KEEP THE RIVER ON YOUR RIGHT: A MODERN CANNIBAL TALE

Cannibals being much on the, ah, menu at the movies this year, we invite you to sink your teeth into this stranger-than-fiction documentary about Tobias Schneebaum, a highly controversial painter-turned-anthropologist-turned anthrophage. Schneebaum made international headlines first in 1955 when the State Department announced that the New York artist was missing in the Peruvian jungle. Several months later he emerged from the rain forest, naked and covered with body paint, having willfully assimilated with the natives of the interior. Later, after a similar escapade in New Guinea, Schneebaum made the bombshell confession that during the time spent with primitive cultures he had not only mingled socially (including fighting in tribal wars) and sexually (Schneebaum is openly gay), but also gastronomically. Yes, he had joined in the rituals of “head-hunters” and had consumed human flesh. Here the now-78-year-old adventurer, accompanied by the camera, revisits sites of his hair-raising exploits and reunites with some of his old intimates. The most oft-heard questions are “Why did you do it?” And, of course, “How do people taste?”