Lectura Vis Anth
Lectura Vis Anth
Lectura Vis Anth
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ilm
Review Essay
EarlyAnthropologicalFilm
Some of the first film footage ever produced depicted
tribal peoples. In the spring of 1895 (six months before the
Lumiere brothers made their first public projection of
cinematograph films), Felix Regnault visited the Exposition Ethnographique de l'AfriqueOccidentale in Paris and
shot four short film sequences. Their subjects were a
Wolof woman from Senegal fashioning a clay pot, a Wolof
woman thrashing millet, three Muslims performing a salaam, and four Madagascans passing the camera while
carrying the photographer on a palanquin (see de Brigard
1971).
340
acteristicnarratives,typicalutterances,items of folk-loreand
magicalformulae... documentsof nativementality[in order
to] lead to the final goal, of which an ethnographershould
neverlose sight.Thisgoalis, briefly,to graspthe native'spoint
of view, his relationto life, to realizehis vision of his world.
[Malinowski1922:24-25,emphasisin original]
During the years between Rivers's and Malinowski's
work, a coherent methodology and philosophy of ethnography emerged. Coincidentally, it was between the same
dates that Flaherty began to work with the Inuit people to
produce Nanook of the North. In its intent, its methodology, and its rhetorical conventions, Flaherty's film was a
counterpart to Malinowski's principles. However, given
the fact that Flaherty said of himself, "first I was an
explorer, then I was an artist" (Barsam 1992:294)-in
other words, that he was not an ethnographer of any
variety-we should perhaps be cautious about applying
the label "ethnographic"to Nanook or "ethnographer"to
Flaherty.
In 1913, Flaherty began to develop the sort of familiarity with the language and culture of the Inuit that Malinowski had proposed as essential for the "new"ethnography. Flaherty's guiding methodological principle in
making the film was to develop scenes in collaboration
with his subjects, out of a concern to make an accurate
depiction of their lives. Moreover, those scenes were to
be constructed out of material aptly described by Malinowski as the documentation of concrete evidence and
the imponderabilia of everyday life. As Grierson would
later comment, "WithFlaherty it became an absolute principle that the story must be taken from the location....
His drama is, therefore, a drama of days and nights, of the
round of the year's seasons" (Grierson 1946:148).
Unlike the anthropological films of the previous generation, which juxtaposed vignettes to illustrate the existence of various activities, the scenes in Nanook were
structured to represent the "truth"of the Inuits' situation
as the filmmaker saw it. It might be more accurate to call
this structuring principle Flaherty's "comment" on the
meaning of Inuit life, because, in Nanook, it could be
reduced to the proposition that the Inuit people were
engaged in a constant struggle for survival against nature.
Such a principle is, however, a long way from the sentiments underpinning the work of the previous generation
of anthropologists and anthropological filmmakers. In
this sense, the comparison between Malinowski (as characterized by Evans Prichard) and Flaherty is illuminating.
In the course of being highly critical of Malinowski's work,
Evans Prichard wrote,
One event follows anotherand they are describedin succession with explanatorydigressions.... To make kula one has
to have canoes so theirconstructionand use are described;it
involvesvisitingforeignpeoples so their custom, crafts,and
so forth are described.... In a sense it is a piece of book
FILMREVIEW
ESSAY 341
Consolidationof EthnographicFilm
In the decades following the publication of Argonauts of the Western Pacific, Malinowski's methodological principles became enshrined in anthropology as the
convention known as "participantobservation." However,
with time, analytical principles in anthropology developed away from Malinowski's insistence on understanding the way in which a whole society functioned. As
anthropological analyses became increasingly focused on
the meaning of particular actions or the interrelatedness
of discretely defined sections of society, the ability to
create and connect illustrative vignettes of native life was
seen less and less as an analytical contribution to the
discipline. Similarly, Flaherty's broad-brush approach in
cinema came to be seen within the anthropological community as being merely illustrative rather than analytical.
Anthropological film of the Flaherty variety provided
moving pictures of the people about whom anthropologists wrote, and might record both details of daily life and
the production of material culture. However, in analytical
terms, film was not deemed capable of going beyond
342
Figure1
Yanomamowomen gatheringand haulingfirewood.Photo by T. Asch and N. Chagnon.Gourtesyof DocumentaryEducationalResources.
FILMREVIEWESSAY
343
Figure2
Yanomamofilmseries. Photoby N. Chagnon.Courtesyof Documentary
EducationalResources.
time. A fundamental philosophical principle of the anthropological enterprise in its functional, structural, or processual approaches was the conception of society as an
entity that could be understood in the sense in which a
surveyor understands topography. While some ethnographies were couched in simple objective terms, many or
most grappled with the problems of the relationship between an anthropologist and a subject, conceptualized as
resembling the relationship between the surveyor and the
topography. The result was a literature that tended to
vacillate between the emic and etic. But it goes without
saying that emic and etic are two sides of the same coin.
If one posits asocial world "out there" to investigate, there
are only two positions one can take relative to it, inside it
(emic) or outside of it (etic).
Many anthropological explanations of the time therefore faced the invidious choice between an "emic"reification of native models of understanding and an "etic" reification of Western anthropological models whose meaning
was often obscure or incomprehensible to those to whom
they were applied. Stephen Mamber notes of cinema
verite that it is a cinematic style that "indicates a position
the filmmaker takes in regard to the world he films," a
Figure3
Yanomamo
filmseries.PhotobyN.Chagnon.
of Documentary
Courtesy
Educational
Resources.
344
FILM REVIEWESSAY
345
Figure4
Future
direction
of innovation.
Hortensia
trained
Aschinvideoediting,nowinstructing
infilmmaking
themselves.
Yanomamis
Cabellero,
byTimothy
346
expressing the changing sense of the anthropological enterprise. (See Figure 4.) Douglas Harper summarizes one
vision of the present possibilities for ethnographic film in
this context when he writes that, "ethnographyis in a state
of change, and ... visual ethnographers may be able to
contribute to the discussion of what the 'new ethnography' is and how one does it" (Harper 1989:33). He sees the
possibility of a time when "ethnography has moved from
a kind of positivism to a stance of eclectic experimentation" (Harper 1989:37) in which it may break free of the
legacy of visual anthropology as "a branch of natural
history" (Lansing 1989:10). On the other hand, there is still
considerable favor within the community of ethnographic
filmmakers for using cameras in precisely the way in
which Boas would have approved:
to provide records for succeeding generationsin the local
communityto be able to recognize the culturalcontinuity
linkingthemto theirforefathers,[and]second to allow scientists and generalreadersto discover the intrinsicoriginality
andspecificfunctioningof the local culture.[Balikci1988:32]
Whatever the future direction of ethnographic film, The
Ax Fight will always stand as a crucial work in the genre.
In its understanding of the power of the vignette in film
and its concern for the truth and the accuracy of its
representation of a society, it echoes the concerns and
methods of Flaherty. But in its self-consciousness and
willingness to experiment, it prefigures many of the
themes of contemporary ethnography and ethnographic
fill
Notes
Acknowledgments.For 30 years TimothyAsch was the most
vital force in visual anthropology.His work as a filmmakerand
a teacher no less than the force of his personalitywere an
inspirationto severalgenerationsof his colleaguesandstudents.
His deathhas robbedvisual anthropologyof one of its guiding
lights. It is testamentto Tim'svision and to the work he did to
turnthatvision into a realitythatthereis a strongvisualanthropology world which, however lessened by his loss, is able to
continue without him. I was privileged to know Tim as my
teacher, my colleague, and my friend. I could have had none
better.Thisessay is writtenin his memorywith love andthanks.
References Cited
Anderson,Ian G.,and J. R. E. Lee
1982 Taking Professor GluckmanSeriously:The Case of
ParticipantObservation.In Customand Conflictin British
Society.RonaldFrankenberg,ed. Pp.286-312.Manchester:
ManchesterUniversityPress.
Balikci,A.
1988 Anthropologistsand EthnographicFilmmaking.In AnthropologicalFilmmaking.Jack R. Rollwagen,ed. Pp. 3147. London:HarwoodAcademicPublishers.
Bamouw, Erik
1974 Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film. New
York: Oxford University Press.
Barsam, Richard M.
1992 Non-Fiction Film: A Critical History. Bloomington and
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Biella, Peter
1988 Against Reductionism and Idealist Self-Reflexivity: The
Ilparakuyo Maasai Film Project. In Anthropological Filmmaking. Jack R. Rollwagen, ed. Pp. 47-73. London: Harwood Academic Publishers.
de Brigard, Emilie Rahman
1971 History of Ethnographic Film. Unpublished Master's
Thesis, Department of Theater Arts, University of California, Los Angeles.
1975 The History of Ethnographic Film. In Principles of
Visual Anthropology. Paul Hockings, ed. Pp. 13-43. The
Hague: Mouton Publishers.
Evans Prichard, E. E.
1981 A History of Anthropological Thought. Andre Singer,
ed. London: Faber and Faber.
Geertz, Clifford
1988 Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Gluckman, Max
1958 Analysis of a Social Situation in Modern Zulu-Land.
Manchester Manchester University Press on behalf of the
Rhodes Livingstone Institute.
Grierson, J.
1946 Grierson on Documentary. Forsyth Hardy, ed. London:
Faber and Faber.
Harper, Douglas
1989 Interpretive Ethnography: From "Authentic Voice" to
"Interpretive Eye." In Eyes across the Water. Robert Boonzajer Flaes, ed. Pp. 33-43. Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis.
Heider, Karl G.
1977 Ethnographic Film. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Lansing, S.
1989 The Decolonization of Ethnographic Film. In Eyes
across the Water. Robert Boonzajer Flaes, ed. Pp. 10-18.
Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis.
Malinowski, Bronistaw
1922 Argonauts of the Western Pacific. London: Routledge.
1974 Balmoma: Spirits of the Dead in the Trobriand Islands.
In Magic, Science, and Religion and Other Essays. London:
Souvenir Press Ltd.
Mamber, Stephen
1974 Cinema Verite in America: Studies in Uncontrolled
Documentary. Cambridge, MA:MITPress.
Marcus, George E., and Michael M. J. Fischer
1986 Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental
Moment in the Human Sciences. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Mitchell, J. Clyde
1956 The Kalela Dance: Aspects of Social Relationships
among Urban Africans in Northern Rhodesia. Rhodes Livingstone Paper No. 27.
Ruby, Jay
1975 Is Ethnographic Film a Filmic Ethnography? Studies in
the Anthropology of Visual Communication 2(2):104-111.
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FilmsCited
The Ax Fight
1971 Timothy Asch and Napoleon Chagnon, dirs. Distributed
by Documentary Educational Resources, Watertown, MA.
In the Land of the Headhunters (aka In the Land of the War
Canoes)
1914 Edward S. Curtis, dir. Distributed by Audiovisual Department, University of Washington Press, Seattle.
Nanook of the North
1922 Robert Flaherty, dir. Distributed by New York University Film Library.
Tapir Distribution
1975 Timothy Asch and Napoleon Chagnon, dirs. Distributed
by Documentary Educational Resources, Watertown, MA.