old man has died and he’s still holding onto the seat?’. So, we have to tell the director, ‘We have a bit of a problem’, and they cut it out.” Sine was born in an old village that has now been abandoned, Emurovo at Sogeri, with his birth taking place traditionally in the bush outside his parents’ house, a custom of that time as giving birth was considered unclean and not to be done indoors. The war had just reached PNG then, and, being so young, Sine only remembers snippets, with one being the soldiers who would pass through the village on their treks, exchanging lollies for cucumbers, papaws and ripe bananas. Sine’s family was one of about 15 Sogeri families involved in making the film, including his nephew Douglas Asi as a Koiari cultural dancer. “We actually worked with all his family out there. We got them all to be a part of the crew,” Noelene said.
“The movie united a lot of us, there were families we hadn’t known before the movie, had no connection with them, and by the end, the Papa Buka Project made everybody become family. All the people at Koiari, they were able to be given that opportunity to showcase their culture, their traditional bilas, even their traditional way of life. A big mumu (earth oven cookout) they did, so we were able to shoot how they conduct their feast and their traditional bilas, and the dances and all those, they captured it in the movie. And they did a very good job in making up that village. When you see it in the movie it really looks like a real village. “When we were trying to scout all the cast that would fit in, we ended up spotting all this in the community, so that brought us closer. They have a little area with the big river on the side (Wild Track Orchid picnic area at Depo Karaka’Dabu village near Sogeri) where they put up barbeques for people to go
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