Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale

Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale is a 2000 documentary film about the travels of American anthropologist and artist Tobias Schneebaum, directed by brother-and-sister filmmakers David Shapiro and Laurie Gwen Shapiro.

Content

Taking its title from his 1969 book, Keep the River on Your Right, the film covers material from several of Schneebaum's other books and articles. In the film, Schneebaum, by then an elderly man, revisits two cannibal tribes—one in Papua New Guinea and the other in the jungles of Peru—with whom he had lived several years each as a young man. He and the filmmakers manage to locate a few of the individuals he had known well during those periods.

Awards

The film won a 2001 Independent Spirit Award.