| Series Description:
In this series, we are looking at the communicative
techniques used
by the scholars/ filmmakers. We will be asking such questions as:
How is the subject matter organized and presented? Is the film
organized
around an individual, a community, a process, etc.? Are events
staged?
Are they re-enacted? Is cinema veriteused? What are
other possible approaches? Is the action continuous, or is there
editing? If there is editing, what does the editing do?
What
relationship do the informants seem to have with the camera? Do
the
informants even seem to be aware of the camera? Is there a
voice-over?
If so, is it the voice of the scholar, a hired narrator, or an
informant?
How is translation handled (simultaneous aural, sub-titles,
etc.)?
Should informants be enabled to speak for themselves? How are
compromises
achieved, allowing both informants and scholars to express their
various
points of view?
This series seeks to introduce viewers to the wide variety
of types
of ethnographic film/video, including the art film, the scientific
film (aka, anthropological or academic film), the educational
film (aka, instructional film), and the
public film.
This series, while it can only hope to present the most cursory of
introductions
to these sub-genres, will provide exposure to the different methods of
composition, addressing the audience, funding, and distribution that
have
been inherent to these various types of ethnographic filmmaking.
Sept. 30
The Man with a Movie Camera. 1928. 66
min.
Dziga Vertov, director.
Using his "kino eye" theory of identifying the camera lens with the
human eye, Dziga Vertov attempts to show life as it is actually
lived.
This method seeks to destroy illusion by exposing the artificiality of
the situation, that is, the presence of the filmmaker. This is an
experimental film using numerous cinematic techniques (split screens,
multiple
superimpositions, animation, variable speeds, etc.) to present a dawn
to
dusk view of people, things, and events in Moscow. At the end of
the film, the camera takes a curtain call bow for its ubiquitous,
gymnastic
performance. A virtual textbook of advanced photographic and
editing
techniques, as well as a boldly detailed portrait of the Moscow of the
1920s.
Oct. 14
Films by Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead; and Robert
Flaherty.
Trance and Dance in Bali. 1952 (filmed
1936-8). 20
min.
Gregory Bateson, Margaret Mead, and Jane Belo, directors.
The subject is performance of the kris dance, a Balinese ceremonial
dance which dramatizes the never-ending struggle between the witch and
the dragon -- the death-dealing and the life-protecting -- as it is
given
in the village of Pagoetan. Dancers go into violent trance seizures and
turn their krisses (daggers) against their breasts without
injury.
Consciousness is restored with incense and holy water.
Karba's First Years: A Study of Balinese Childhood.
1952 (filmed 1936-8). 20 min.
Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead, directors.
Series: Character formation in different cultures.
A series of scenes in the life of a Balinese child, beginning with
a seventh-month birthday ceremonial, showing the child's relationships
to parents, aunts and uncles, child nurse, and other children, as he is
suckled, taught to walk and to dance, teased, and titillated.
Demonstrates
the process by which a Balinese child's responsiveness is muted as
parents
stimulate and themselves fail to respond.
Childhood Rivalry in Bali and New Guinea. 1952
(filmed
1936-8). 17 min.
Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead, directors.
A series of scenes comparing the responses of Balinese and Latmul
children
of the same age to the mother's attending to another baby, to the ear
piercing
of a younger sibling, and to the experimental presentation of a doll.
Nanook of the North. 1922. 55 min.
Robert Flaherty, director.
A classic romanticized, semi-reenacted view of Eskimo life.
Focusing
on an individual hunter.
Nov. 11
Films by Timothy Asch.
The Feast. 1968. 29 min.
Timothy Asch and Napolean Chagnon, directors.
Documents how an alliance is formed between hostile Yanomamo Indian
villages through feasting, trading, dancing, and chanting. Records the
arrangements for the feast which include sweeping the compound,
preparing
the food, and primping their nude bodies with feathers, jewelry, and
paints.
Notes that the tribe's leader must persuade the others to a course of
action
through his own activities.
A Balinese Trance Seance. 1980. 36 min.
Timothy Asch and Linda Connor, directors.
Part 1: Jero has been approached by anxious villagers about proper
ceremonial for a funeral. Shows her preparing for the trance, entering
it several times, giving advice and clarification of the spirit
messages
to the villagers.
Part 2: Two years later, Jero sees the film and comments on it.
Note:
Timothy Asch (1932-1994), filmmaker, professor of Anthropology, and
director of the Center for Visual Anthropology at the University of
Southern
California, had a unique place in the development of ethnographic
film.
Defining ethnographic film as footage of naturally occurring social
interaction among a group or groups of people, he collaborated with
a series of anthropologists, filming in Canada, Africa, Trinidad,
Venezuela,
Afghanistan, Indonesia, etc. Timothy Asch was interested in
pedagogical
uses of film: he expressed preference for filming sequences that could
be edited as discrete events which could then be combined in more
complex
forms or integrated with classroom lectures and discussions; as opposed
to constructing lengthy narrated films which told the viewer what to
see
and how to interpret it. One of his stated goals was to enable
his
subjects to speak for themselves.
Dec. 1
Public Folklore films.
The Stone Carvers. 1985. 29 min.
Marjorie Hunt and Paul Wagner, directors.
A portrayal of a small group, the carvers of the National Cathedral
in Washington, DC. Demonstrates connections between ethnicity,
folk
art, occupation, and family. Carvers are filmed at a reunion
lunch.
Winner of the Academy Award for Outstanding Short Documentary.
The Grand Generation. 1993. 30 min.
Marjorie Hunt, Paul Wagner, and Steve Zeitlin, directors.
Age is the unifying factor. Related to the 1981 White House
Conference
on Aging, and the Aging Program of the 1984 Smithsonian Festival of
American
Folklife, this film presents six elder folk artists who tell their life
stories to the camera.
Jan. 27
About AFRICAN-AMERICAN speaking, storytelling, and singing.
Bottle Up and Go. 1980. 18 min.
William Ferris, director
On one-string guitar playing and the lives of a black couple in rural
Mississippi.
Give My Poor Heart Ease. 1975. 20 min.
William Ferris, director.
On Mississippi Delta blues, featuring B.B. King, James Thomas, and
Parchman work chants.
The Performed Word. 1982. 60 min.
Gerald Davis, director.
The subject is the power of the performed African-American word,
particularly
that of preachers. Includes excerpts from services and interviews
with Bishop E. E. Cleveland of Berkeley, California.
Note:
Both William Ferris, Chairman of the National Endowment for the
Humanities,
and the late Gerald Davis earned Penn Folklore Ph.D.s. Their
respective
dissertations were: "Black Folklore from the Mississippi Delta" (1969),
and "The Performed African-American Sermon" (1978).
Feb. 17
About AFRICAN speaking, storytelling, and singing.
Al Haji Bai Konte. 1979. 12 min.
Marc Pevar and Oliver Franklin, directors.
About the griot, Al Haji Bai Konte, from Brikama, the Gambia.
Includes local performance scenes with his son, Dembo. In
Mandinka,
with English narration by Taj Mahal.
Griottes of the Sahel: Female Keepers of the Songhay Oral
Tradition.
1990. 12 min.
Marie Hornbein, director/editor. Thomas A. Hale, producer/writer.
About griottes, or jeserey weyborey,in both the urban context
of Niamey, Niger, and the isolated town of Yatakala. In Songhay
and
Zarma, with English voice-over.
Bitter Melons. 1971 (filmed in 1955). 30 min.
John Marshall, director
Portrays the music and lives of Ukxone and other G/wi people of
southern
Botswana. Featuring a one-stringed musical instrument; songs
about
animals, the land, and social life; dances; and children's games.
Fieldwork footage from Cameroon to be presented by Penn
Anthropology
Ph.D. student Clare Ignatowski.
March 3 (special Friday
date!)
Co-sponsored with Penn's "French Cinema Group"
Chronique d'un Ete (Chronicle of a Summer).
1960.
90 min.
Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin, directors.
Generally regarded as the French ethnographer Jean Rouch's most
influential
film. It focuses on the moods and emotions of Parisians during
the
Algerian war. Through cinema verite technique, the filmmaker
takes
the viewer into the lives of a group of Parisians-- some, average
citizens,
other, highly individual types -- as they lived through the summer of
1960.
People are caught at their most natural and unaffected moments: a young
and mild-mannered worker's sudden outburst against the system, some
African
friends trying to understand what the tattoo on the arm of a Jewish
girl
means, and the emotional breakdown of a Bohemian girl in her late
twenties
as she talks of her dread of being alone and unloved. (In French
with English subtitles.)
April 6
Zulay, Facing the Twenty-First Century. 1993.
108 min.
Jorge Preloran, Mabel Preloran, and Zulay Saravino, directors.
An Equadorian woman comes to the USA and helps edit a film about
herself
and her people.
Bathing Babies in Three Cultures. 1952 (filmed in
1936-38).
9 min.
Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead, directors.
A comparative series of sequences showing the interplay between mother
and child in three different settings: bathing in a mountain village of
Bali in Indonesia, in the Sepik River in New Guinea, and in a modern
American
bathroom.
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