DAVID FEDELE is an award-winning documentary filmmaker from Australia.

He entered the world of documentary filmmaking through a love of travel and exploring different cultures, having traveled extensively throughout Australasia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and South America.

Generally working alone, self-producing and self-funding his own projects, David is particularly interested in exploring cultural, humanitarian and social justice issues. His films have covered such diverse topics as Sub-Saharan African migration in Morocco, electronic waste in Ghana and illegal logging in Papua New Guinea.

David’s films have been broadcast widely and screened widely, winning numerous awards.

DAVID FEDELE - One-man film crew / director / producer / editor

www.david-fedele.com

MAKING THE FILM

David spent three months alone in Papua New Guinea at the start of 2011, shooting this film. He was based in Vanimo town, Sandaun Province, less than 50km from the border with West Papua / Indonesia. This is one of the most remote parts of PNG, accessible only by plane or boat.

From Vanimo, he travelled extensively into the jungle visiting remote villages and exploring current and past logging operations, as well as two of the main logging camps in Sandaun Province – Maka Basecamp and Amanab 56 Basecamp.

The only way to access these areas was via the logging roads themselves, traveling on the vehicles of the logging companies. Traveling with just a small hand-held camera and a local guide, it was essential to keep as low a profile as possible, due to the sensitive nature of the project.

To avoid the suspicion of the logging companies and their employees, David couldn’t stay in the logging camps or villages for more than a few days at a time, making it difficult to follow particular characters throughout the film.

So instead, he decided to combine the stories of different people into a narrative that could be followed, to give as many and varied people as possible the opportunity to be heard and have their stories told.