| Sky Above and Mud Beneath | |
| Director: | Pierre Dominique Gaisseau |
| Editing: | Georges Arnstam |
| Distributor: | The Rank Organisation (France) |
| Runtime: | 92 minutes |
| Country: | France |
| Language: | French |
| Gross: | $1.1 million (US/Canada)[1] |
Sky Above and Mud Beneath (French: Le Ciel et la boue|lit=the sky and the ball), also released as The Sky Above –The Mud Below,[2] is a 1961 French documentary film. It won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature[3] [4] and was entered into the 1961 Cannes Film Festival.[5]
The film documented a 7-month, thousand-mile Franco-Dutch expedition led by Pierre-Dominique Gaisseau, into uncharted territories of what was then Netherlands New Guinea.[2] The expedition began in the northern region of the Asmat. The group interacted with tribes of cannibals, headhunters and Pygmies; battled leeches, hunger, and exhaustion; and “discovered” and named the Princess Marijke River, named after Princess Maria Christina (Marijke) of the Netherlands.[6]