Shark Woman

The Indonesian village of Samarang lies in the forbidden waters of the Indian Ocean in the Malay Straits. As primitive as the dawn of time, the villiage has lost half of its male population diving for pearls. The local pearl beds are depleted. The only hope lowly villager Ahmang has of winning the chief's beautiful daughter Saiyu, is to venture to the distant lagoon of Sakai for a prize pearl. Believing "the sea gives life and the sea takes life" Ahmang must face a deadly octopus, killer sharks and even cannibals in his quest for true love.

In an effort to thrill as well as educate, producers ventured into remote areas of the world, recruited local talent and fashioned realistic stories around their exotic lives. And if the natives documented in these films were scantily clad or even topless, the films were just being true-to-life. Shark Woman, originally released as Samarang, is an early and prime example of the documentary/drama hybrid.

• documentary