Keep the River on Your Right - A Modern Cannibal Tale

Starring:Tobias Schneebaum, Norman Mailer
Director: Laurie Gwen Shapiro, David Shapiro (II)
Studio: New Video Group
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Amazon.com
Artist, anthropologist, and author Tobias Schneebaum spent most of a year living with a tribe in the depths of the Peruvian jungle, during which time he tasted human flesh. Forty-five years later, a pair of filmmakers convinced Schneebaum, in his late 70s, to return to the Amazon to discover if any of these tribesmen still exist. Keep the River on Your Right initially seems like it's going to be a highbrow version of a lurid exploitation flick, but instead it becomes both an astonishing portrait of the charming, gracious, and insightful Schneebaum--a Greenwich Village artist who became an explorer of uncharted realms of the world--and an examination of the vast breadth of human cultures; for example, the documentarians cunningly juxtapose a ritual circumcision in New Guinea with a Jewish wedding in New York, making each seem both strange and familiar. An unusual and fascinating documentary. --Bret Fetzer
Description
"I am a cannibal... No matter into what far corner of my mind I push those words, they flash along the surface of my brain like news along the track that runs around the building at Times Square."--Tobias Schneebaum, Keep the river on your right

Amazon.com

Artist, anthropologist, and author Tobias Schneebaum spent most of a year living with a tribe in the depths of the Peruvian jungle, during which time he tasted human flesh. Forty-five years later, a pair of filmmakers convinced Schneebaum, in his late 70s, to return to the Amazon to discover if any of these tribesmen still exist. Keep the River on Your Right initially seems like it's going to be a highbrow version of a lurid exploitation flick, but instead it becomes both an astonishing portrait of the charming, gracious, and insightful Schneebaum--a Greenwich Village artist who became an explorer of uncharted realms of the world--and an examination of the vast breadth of human cultures; for example, the documentarians cunningly juxtapose a ritual circumcision in New Guinea with a Jewish wedding in New York, making each seem both strange and familiar. An unusual and fascinating documentary. --Bret Fetzer

Description

"I am a cannibal... No matter into what far corner of my mind I push those words, they flash along the surface of my brain like news along the track that runs around the building at Times Square."--Tobias Schneebaum, Keep the river on your right

In 1955,

Customer Reviews:

Not Really a Cannibal Tale - - .......2007-05-31

This film is an excellent documentary about the life of the late Tobias Schneebaum, which features a segment on his time in Peru and his cannibalism experience. This film also includes segments about Schneebaum's research into homosexuality in "primitive" societies.

If you are looking for a film focusing on cannibalism, then look elsewhere.

I Tried to put 0 stars but it wouldn't let me........2007-02-07

I was very excited to view this film but found myself incredibly disappointed. This movie was NOT in anyway about an adventurer or journalist discovering tribes or cannibals which happen to practice homosexuality but rather just a dull putz from New York who branched out to find different sexual partners.

Tobias was in no way an entertaining man nor were the film producers very wise for creating this documentary which showed more about his homosexuality than it does entertaining footage of meeting with his reunited cannibal tribes or scenery.
Taking a look at the cover and summary was far more incredible than the actual movie. I give the cover of the film an 8. Movie 0.

Nihilists Tobias Schneebaum and Norman Mailer are truly Depraved Individuals.......2006-11-17

Tobias Schneebaum has little love for the West. We are supposedly the backward ones unwilling to accept the advanced thinking of Third World cultures. They are our superiors in how to live the good life. We are regrettably too uptight and arrogant to get our act together. Do you believe such nonsense? I most certainly do not. The Harakamut natives living in the Amazon are to be pitied, not emulated. It is only the Western missionaries, business people, and altruistic organizations that have encouraged them to abandon their long established customs of butchering each other and outright cannibalism. The almost eighty year old Schneebaum is the quintessential example of multicultural ideology gone amuck. He literally asserts that he had no moral right to stop the slaughter of innocent people! We Westerners are to remain silent and not interfere with the cultural mores of the indigenous peoples. And yes, our morally challenged explorer has even eaten human flesh.

Fellow nihilist Norman Mailer also makes an appearance to endorse Tobias Schneebaum, his friend of some five decades. These two men have much in common. Mailer is the one who helped convicted murderer Jack Abbott get released from prison---who soon thereafter murdered a restaurant employee. The infamous novelist could care less that he inflicted the aspiring writer Abbott onto an innocent public. "Culture is worth a little risk," was Mailer's rationalization. Viewing this dvd is of utmost importance. You need to clearly understand just how far gone are the radical leftists who heavily influence our media and intellectual institutions.

David Thomson
Flares into Darkness

More Than Just Another Gay New Yorker Gone Native Cannibalism Picture.......2006-06-03

In the wrong hands, even the astonishing can be dull. What Tobias Schneebaum did transcends our wildest imagination - an act of pure daring and liberty. A dyed-in-the-wool NYC egghead, painter, and amateur anthropologist, he shed the trappings of society as we know it and lost himself in primitivism - not once but twice. His first episode was in Peru, in the 50's. Walking alone in the jungle, Schneebaum simply "fell in" with a headhunting tribe called the Amarekaire and lived as they did for a year. This involved cannibalism, participating in a murderous rampage, and multiple homosexual encounters - which suited him nicely, since he was already "out." (Indeed it must be observed that Mr. Schneebaum's instinct for finding primitive cultures that actively practice homosexuality is unswerving.)

Returning home, Schneebaum became something of a minor celebrity, and we see clips of him telling his mind-boggling tale on talk shows, college campuses, and cruise ships. Not content with one such experience, he repeated his feat in Papua New Guinea, where he lived among the Asmat, another headhunting tribe who, as luck would have it, practice a rather enthusiastic form of multiple-partner homosexuality, (in addition to participating in heterosexuality for purposes of procreation).

That Schneebaum survived these surreal escapades is stunning, but a great story is not a great movie, and Keep The River On Your Right is just dreadful. The central problem, beyond the various inadequacies of its directors, David and Laurie Shapiro, is the man himself, Tobias Schneebaum. Schneebaum is on camera a lot, we are subjected to his lugubrious, plodding, and thoroughly insipid delivery ad nauseum until secretly we wish the cannibals had put him on the menu. It is as if Schneebaum's ability to blend in with these headhunting tribes, so thoroughly foreign to his own culture, came about as the result of an absolute lack of personality, character, will, or self. There is something disturbing, even creepy, about Schneebaum's passivity, he is able to watch the Amarekaire headhunters slaughter a rival tribe, and participate in the event, because "that's what they did."

Schneebaum's adventures may thrill, Schneebaum does not. This kills the picture because the aging Schneebaum, 78 when we meet him, is the film's centerpiece. That his adventures are useless from an anthropological standpoint is totally ignored, in much the same way that Grizzly Man ignores the way Timothy Treadwell put the bears in danger while risking his own life. All that remains to redeem this film is some nice location footage from New Guinea and Peru. Sadly, Keep The River On Your Right fails here too. Instead of giving viewers a sense of what these otherworldly experiences must have looked and felt like, we see ragged remnants. Watching a toothless retired headhunter in a Mickey Mouse T-shirt, Bermuda shorts, and flip flops watching I Love Lucy re-runs piped in from a satellite dish may tell us a lot about how totally insane our world is, but it tells us nothing about Mr. Schneebaum's experience.

Perhaps the greatest value of the film is that it will give you a newfound respect for screenwriters, actors, cinematographers, and actual directors. In the hands of professionals, the astounding truth of Tobias Schneebaum might have been revealed, instead of the dreary facts.

good enough to own.......2006-03-19

I felt this was an extremly satisfying movie to see. If felt very complete. You can read elsewhere that the directors drug a reluctant 79 year old Schneebaum back to what was left of his past. It's the real surprises that add to an already great doc and subject. As the subject of the film, Mr. Shneebaum is a facinating person. Your first perception of him in the begining is of an elderly New Yorker that would seem to look out of place anywhere outside of Manhattan. You come to learn that his perception of the world around him and acceptance of the moment enable him to travel freely into places where western explorers only venture with several weeks worth of supplies. This man did it with canvas deck shoes, a t-shirt, and shorts.
Possibly becouse of his unconventional acceptance of the obviuos, he is able to relate to the indiginous peoples of New Guinea and Peru.
Though he protests searching further for people and villages that must not have survived, the directors push him forward; and to great reward. They actually find some of the people he wrote about. This finally gives legitamacy to his books which have been long critisied for actually have ever happened. The satisfaction of seeing him find the people he thinks must have been long dead is akin to finally seeing an alien in a UFO documentary.
Another unexpected surprise is the almost chance meeting of a long lost lover that he had said goodbye to for the last time many years ago. This presents an amazingly touchig situation where Shneebaum has to once again say goodbye for the final time as both are in their late years.
Footage of interveiws from the 60's - 70's realy drive this film home. Chauncey talk show hosts seem to dismiss this person who has done something few people have, instead obcessing on his dismissal of social morays and acceptance of living with and approaching people on their terms. Every interveiwer seems to miss the point over and over again, at times it seems like Shneebaum who answers questions with a buddhist like calmness is the only sane person on stage.
If you are looking for a movie about cannibalism or homosexuality, this is not it. These two things have about as much relevence to the movie as what day of the week he was born on. See this movie to see a refreshing look at people and the impact of westernism. If you want to laugh you will laugh, if you want to cry you will cry. If you want to be rightous and indignant than you will be afforded that chance as well.

DVD:

DVD

DVD

DVD

Leila

801 T.T.S. Airbats - 2nd Strike : Video

Canterbury Tales

DVD: A Star is Born

Die Biene Maja - Folge 15: Die Raupe bekommt ein Haus / Die