BRIDGE & TUNNEL (2007)

Ethnographic Film Project






Credits:

Sebastiano
Christine
Harlan

Mararet Mead Film Fest 2007

This previous weekend - Nov. 9-11th, the 31st annual Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival took place at the Museum of Natural History and was a great venue for these contemporary visual ethnographies. The Museum itself was a buzz with its usual sunny Sunday crowds thirsting for knowledge, and it was great to work our way towards the screenings by weaving in and out of various wings, rooms, and people to finally get to the rather small festival.

The first film I attended was Judith MacDougall's The Art of Regret. This was a very intimate film directed, produced, and shot by MacDougall and her translator in China. The focus of the ethnography was on how the Chinese use, view, and bring meaning to photographs in their culture. It brought up many points about how China is very much at a cross roads in their understanding of the past and the future. In China it is very hard to get a hold of older photos as many were destroyed during their Cultural Revolution and this has taken a toll on many individual families who have lost their pasts. Also the film explores the new steps in technology and how these images can be manipulated or restored by the same digital means. The film leaves the audience wondering if photography is still an art of regret or if it has reached a new place/definition in its history.

The second film we sat in on (literally on the floor) was The Birthday by Daisy Mohr and Negin Kianfar. This film chronicled the lives of trans gendered people in Iran, a conservative Islamic government. I went into the film with much different expectations of what I would see, and enjoyed being surprised. While being very anti-homosexual, the Iranian government is actually quite supportive of their transgender folk who wish to change their sex, due to a strange Islamic loophole in the Koran. The stories of the people the filmmakers followed around were quite emotionally effective and poignant. Despite thinking that the Iranian government was very tolerant at first, I realized later that the only reason they favor this is because it reinforces their belief system and doesn't challenge the preestablished binaries that their culture lives in.

All in all I really enjoyed the Festival and liked seeing these fresh works as opposed to the classics we've been viewing in class. The stories of human struggle, history, and joy are always interesting and it was nice to see it all in such a setting of learning and knowledge.

Two References from Class:

This is the first 15 mins of the Gods Must Be Crazy (1980):




and

Joseph Campbell & the Power of Myth, below is the introduction to the show that ran on PBS.

Jean Rouch and Ethno-Fiction - Jaguar

Jean Rouch's film Jaguar (1967) almost seamlessly blends the realms of ethnographic realism with a fictitious parable of boys leaving and returning home men. The film follows it three protagonists from their homes in a small village in Niger, across Africa and to the Gold Coast of Ghana. Courtesy of Rouch the audience is also along for the ride.

A key part in understanding Rouch's interest in the region in the first place reveals itself in an interview conducted by fellow filmmaker and anthropologist Lucien Taylor. In the interview Rouch is unexpectedly candid about his work and autobiography. The filming of this movie was certainly not the first time he had ever been to Africa or Niger. During the Second World War Rouch was studying there to avoid the chaos in Europe and had this to say about the country he so delicately depicts in Jaguar: "Niger was an awful country - the climate was dreadful, the quinine tablets had ran out, and the mosquito bites could be very dangerous... there was absolutely nothing there - no gas, no cars, no clothe..." (Rouch 133)

Quite a surprising response from the way the film is handled - with its rhythm of walking, and emphasis on the simple grandeur of this odyssey - There is also a strong emphasis on a collaborative effort with those he was shooting. This is evident in the commentary of the film being lively and allowing his informants/subjects voice their opinions on what has happened to them.

Rouch's explanation of the inherent condition of ethnographic film is also quite important, "The situation is clearly this: the anthropologist has at his disposal the only tool (the partisipating camera) that offers him the extraordinary possibility of direct communication of the group he studies - the film he has made about them." (Rouch 8) This symbiotic relationship is present in Jaguar where the subjects and their journey is documented and the represented to the public at large. Rouch is saying that he and them are bonded through this film and their mutual hope that it comes out as good as possible.

I enjoyed the film and its over-all understanding of the rite of passage it was filming. Rouch's "jump-cutting" technique is a great stamp of authenticty on the project and adds a feeling of other-worldly-ness to landscape, while the men's story is all too familiar. Universality really shines through his camera lens.