Media praxis within ethnographic film restructures many of anthropology’s founding positions. The naming of unequal relations of power, difference, and knowledge production between the anthropologist (author) and the Third World or indigenous native (subject) is both subject and method of this tradition. Writes Jean Rouch, “every time a film is made there is cultural disruption.” [...]
http://www.nfb.ca/nollywood-babylon (website coming soon)
A compelling look at the third largest movie industry in the world - in the heart of Africa.
Nollywood Babylon is a feature documentary about the explosive popularity of Nigeria’s movie industry.
The film drops viewers into the chaos of Lagos’ Idumota market. Here, among the bustling stalls, films are sold and unlikely stars [...]
a clip from the 2005 movie “Rize” http://soundgasms.blogspot.com
Third World Newsreel
Mission
Third World Newsreel (TWN) is an alternative media arts organization that fosters [...]
A new project in Vietnam run by Italian NGO - GVC - aimed at giving ethnic minority women a chance to have their say in the community.
I am watching myself being pictured as a Savage. I am the Bride of Kong.
Perhaps we Savages, plunged into darkness, do understand each other. What we share is the ability to see with the “third eye.”…for a person of color growing up in the United States, the experience of viewing oneself as an object is profoundly formative…a double consciousness…We turn to the movies to find images of ourselves reflected [...]
The people depicted in ‘ethnographic film” are meant to be seen as exotic, as people who until only too recently were categorized by science as Savage and Primitive, of an earlier evolutionary stage in the overall history of humankind: people without history, without writing, without civilization, without technology, without archives. In other words, people considered, [...]
The obsessive consumption of images of a racialized Other known as the Primitive is usefully labeled fascinating cannibalism. By “fascinating cannibalism” I mean to draw attention to the mixture of fascination and horror tha the “ethnographic” occasions. 10
Film is the only means I have to show someone else how I see him. For me, after the pleasure of the cine-trance in shooting and editing, my first public is the other, those whom I’ve filmed. The situation is clearly this: the anthropologist has at his disposal the only tool (the participating camera) that [...]
I am at the point of reflecting on my own role as a taker and giver of doubles, as an eater and shower of reflections. 100
To speak of the film subject at all is to speak of this shared space, willed with such intensity into the camera….FIlm, filmmaker, and subject are drawn together in a fusion from which they are destined to be forced apart…Later on I may look at the film with an audience, and I may then have [...]
Invisibility and omniscience. From this desire it is not a great lerap to begin viewing the camera as a secret weapon in the pursuit of knowledge. 129
The socially oriented filmmaker is thus the almighty voice-giver (here, in a vocalizing context that is all-male), whose position of authority in the production of meaning continues to go unchallenged, skillfully masked as it is by its righteous mission. 84
A documentary aware of its own artifice is one that remains sensitive to the flow between fact and fiction….It recognizes the necessity of composing (on) life in living it or making it. Documentary reduced to a mere vehicle of facts may be used to advocate a cause, but it does not constitute one in itself. [...]
Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/kenya-boran-… The film focuses on the life of Peter Boru, a sixteen-year-old former herdsboy who has become a boarding school student. Peter’s life is juxtaposed to a traditional herdsboy, Dokata. The question, “Education for what?” is posed when both tradition and modern forces common to developing areas make the economic outlook bleak for young [...]
Chants Of Lotus (Upi Avianto, Nia Di Nata, Fatimah Rony, Lasja F. Susatyo, Indonesia, 2007)
Screening Dates
31 OCT 2008/16:30/Paragon Cineplex 14
1 NOV 2008/20:20/Paragon Cineplex 14
Subtitled version of Jean Rouch’s “Les Maîtres Fous” (1955). A documentary about an african sect based on ceremonies during which the members are possessed by the spirits of european colonial entities.
It is worth mentionning that this film was very badly recieved, originally, both by africans shocked by the “savagery” of this ritual, and by europeans [...]
Why we Care/Cultural Survivial
Lands stolen, forced assimilation, arrested without charge, shot, displaced, discriminated against, economically marginalized, and politically ignored—all of this happens to indigenous peoples because they speak a different language, dress a different way, or have a different spirituality.
And the damage is not just to individuals. Entire cultures are dissolving. Languages developed over thousands [...]
the obsessive consumption of images of a racialized Other known as the Primitive is usefully labeled fascinating cannibalism. By “fascinating cannibalism” i mean to draw attention to the mixture of fascination and horror that the “ethnographic” occasion: the cannibalism” is not that of the people who are labeled Savages, but that of the consumers of [...]
Cultural Survival partners with indigenous communities to defend their lands, languages, and cultures. We help them get the knowledge, advocacy tools, and strategic partnerships they need to protect their rights. When their governments don’t respond, we partner with them to bring their cases to international commissions and courts, and we involve the public and policy [...]
“Aware that ‘there is a Third World in every First World and vice versa’ (Trinh T. Minh-ha), the diaspora perspective has the potential to expose and illuminate the sheer heterogeneity of the diverse social forces always repressed by the monologisim of dominant discourses–discourses of domination.” Mercer