Old Believers

I have chosen as a final film to discuss (at least for a while) Old Believers, a lesser known documentary about a sect of religous believers. In the context of Russian Orthodox church history, the Old Believers became separated after 1666-1667 from the official Russian Orthodox Church as a protest against church reforms introduced by Patriarch Nikon. Old Believers continue liturgical practices which the Russian Orthodox Church maintained before the implementation of these reforms.

What struck me most about this film was its stylistic qualities. It was as though the style represented to me more about what the filmmaker was trying to accomplish with the film than the content itself. It is all black and white, and often employs long shots or pans of the nature surrounding the village. The music is hypnotic,especially when the church bells ring. The geographical terrain presented always has white clouds or mist. There are no wide shots or "set up" shots and the foggy atmosphere creates soft but finite edges. As though the village was its own little world, that nothing existed beyond the mist.

It truly is a world that exists outside the rest of the world, the subjects of the film never mention "others." They are autonomous, they are isolated, both seemingly by terrain as the filmmaker would have you believe, but also by their beliefs. I believe the film is a juxtaposition of God and Nature... as the old anthropological dichotomy goes Culture vs Nature, even as Culture/Church "controls" nature, it is also bounded by it (literally surrounded by it). "Equilibrium comes about not mechanically and inertly, but out of, and because of, tension" (Dewey, 13). This is really the heart of the film, these Old Believers are in contension with the rest of the world, exiled because of a break with the Church. There is an unspoken sadness there, an undertone of sympathy for these believers because of their isolation. "Emotion is the conscious sign of a break, actual or impending. The discord is the ocasion that induces reflection... with the realization, material of reflection is incorporated into objects as their meaning" (Dewey 14). This sympathetic gaze is the meaning of the art "object," in this case, the otherworldly stylized film.


cheers



Dewey, John. 2005. Art as Experience. Perigee.

Old Believers (Jana Sevciková, 2001)

Les Maitres Fous

Catherine Russell frequently describes possession ritual films as a mise en abyme of representation, or “placing into the abyss”. When discussing film, it refers to a scene dealing with unconsciousness or surrealism, like a dream within a dream. This is an excellent way to describe something that is captured on film, but not really seen. When a person goes into trance we can see everything that physically happens to them, but we can’t see what they’re seeing. Even if a revived individual has picture perfect memory of what was happening while he or she was in trance, which most do not, the description would not suffice. I believe Jean Rouch, above any other ethnographic filmmaker, has not just an overt fascination with such phenomena but also most vigorously attempted to (re)present it on film. In fact, I think he would argue film to be the only appropriate medium to express possession rituals, as the mediation of a camera from life to film embodies the essence of possession. In fact, it was Rouch who appropriated the term cine-trance.

Ethnographic film is a form of cultural communication, to document the extent and variation of human behavior and cultural imagination. When encountering a behavior that is contrary to the normative, such as possession rituals, anthropologists find the need to rigorously analyze them in order to contextualize the spectacular behavior as an expression of some universal trait. This, of course, has not always been the case. Anthropology has its dark past, including ties with colonialism and imperialistic behavior. At that time the possession ritual was observed as a spectacle, highly romanticized to feed a fantasy of the “other”, or used to justify exploitation. With regards to subjectivity, Russell says it best as, “If the possession ritual represents the most “savage” and “crazed” figure of the Other, it also represents a subjectivity that remains uncolonized. The ritual in Les Matres Fous is transcendental and sublime. The truth-value is the subjectivity of decolonizationary thought, and it infects the “real” of ethnographic film.

Jean Rouch’s Les Maitres Fous is a very powerful, provocative ethnographic film. The approach Rouch took on the structure of the film made it, for me, the most memorable ethnographic film I’ve ever seen. In fact, I have had to be reflexive about this film in order to “lay my feelings aside” and think critically about its content. Once I was able to except my own consternation and revulsion to the graphic-ness of the film (I have a problem watching animal sacrifices), I was able to move on and deconstruct it for the brilliance that this film is. Contextualizing a possession ritual with in a modern ordinary existence was as effectively stimulating as the organization of the film. The primary role of the film “demands a decolonization of thought” (Russell, 221). The Dogon enact this ritual as a way of sticking it to the man, reappropriating historical atrocities to strengthen their cultural convictions. It is paradoxically an escapism and confrontation, ironically, spirit possession is a way of dealing with the "reality" of their past.

Rouch’s concept of cine-trance can be expanded over to those who are watching the film. When I saw Les Maitres Fous, I sat with my mouth open, dazed, and physically ill, and I remember thinking it was at least an hour-long film. In reality, it’s only twenty minutes of footage. My sense of time and space was altered, how better to describe that state then an extension of cine-trance?

cheers

Russell, Catherine. 1999. Experimental Ethnography. Duke University Press.

Les Matres Fous (Jean Rouch, 1955)

Lunch Break

I would call myself an appreciator of art in all its capacities; I consider myself to be a fan and a practitioner, way before I am a critic. Even when "critiquing," I'm not one to find faults, per se, I'm more keen on what we all do with everything in ordinary life: try to ascribe meaning to and glean meaning from the symbolic world around us. "For the doctrine did not signify that art was a literal copying of objects, but that it reflected the emotions and ideas that are associated with the chief institutions of social life" (Dewey, 6). Even art for art's sake has meaning, even if it's a non-meaning. I am finding it hard to get to my point here...

I recently went to a "theatrical screening" of Sharon Lockheart's film, Lunch Break. The film was shot in a factory somewhere in Maine. The entire film is one shot. 80 minutes, one shot. Which sounds like one hell of an accomplishment, really. However, this one shot consisted of a super-slow motion dead-pan down one corridor of the factory during the worker "lunch break." Sitting in a crowded theater, watching this film had to be one of the hardest 80 consecutive minutes of my life. You cannot even tell, at first, if the shot is moving, it is going so slow.

After the first 5 minutes, when the lady sitting on the bench's hand finally reaches her mouth, I thought to myself, "cool, I get it." This is the "American working (wo)man," a majority of people in the country, yet completely and utterly overlooked, unseen, and unappreciated. Bravo Sharon, thank you for forcing me to look at this woman, not just to look at her, but to really fucking soak her in. In the time of glamorization of celebrities and the utter fascination with the bourgeoisie, she is a modern example of an American proletariat; this calling attention to her is almost a revolutionary act.

Once we reach her, and the film goes on, I start to move around in my seat a bit, I'm looking at the hallway, and its long, and I'm finally realizing, "you know what... this is what the whole film is going to be." 80 minutes, trapped, with the filmmaker and her cohort in the theatre with me. After 20 minutes, I began to play a game, I would pick a point in the middle of the screen, and once it had reached the foreground, I would draw little circles on my arm for a minute. I would spend the rest of the hour doing this to myself:

I walked out of the theater with a forearm cheetah sleeve. This film, is not for theatrical viewing. It would make an excellent installation piece, where a viewer would have the ability to walk away from it. Subjecting an audience to a theatrical screening of this film was borderline torture. It was rude. I kept thinking to myself, somebody say something! Do something! Walk out, laugh, scream, say "are you Fucking kidding me?" And then I realized what was going on. I was right in the middle of a group of proponents for what I call the "new avant garde." Avant garde used to be about pushing the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm or staus quo, primarily in the cultural realm. It was often pretentious, inflated, grandiloquent, but always exciting to observe. The "new avant garde" seems to be about whether or not a viewer can stick it out. Being "hard" to take, hard to watch. As though, if you did get through it, you get it. You, my friend, are an artist. Well, I refuse to be a part of the self-congratulatory league (my colleague aptly entitled circle-jerk) going on in the art world; hey emperor, put some clothes on.

The ironic thing here, and I think most important to remember, is that the subjects of the film, these "research participants" (don't get me started on the fury that comes with the knowledge that 2 years of ethnographic research went into the making of this film, along with a hefty endowment) would never sacrifice 80 minutes of their life to watch a film like this. I'm willing to stake money I don't have on it. Not just these subjects, but the entire group of marginalized blue collar workers in this country that they represent, would never choose to watch this film over spending quality time with their families.


cheers




Dewey, John. 2005. Art as Experience. Perigee.


Lunch Break (Sharon Lockheart, 2008)

The Good Woman of Bangkok

The film's beginning is highly stylized, like a fiction film, or even more specifically, like a soap opera. It is melodramatic and contrived. Come to find out by the end of the film, soap operas are kind of an analogy for this woman's story. Throughout she experiences and recalls tragedy, drama, deceit, betrayal etc. etc. The "good woman" is not actually from Bangkok, but from a village near by. She is forced into prostitution by a series of male oriented bad happenstances, including her husband's abuse and eventual jilting of her, and her father's gambling. The two main men in her life have broken her in a way that has made her extremely depressed and even suicidal. Ironically, she is "forced" into the sex industry where she must cater to men. She despises men, after all, they are the source of all her misery.

She despises all men, and the filmmaker is a man. This is what gives this film depth. Aoi is a prostitute, forced into the industry because of the male ineptitude in her life, a tragic tale, but a common and familiar tale nonetheless. It is the construct of the film that separates it from its pervasiveness. This male filmmaker comes into Aoi's life, presumably as a john, and asks more from her than just sex (though the subject is never directly addressed, one can assume he engaged in a sexual relationship with her at least to start). She agrees to let him film her life, and he promises to compensate her.

Now, because of documentary film's subjective nature (beyond just a cinematic object) it is, "less a thing than an experience"(Sobcheck). An audience might not be able to identify with Aoi on an emotional recall level, but the combination of the pervasiveness of her story, coupled with the knowledge we all have of betrayal and of the importance of assessing new relationships allows a more empathetic understanding of Aoi's personal story through the film experience. At the same time we are learning through interviews about her past, we are learning about her cinematic presence. Who is Dennis O'Rourke (the filmmaker), what does he want from her? Although he starts off by stating, in text, what he is looking for "love to be both banal and profound," by the end of the film he has passed judgment on her lifestyle, constantly saying to Aoi he wants her to get out of the business. He even buys her a rice farm (the thing she said she would need to be able to quit). In the end, the film still seems exploitative, has remnants of unintentional post-colonialism, and is brimming with naivete. Just when one thinks there might be a happy ending to the story, there is a sort of afterword where by O'Rourke tells the audience that even though he bought her a rice farm, a year later (after he LEFT her) he finds her working in a dingy sex shop again.

What responsibility do documentary filmmakers have to their subjects? In an interview with Sergei Dvortsevoy he says, "documentary film, at least the kind of creative documentary that I make, is a strange genre, one that doesn’t help people much. When I make a film I don’t make it to help people. I help them while I am shooting, but the film itself cannot help them, and in fact sometimes it harms them, makes the situation even worse. Making a film about someone doesn’t necessarily bring them happiness." Something to at least think about.


cheers


The Good Woman of Bangkok (Dennis O'Rourke, 1992)

Sobcheck, Vivian. "Toward a Phenomenology of Nonfictional Film Experience." ed. Gaines, Jane, and Michael Renov. 1999. Collecting visible evidence. U of Minnesota Press, July.

Interview by Andrea Slovakova and Bara Stefanova.

A Joking Relationship

A very short film worth mentioning on this blog is John Marshall and Tim Asche's A Joking Relationship. It is a very simple format; 13 minutes of observational film. The two characters are N!ai, the young woman who is the "star" of Marshall's !Kung series, and her great-uncle /Ti!kay. Though, without the contextual knowledge of who these characters are, the film still has surprising amount of charged subjective quality, enabling a viewer to catch a glimpse of an intimate relationship, fostering an amount of cultural understanding. The observational style creates at first an objective perspective then an experiential sense of "being there." This movement from invisibilty to visibilty is creatively done in the editing of the film (as well as the way it was shot). It begins with extreme close ups of their faces, creating a sense of ulterior space, one never really gets to be that close with someone without knowing them intimately. But we do, we are privileged to be this close, it simultaneously evokes a level of voyeurism and comfort. The shots go from extreme close up of faces to hands and different parts of the body, all the while the two are carrying on a casual dialogue which subtitles allow us to follow. These scenes convey a genuine moment, they are being playful with each other, joking.

Later the shots move to medium, now we can see the space around the two bodies. A giant rock and some trees, savannah grass in the distance. The teasing persists, N!ia tells her uncle, "My neighbor's a snake in a tree" and her Uncle replies, "I have a lion at my fire." Both cultural idioms, expressive of a world view. A world we are now serendipitously more aware of as the shots begin to move further away. Once we are at a wide shot, the subject matter of the discussion moves from teasing each other, to talking about the filmmaker. They discuss what they think "he wants" them to do. This moment the filmmaker/film-making goes from strictly observational, to participant observational. It changes the whole ethos of the film. It forces an audience to reflect upon the happenings on screen, are these characters indeed engaging in these casual moment of intimacy because John Marshall is filming them, or would it all have taken place regardless? Even if we had not had a sense of being a part of the !Kung culture up to this point, surely "overhearing" their diatribe regarding the filmmaker gives us a phenomenological tickle as to what it might have been like to be there, filming from that spot in the universe.

The final shot is an extreme wide, hinting that the filmmaker had been faraway all along. Had N!ia and her Uncle known just how closely they were being observed? Had they known their voices were being picked up from that far away? Probably not, making this exchange of teasing, comforting and joking an almost private affair. As though they were posing for still photographs as a part of the environment, and maintaining a casual conversation to pass the time.

cheers

A Joking Relationship (John Marshall and Timothy Asche, 1962)

Good Hair

Again, another non-ethnographic film. Good Hair is more of a "social documentary" than anything else. I'm including Good Hair in my blog specifically because of my experience, academically, in the subject matter. I have had the privilege of having a professor for both my undergraduate and my graduate experience whose dissertation and subsequent first book were on the topic of African-American hair. She is one of the most inspiring women I know, and I am compelled to review the film for the sake of my gratitude to her for her wisdom, her guidance, and of course, her friendship. Although I am not African-American, I do feel like the years in her presence have priviliged me somewhat in having an opinion on the film.

Bluntly, I think the filmmaker, Chris Rock, had good intentions on making this film. Right from the outset, he recalls the story of his little daughter asking him one day, "Daddy, why don't I have "good hair?" Compelling, sentimental and even heartbreaking as this moment must have been for a father, Chris Rock, the comedian, opens his film about a very controversial topic clearly outlining his good intentions. Unfortunately, as the proverb goes, the road to hell is paved with them...

Now, it is not as bad as all that. One must keep in mind the filmmaker is a comedian, not a social scientist, and thus cannot be held accountable for the often times severe crises of representation going on throughout the documentary. The main point of the film is correct; the notion that "black" textured hair is "bad" and that "white" textured hair is "good," basically enforcing a hegemonic ideal of beauty. However, the concept is problematized in a self-deprecating, almost stereotypically self-fulfilling prophetic way. What should be an eye-opening confrontation of the facts, tends to be more of a display of the wackiness of "Black" hair shows, and an exploitation of Black hair product consumers, not by "white people" but by the few African American run Black hair care businesses.

For me, the most brilliant part of the film is when Rock asks people about "relaxer," the hair product that turns "bad hair" to "good hair." He sardonically points out that although the term denotes the "relaxing" of the hair itself, the connotation could really be read as a social lubricant, to, "make white people relax" when confronted with difference. This critique into the constructs of the everyday language used to describe Black hair is what most closely resembles a critical analysis in the significance of the "social" part of the documentary. It is along this linguistic theme, as displayed in the film's title, that the investigation of this "study" most closely resembles the culturally responsible work of my professor, "My overarching goals for this book were to present situated and 'lived' accounts of the role of hair and language in the formation of Black women's identities... I likewise sought to illuminate how, when, and why hair matters in African American women's day-to-day experiences and how it is they work out, either by themselves or with others, when exactly 'hair is just hair' and, alternatively, 'hair is not just hair' " (Jacobs-Huey 129). My advice to Rock would be to have read Jacobs-Huey's book, From the Kitchen to the Parlor: Language and Becoming in African American Women's Hair Care before setting out to represent the counter-hegemonic goals of Good Hair.

A good test would have been, as I believe comedian Dave Chappelle is utterly aware of, when dealing with race, are you seeking to get an audience to laugh with, or at your subjects/research participants?

cheers

Jacobs-Huey, Lanita. 2006. From the Kitchen to the Parlor: Language and Becoming in African American Women's Hair Care. Oxford University Press.

Good Hair (Jeff Stilson 2009)

City of God

Inspired by my previous posting, I watched the commercial/narrative film City of God having heard so much about it being along the same vein as my interpretation of film being an avenue for impressionism. The film takes place in a shanty town called Cidade de Deus (city of god) just outside Rio de Janiero, Brazil. It is the first commercial film (that I have watched) to have serious contendership in being considered an "ethnographic film." Using the same tactics as Robert Gardner, the director constantly and colorfully displays swatches of everyday life, glimpses into the struggles and banalities of the comings and goings of the citizens of City of God. I use the term "swatches" purposefully, as they are made up of vibrant iconographic hues, splayed out and then focused on when the timing corresponds to the place in Rocket's story. The visuals include vast amounts of dust and smoke, serrated by the slowing down or the speeding up of time, gleaming beads of sweat highlighted by the sunshine, and a constant menagerie of citizens of all ages, exchanging gunfire with blood spatter. It is a dizzying array of sights and sounds that make you feel like you can smell the violence in the air. It is hyper phenomenological; Robert Gardner has no interest in the "unvarnished" reality of life, rather, "I have always been interested in indicating things by suggestion rather than direct statement... Perhaps my tendencies arise from an interest in, among other things, surrealism" (Barbash 94).

The film is narrated by Rocket, a slum child grown up in Cidade de Deus, an interesting character as he provides an "ethnographic" emic/etic perspective of life. He manages to be centrally located in the cast of widely varied characters, yet somehow remains peripheral and almost objective to the calamities of the narrative. The narrative unfolds in a non-linear fashion, it is being thread together for us by Rocket, and moves according to his logic. Rocket is not without fault, he does drugs, is often motivated by sex and jealousy, however is the most clearly defined protagonist in the film. For an audience, Rocket's life is a vignette, a pinhole into the world in which he's enmeshed.

Coincidentally, I day or so after watching City of God, my friend insisted upon watching the Steve Martin film, L.A. Story. Having always been a Martin fan, and having grown up in Los Angeles, I agreed. Midway through the self-deprecating comedic romp, I made a joke about how L.A. Story matched up to City of God. I mean, Los Angeles is known as the "City of Angels" and both goals of the film were to give the impressions of the title city. After having a laugh about it, I recalled more parallels, including the structure of a first person narrative, "guiding" the audience asynchronously through their personal vignettes, and furthermore how the city had affected their journey's. The similarities of the structural tactics are uncanny, as each film seeks to highlight the most depraved behaviors, (stereo)typical to each place. The difference, of course, being that the situation in City of God is tragic, and includes life or death stakes, while Los Angeles might very well be tragically egocentric and shallow, the stakes involved are clearly non-mortality related.

cheers

Barbash, Ilisa. 2001. "Out of Words." ed. Taylor and Barbash. The Cinema of Robert Gardner. Berg:Oxford.

City of God, Cidade de Deus (Fernando Meirelles, 2002)
L.A. Story (Mick Jackson, 1991)

Forest of Bliss

Another film with a good deal of critical analyses out there in the documentary realm, Robert Gardner's Forest of Bliss is a 90minute portrait of life in Banares, India, a city off of the Ganges.Gardner chooses to have a minimal amount of text involved in the 90 minute narrative, opening with a quote by W.B. Yeats "Everything in this world is either eaten or eater," and including some speech of the people in the film, but nothing substantial, and he leaves all spoken word completely untranslated (no subtitles). Because of the way the film is shot and edited, the speaking seems to be yet another one of the sounds inhabiting the world of Forest of Bliss, adding to its mystique and energy. Keeping the speaking and sometimes chanting undecipherable throughout the film makes the noise blend together to be a somewhat abstraction, matching the constant movement and random visuals. No individual is a distinguishable character, instead, after watching thirty minutes of everyday life, from all different angles, without having the camera acknowledged, a viewer comes to realize that the character, the "star" of the film is actually the city itself. The film is impressionistic, like a painting with movement and a soundtrack. As Gardner himself says about his work, "I have always been interested in indicating things by suggestion rather than direct statement" (Barbash, 94).

That is not to say the people in the film are not also important to the portrait, after all, the city would just be space if their were no people there making it a specific place. The specificity of this place, Baneres, is clearly a great deal to do with death. Death becomes the kind of running theme of Forest of Bliss, the death of both animals and humans, and how death is out in the open and dealt with throughout the city. In fact, the city seems to be operating an industry, as most laboring shown has one thing or another to do with the ceremonial and paradoxically banal aspects of death. The paradox is really most pronounced in the banality of the sacrament, as it would seem that everything that is done in Baneres is ritualized. Everything from the way one washes oneself to the way one picks flowers seems to be imbued in symbolic and cultural significance.

Gardner plays with camera angles a great deal. "I have always felt obliged to find new ways to use the camera... I feel badly when I let the camera stand back and be passive" (Barbash, 98). Some shots seem to be from a point of view, sometimes of a child or citizen in the street, or from a dead body in a hospice or on a boat. Since the camera is never steady for long, and the shots are unpredictably held, it gives the impression of constant movement, a living, breathing city, saturated in death (not to mention refuse and shit) However, the construction of the shots are not random, there does seem to be a building of some sort. Gardner is a master of building tension, while watching the film one starts to anticipate certain narrative points, and once the time comes, he might give a glimpse and move on to the next "story." For example, one long shot is tracking a man walking through the streets (similar to that Goodfellas famous tracking sequence) up and down stairs, through the refuse/shit in the path, finally we get to the river, and then there is a devastatingly quick shot of a dead man floating in the river, and then just as quickly, we are on another path, following a different man.

When asked about his editing techniques, and his propensity to not follow the stricter "ethnographic" observational film paradigm, Gardner replied, "I would say what seems important is what is being filmed, not how it is done... Everything depends, it seems, on some combination of knowledge, insight, inspiration and talent. These scarcely measurable and mostly unteachable attributes tell me that film, whether we like it or not, is an art form, and that we should welcome, and not despair of that fact" (Barbash, 99). Forest of Bliss is an artistic construction suggesting ethnographic insight. As an anthropologist Gardner clearly spent the time needed to inform an ethnographic film, yet as a filmmaker he is sticking to his guns, relying on an impressionistic paradigm. A film like Forest of Bliss relies on an audience who is willing to put in the time, to be actively engaged in uncovering the cultural truths being presented.

cheers



Barbash, Ilisa. "Out of Words: The Aesthesodic Cine-Eye of Robert Gardner." Barbash and Taylor eds. 2007. The Cinema of Robert Gardner. Berg Publishers.

Forest of Bliss (Robert Gardner, 1986)
Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990)

Under the Men's Tree

David MacDougall is famous for his participatory-observational style of film-making. MacDougall’s films exemplify both the subject engagement with the camera, and the movement of the camera through a scene as cinematically documental. In Under the Men’s Tree, MacDougall is sitting among the group of men, not outside of it, or above it, but right in the heart of it. MacDougall does not ask any questions, he is mostly just observing, and the participation is felt by the sheer locality of the camera itself. The subjects or characters are carrying on a conversation, and it is when they acknowledge both filmmaker and camera that the film takes on more of the participatory feel. A man says, “you better not say that, he’s filming,” and an audience becomes privy not just what it is like to be there, but of the complexities of anthropological inquiry itself. This moment in the film addresses the enduring question of would a research participant be acting a certain way if there were no anthropologist in the room? Without answering that one directly, we do know that the anthropologist/ethnographic filmmaker/filmmaker will always be affecting the social world in which he/she observes. These questions are about reality itself, a phenomenon that can be addressed scientifically/culturally through documentary and narrative film.

Under the Men’s Tree (David and Judith MacDougall, 1970)

Tierra Sin Pan (The Land Without Bread)

It almost seems futile to add to the vast confabulation this film has generated since its emergence onto the film scene in 1932. Unfortunately, this fact makes it hard to try and watch Tierra Sin Pan with an open mind. To try to pretend I have not read any of the critiques or analyses is an impossible test of the critical mind, however, being forthright about it may at least clarify my perspective. Hopefully, it also provides a background as to why I'm less inclined to discuss the film's content as much as it's structure and place in documentary film's history.

In Lucien Taylor's "Iconophobia," he presents the arguments of famous film critics who believe that film "imposes itself through temporary suspension of disbelief" (Taylor 35). Critics such as Metz, Bloch and Hastrup believe "filmmakers seem not to recognize their works as constructed" (Taylor 35). Tierra Sin Pan seems to exemplify the opposite. Just as the genre of Surrealism was a reaction towards a constructed, methodical, logically ordered world, so too were Surrealist films a reaction to the rigid idea of film's rationality and strict confinement of reality. Tierra Sin Pan did this not by some radical means of experimental filmic approaches, but by employing the very epitomizing methods that have been "holding back" (ethnographic) documentary in the first place. Banuel used a strictly "Voice of God" narration to construct the reality of film, mimicking the pretext of other films before or of the time that seemed to keep ethnographic film's viability as a legitimate venue for capturing cultural understanding. This produced a sardonic and satirical stand against documentary's leading criticism. As it turns out, filmmakers are aware of the constructed nature of the medium, and what's more, their role in that construction as well as the audience's perception not just through "suspension of disbelief" but in relation to other comparable texts (ie. films or writings).

It is a film that implores the audience to think about the action of viewing films, to be aware of the constructiveness of meaning making. There is a disconnect between the signifiers and the signified as a choice of the filmmaker, and that is the point of departure that a critical viewer will have to discover, and construct meaning on his or her own.

Tierra Sin Pan (Luis Bañuel 1932)

Taylor, Lucien. 1996. Iconophobia. Transition, no. 69: 64-88.

Two Brushes

It is always an auspicious event when one gets to view a documentary with the documentarian in the room, if for no other reason, the filmmaker can provide the context so often lacking in this art form. That is not to say film needs context, in fact most great works of art can "speak for themselves" or "stand alone" if you will. However, most good documentaries provoke a viewer (an inquiring mind) into asking questions; questions about the content of the film, or even questions about the process of making the film in general. Two Brushes is an award-winning short documentary film made by Chera Kee and Helen Stone. Only C. Kee was present at the screening, as H. Stone lives in China.

The film was a part of an overseas collaboration project between two Universities (one in the States and the other in China) where each student was paired with an an individual from the other University. Chera Kee was paired with Helen Stone in the summer of 2006 in Beijing, China where the two produced a short film about a well known Beijing artist, Duan Zhengqu.

The title, Two Brushes, is an expression in Chinese. To say that someone has two brushes is to say that they have talent. The title was duplicitous in its nomenclatural nature because of the way it described Duan Zhengqu, and also served as a metaphor for the filmmakers collaboration. They were each a brush coming together in the end to make a solid documentary.

Hearing Chera Kee's side of the story, provided a lesson in the art of filmmaking in general. The two filmmakers apparently did not get along until the end of the production when they realized they actually had a great project, as Chera Kee said, "tends to smooth over any personality situation." Focusing on Duan Zhengqu, a modern artist known for his Western style of paint, the two saw the artist in very different ways. Stone being native to Beijing, insisted on Duan Zhengqu's being a "villager" while Kee's impression was that he was a "modern" man. The argument between the two provided the investigatorial template for the film.

Through scrutinizing his "modern" artwork, Chera Kee was able to see his calligraphic influence coming through. This is where the editing of the film was most affective, showing his calligraphy and then close ups of the bold brush strokes in his modern paintings, mimicking those of his calligraphy. Shots of Duan Zhengqu, and his entourage living in Beijing were quite convincing of his modernity; he lived in a multimillion dollar flat and was constantly on his cell-phone or computer. Stone saw through the modern setting of his Beijing flat, and was convinced by the cultural subtlelties only someone grown up in China would pick up on. He was a villager because of "the way he smoked his cigarettes" and "the way his shoulders were crouched." In the seminal scene of the documentary, the filmmakers confronted him about their inquiry, and he declared himself to be a villager at heart.

The questions that were being asked in this film were having to do with modernity. When confronted with this word "modern," both the Chinese people involved were at a standstill. In their view, Duan Zhengqu was a villager, and therefore not modern. In Kee's view, he was the epitome of modern. So, in the end, the viewer is left with the ultimate answer, which is a typical postmodern theme, one of multiplicitous or fractured identity. Just like two brushes representing the two filmmakers that came together to make one film, two identities, "modern" and "villager" are embodied by Duan Zhengqu. This notion is especially, and more graphically displayed in his art.

cheers

Two Brushes (Chera Kee and Helen Stone, 2006).

Mother Dao the Turtlelike

A promising title for a supposedly ethnographic film. I would recommend watching Mother Dao without any background or context as I did, if only out of respect for the one thing that is clear of the filmmaker's desires; Vincent Monnikekendham withholds the informative portion of the film until the very end.

However, in order to save you I would say 90 minutes of your life, I'll go ahead and tell you what this film is. You will have to excuse my terseness, I was told the film would be 58 minutes upon viewing, and vividly remember checking the clock every two minutes or so once I felt that a solid hour had indeed gone by. Now, had I been talking about a good film just now, I would have said slipped by, a great film this discussion would be moot. Unfortunately, these days, that mootness is few and far in between.

As this is my first real entry in this film journal, and given the medium by which my verse is being delivered, I should probably be reflexive (I'm an anthropologist in 2010 after all) and say outright how I feel about film and time in general. Now, the following is explicitly my opinion, it is not based in any scientific or evidentiary data. I believe the medium of film is very special, in that it has an almost magical quality that allows for complete consummation of the viewer by the art form. A viewer can become enveloped by a film there in the darkness of the screening room. It is a very powerful thing of which I speak, and therefore, should not be taken lightly. This is why I believe a filmmaker has a responsibility to the audience, because life is so precious, time is not something one needs to waste on being consumed in a bad way, or worse and more to the point, longer than necessary. Because film can affect so greatly, every moment counts, and I do not want to spend any time consumed in a film that does not measure up to the way I value my time. Although that sounds utterly pretentious, I want to make it clear that I do not value my time unreasonably higher than the next schmuck. How often does one hear, "yeah, that movie could have been great, but it was just too long?" Even the "bad films" that I have come across in my time as a visual anthropologist that were under twenty minutes were really not "bad" at all; I probably just didn't appreciate the content, which is purely subjective. However, a "bad" LONG film is not just a subjective matter.

Sorry for the tangent. Back to Mother Dao the Turtlelike. The film, at first, is a brilliant compilation of images set in what appears to be the East-Asian islands. It is beautiful black and white footage of different groups of people going about there daily lives. The sound is what I noticed began to have a pattern. First is chanting (non-sync), then there is a narration (non-sync) then there is natural sound that slowly gets louder (sync) making these images appear to be at last telling a story, one which the audience should know at this point needs to be anticipated. The sound has been building, so anxiety should be felt, etc. Then, just when you think a narrative is going to be constructed, the cycle of sound starts over again, with the images staying at a kind of random pace. People in the jungle, people in the village, etc. This reminded me of Reassemblage, only without the meta-narrative calling attention to the structure of ethnographic film-making in general, the thing that makes Reassemblage what it is (to be fair, I even thought Reassemblage could have been twenty minutes shorter and achieved the same brilliance).

Then the images start to show a pattern of sorts, and you think "Aha, this film is about the evils of colonization and imperialism." Which is a perfectly reasonably post-colonialistic point to be making. Then the images just get repetitive. Again, this is not about the content, at this point, I'm speaking of time management. After all, we are not discussing a complex issue here, there is no other point I'm gleaning from this "assemblage" of pictures other than, "what happened to the natives is bad." After about an hour of this, out of nowhere, there is a series of images doing quite the opposite, showing the natives being brutal and at times "savage." This goes on for the rest of the film, but at this point I have completely lost interest in gleaning any other message from the film, feeling utterly taken advantage of for the past 40 minutes of my life.

Once the screen goes black, the message of what this film was illuminates the blank screen. The film was put together from over 200 propaganistic films from that period. The filmmakers indeed wanted to "resignify colonialist imagery" (Griffiths) something that crossed my mind, but did not stay there once I felt the film was dragging on and on. I even thought perhaps that it was the opposite point, perhaps calling us all savages. As far as a meta-commentary "on the politics of cross-cultural representation" (Griffiths) a very important theme to explore in Visual Anthropology and Ethnographic Film in general, the intellectualism and the cultural critique was lost once the film became repetitive, random and exceedingly unnecessary. This film could have been great if the images and sound were carefully chosen. Bigger is not always better, more sometimes is just more, and in this case, more was just excess.

cheers

Griffiths, Alison. 2001. Wondrous Difference: Cinema, Anthropology and Turn of the Century Visual Culture. Columbia University Press.

Mother Dao the Turtlelike ( Vincent Monnikekendham, 1995).

Reassemblage (Trinh T. Minh-ha, 1982).

Statement of Purpose

I will be critiquing/analyzing a series of films from an anthropological perspective. The bulk of the series will be ethnographic films, but social documentaries and even commercial films might be viewed and critiqued as well.

cheers