Family Matters

Foreign Correspondent - Series 25, Ep 27, 2016. ABC Australia

The last time filmmaker Bob Connolly was in PNG's Highlands he was caught up in one of the bloodiest and most destructive tribal wars in the region's recorded history.

Now 25 years on, Connolly returns to the Highlands for Foreign Correspondent to catch up with key characters from the masterful trilogy of documentaries he made with his late partner Robin Anderson - First Contact (1983), Joe Leahy's Neighbours (1989) and Black Harvest (1992).

At the heart of it all is Joe Leahy, the son of an Aussie gold prospector who was the first European to make contact with the local Ganiga tribe, and a Highlands woman. As Connolly puts it: "Western-oriented, mixed race coffee millionaire surrounded by tribal subsistence farmers - fertile ground for a clash of values."

Joe Leahy had big dreams for his coffee plantations. So too did the Ganiga people who wanted to grow rich from them. That was until the coffee price suddenly tanked and a tribal war exploded, scenes dramatically captured in Black Harvest, the last film in the trilogy.

Fast forward to 2016. Coffee prices have recovered and a quarter century has passed. So by now, surely, war will be a distant memory, and Joe Leahy and the Ganiga finally will be reaping their shared riches? That is the rough scenario Bob Connolly hopes he will find as he drives into the Highlands to pick up with Joe Leahy and Ganiga leaders.

But from day one the signs are bad. It's harvest time. There are 60,000 coffee trees but only two pickers.

"Why do I have to give them money and all these things?" Joe is railing against the Ganiga. "I'm sick of it now."

But Joe, now 77, can't bring himself to leave the plantation, despite pleas from his son Jim. In turn Jim is resisting pressure from Joe - to take over when Joe dies.

"I don't want to be Joe Leahy when I turn 80," says Jim. "He's angry all the time and I don't want to be like that."

Wrangling over the succession is imperilling the Leahy coffee dynasty - but what's left anyway? As Connolly digs deeper it becomes clear that the old tribal war is still playing itself out, with insidious effect, long after the last arrow flew.

A film by Bob Connolly & Stephen Dupont

Reporter: Bob Connolly
Camera: Stephen Dupont
Editor: Stuart Miller

Afghanistan - A Survivor’s Tale

Foreign Correspondent - 2008. ABC australia

On Tuesday, April 29th, 2008, two days after a failed assassination attempt against Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai, photojournalist Stephen Dupont and writer Paul Raffaele, both Australian, set out to investigate opium eradication in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Nangarhar. Minutes later they became witnesses — and victims — of the escalating violence threatening the Karzai government when a suicide bomber attacked their convoy. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which killed at least 15 and wounded 14, according to ISAF.

A raw and confronting look inside a suicide bombing filmed and narrated by Stephen Dupont who has been capturing images of Afghanistan for more than a decade. He tells his incredible story of survival to Foreign Correspondent's Mark Corcoran.

The film went on to win the Australian Logie Award for Most Outstanding Public Affairs Report and his photographic essays won in both the Australian Walkleys and the United Nations Peace Awards.

A film by Stephen Dupont & Mark Corcoran

Producer: Mark Corcoran

Camera: Stephen Dupont

Brothers of Kabul

Foreign correspondent - 2006. abc australia

Follows two young brothers and addicts, Reza and Hussein, from the bombed out ruins were they shoot up heroin to a decrepit mental hospital were they try to get clean. Co-directed with photographer Stephen Dupont, the film is an unflinching observational documentary that plunges viewers into an underreported side of life in liberated Afghanistan: a savage environment only partially alleviated by fraternal love.

It was broadcast on CNN International and al-Jazeera in 2007. The following year it was a finalist for the Rory Peck Award for Freelance Cameramen and received Australia’s Walkley Award for Best Television News Feature

A film by Stephen Dupont & Jacques Menasche

Reporter: Stephen Dupont

Writer: Jacques Menasche

Camera: Stephen Dupont & Jacques Menasche

Psych War in Afghanistan

DAteline - EP 34, 2005. SBS australia

Stephen Dupont embeds with a US Army Psych Ops Unit on a mission in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, that results in the burning of two dead Taliban militants.

US soldiers burnt the bodies of two dead Taliban and taunted their opponents about the corpses, in an act deeply offensive to Muslims and in breach of the Geneva conventions.

An investigation by SBS's Dateline program, filmmaker Stephen Dupont filmed the burning of the bodies.

He also filmed a US Army psychological operations unit broadcasting a message boasting of the burnt corpses into a village believed to be harbouring Taliban. Delivered in the local language, the soldiers accused Taliban fighters near Kandahar of being "cowardly dogs". "You allowed your fighters to be laid down facing west and burnt. You are too scared to retrieve their bodies. This just proves you are the lady boys we always believed you to be," the message says.

"You attack and run away like women. You call yourself Taliban but you are a disgrace to the Muslim religion, and you bring shame upon your family. Come and fight like men instead of the cowardly dogs you are."

The burning of a body is a deep insult to Muslims. Islam requires burial within 24 hours. Under the Geneva conventions the burial of war dead "should be honourable, and, if possible, according to the rites of the religion to which the deceased belonged".

The film footage was broadcast around the world and sparked riots across the Muslim world and condemnation globally. The soldiers involved were reprimanded and the power and importance of the story instigated a change in US Military Policy.

Stephen Dupont was a finalist for the Rory Peck Award for Freelance Cameramen for his footage and won a Bayeux War Correspondent’s Prize for his photography.

A film by Stephen Dupont & John Martinkus

Reporter: John Martinkus

Camera: Stephen Dupont

Raskols

l’effet papillon canal + France- 2009

Inside the world of criminal gangs and police squads in Papua New Guinea's capital Port Moresby.

A film by Alexandre Spalaikovitch & Stephen Dupont

Director: Alexandre Spalaikovitch

Camera: Stephen Dupont & Alexandre Spalaikovitch

First Contact

BBC FOUR - 2007

Documentary in which adventurer Mark Anstice travels into unexplored territory in the remote jungles of West Papua in search of a tribe as yet uncontacted by the outside world.

Camera: Stephen Dupont