Reflections of an Ethnographic Filmmaker-Maker: An Interview with Paul Henley, Director of the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology, University of Manchester

ABSTRACT  Two decades ago the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology (GCVA) at the University of Manchester, U.K., was created. Since then it has become one of the most acclaimed postgraduate visual anthropology schools in the world, providing a space for theoretical debate and training in ethnographic filmmaking techniques. Conceived originally as a master's program under the sponsorship of Granada Television and the University of Manchester, it has now extended training to the Ph.D. level to students from around the world. In this interview, Professor Paul Henley, GCVA's director since its inception, reflects on the last 20 years of the Granada Centre, ethnographic filmmaking, the state of the art in theory and practice in visual anthropology, and new possibilities and challenges for the future. [Keywords: visual anthropology, ethnographic filmmaking, documentary, Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology]     

In memoriam: Napoleon A. Chagnon

Anthropologist Napoleon A. Chagnon was a central figure in the development and foundation of evolutionary approaches to human behavior. We highlight his ethnographic fieldwork, contributions to studies of kinship and marriage, and his foundational role in the development of evolutionary approaches to human behavior. As a holistic anthropologist Chagnon led anthropology toward the integration of cultural and evolutionary theory. Finally, his leadership was central in the foundation of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society.EpigraphRicardo, a Brazilian Protestant missionary who was assisting the scientific team and who has worked with the Yanomami for over 25 years … told me to run and get my camera. “There's going to be a fight,” he said. Then he turned to leave. “Aren't you going to stay?” I asked. “Nah, happens all the time. You stay, you're an anthropologist, should be interesting. Call me if anyone gets hurt.”     

Ethnographic film: Technology,practice and anthropological theory

Despite the enthusiasm of the pioneer generation of anthropologists for the camera as a means of ethnographic research, filmmaking remained marginal to the anthropological project for most of the course of the last century. However a combination of technological developments and recent theoretical paradigm shifts within anthropology generally now offers the possibility of greater integration of filmmaking into ethnographic research. This article1 seeks to identify the basis for this theoretical incorporation and discusses some of the practical ways in which film can now be used as a means of generating ethnographic understanding,     

From Documentation to Representation: Recovering the Films of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson

Although the seven films made by Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, based on footage shot in Bali and New Guinea during 1936–39, are identified as a landmark in various histories of ethnographic film, these films have been the subject of remarkably little analysis in the anthropological literature. In contrast, their photographic work has received much more extended commentary. Making a close reading of the films in their final edited form, this article aims to recover this aspect of Mead and Bateson's work from its relative neglect. We consider the circumstances under which the films were made, the theoretical ideas that informed them, and the methods employed in shooting and editing. Notwithstanding recent skepticism about both the theoretical ideas and the quality of the research on which Mead and Bateson's work in Bali was based, as well as the naiveté of some of the filmmaking ideas found in the films themselves, when considered as a group, they continue to be interesting examples of a particular transitional phase in the history of ethnographic film.     

An anthropologist's work between moving genres*

Anthropologists who have worked in recent decades experienced the breakdown of a dominant methodological and theoretical ethos. The author relates his pains and delights as he moved away from the Jerusalem “modernization” grand theory sociological paradigm of the 1960s to the Manchester School compelling fieldwork doctrine. And he relates his later attraction to the Geertzian genre and the more recent encounters with the mixed blessing of reflexivity and “post‐modernism”. The latter have opened new fields for exploration and liberated the anthropologist from strict disciplinarian borders and ideological taboos. But the new genres seem also to jeopardize the raison d'être of the ethnographic project. The author associates his changing loyalties and tastes with his choice of ethnographic fields.     

Beyond the DP/DSS controversy

Paul Turke's “Which humans behave adaptively, and why does it matter?” shows, if he we are to take him as being representative of “Darwinian social science” in general, that his school of thought has moved surprisingly close to that of its “Darwinian psychology” critics in accepting the importance if not the primacy of the psychological level of explanation in applying evolutionary theory to human behavior. Disagreements continue over whether the adaptiveness of current behavior should be viewed as an occasionally interesting question because of the light it can shed on evolved psychological mechanisms, or whether, as Turke maintains, it is the central question for human sociobiology. In any event, the “vertically integrated approach,” utterly ignored by Turke, incorporates Darwinian Psychology and is far more powerful than is Turke's approach in explicating the relationship between genes and culture, thereby rendering the current debate pointless.     

Toward a Marxian anthropology? Bare,abstract, mobile,global

Anthropology has conventionally taken as some of its most cherished foundational categories the precise opposites of the key concepts that animate this inquiry: rather than “bare life,” anthropology has tended always to emphasize the fullness and complexity of social and political life; instead of labor in the abstract, which we recognize in its commodified form as “labor-power,” anthropology has produced exquisite inventories of concrete laboring activities and the “cultural” content of productive work; against the impermanence and mutability of lives characterized by their mobility, the ethnographic enterprise has been deeply attached to the sedentarist presuppositions of lasting settlement, dwelling, and “community”; and contrary to the task of apprehending space on a global scale, ethnographic study has been overwhelmingly localized and place-bound. Rethinking these elementary premises of the ethnographic endeavor and situating these critical concepts at the center of our epistemological frameworks are crucial theoretical and practical tasks for any meaningful social inquiry today. In this regard, the Marxian theoretical arsenal is simply indispensable. But, in the derisive words of so many disciplinary forebears and overseers, is this properly “anthropological”? The prospective convergence of genuinely critical sociopolitical inquiry with the techniques and insights of anthropology must remain for us the locus of an urgent problem—an open question on an open horizon.     

Slashing the Complacent Eye: Luis Buñuel and the Surrealist Documentary

Land Without Bread [1932] has always been misunderstood. The film incorporates both documentary and Surrealist traditions and has been considered highly problematic as an ethnographic film. Viewers are still perplexed and even outraged by the insensitivity of the portrayal of the residents of Las Hurdes, a remote region in the western interior of Spain where living conditions in the 1930s resembled those in the Third World. In this article I examine the history of the film's creation in the contexts of both documentary/ethnographic film and Surrealism. I argue that the point of the film is to mock both the complacent viewer and filmmakers who construct colonialist documents; and also that ethnographic filmmaking today still has not fully rid itself of an inherent colonialism that has always characterized the genre.     

Early Ethnographic Film in Britain: A Reflection on the Work of Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf

A brief history points up the relative scarcity of ethnographic film made by British anthropologists in the 20th century. The reasons for this were the difficulty and expense of filmmaking until recent years, and a theoretical disinterest in filmmaking, leading to a limited opportunity to capture visually the last tribal worlds. The importance of Fürer-Haimendorf's collection of films thus stands out. The conditions which made his work in India, the North-East Frontier and Nepal possible are discussed, with an outline of his filming and written ethnographies. Why was he interested in film? Fürer-Haimendorf's technical ability with film and photography combined with an emotional sensibility are key. Not fully a man of his time, he avoided the abstract and anti-materialist phase in anthropological theory. An interview with Fürer-Haimendorf and his views on film are presented; and we see that the role of Betty Fürer-Haimendorf was crucial. We conclude with a brief consideration of his attitudes and, in his later life, the role of the BBC and the professionalization of anthropological filmmaking.     

Chronicle of a summer and the editing of cinema‐verite

Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin's Chronicle of a Summer is held up as an innovative, seminal “work in the formation of cinéma‐vérité, and has a central position in the development of documentary and ethnographic filmmaking. Although much has been written about fthis film, little attention has been paid to the film's construction. This paper examines ‘elements of the editing structure of Chronicle of a Summer both to consider how this “work was shaped given the constraints of its production and intended reception and to ¦ analyze a relatively neglected aspect of documentary film practice.     

The Sublime Splendor of Intimidation: Outlaw Biker Aesthetics of Power

Terror, Edmund Burke argued, is the “common stock of everything that is sublime,” capable of producing delight when held at a certain distance. What puzzled Burke was the question of “how any species of delight can be derived from a cause so apparently contrary to it.” I suggest that we may look for an ethnographic answer to this question among the supporters, hangers-on and diverse admirers of outlaw bikers, who take pleasure in being exposed, albeit at a safe distance, to the sublime splendor of the biker’s power of intimidation. Grounded in ethnographic research among outlaw bikers in central Europe, analysis of popular visual culture and biker literature, this article argues that “sublime experience” is one of the indispensable ingredients of the aesthetics of power of the outlaw bikers.     

The cinema and social science: A survey of ethnographic and sociological films∗

It is with great pleasure that Visual Anthropology reprints excerpts from one of the major texts in our field, Luc de Heusch's monograph, “The Cinema and Social Science: A Survey of Ethnographic and Sociological Films.” First published in English in 1962 in UNESCO's series on the social sciences, the monograph has been out of print and difficult to locate for a number of years. It is being reprinted here so that we might better understand the historical development of visual anthropology by again having access to this classic.

The editor would like to thank Professor de Heusch and the rights and permissions unit of the Unesco Press for allowing us to make this work again available. We have omitted Chapter 5, “Brief Outline of the History of the Ethnographic and Sociological Film,” and Chapter 6, “Use of the Film in Ethno‐Sociological Research and the University Teaching of Social Sciences.”     

Playing primitive: “In the land of the headhunters” and/or “war canoes”

Edward Curtis's 1914 film of the Kwakiutl of British Columbia is analyzed from the perspective of early ("primitive") cinema and the avant‐garde. The original film, In the Land of the Headhunters, is recontextualized and compared both to Nanook of the North and fiction filmmaking of the silent period; the restored film, In the Land of the War Canoes, is considered from the perspective of ethnographic spectatorship and native reappropriation of colonialist texts. As an allegory of the “salvage paradigm,” Curtis's ethnography is positioned within a postmodernist discourse on cultural representation.     

From Vues to Ethnofiction: French Ethnographic Filmmaking in Africa before Jean Rouch

This article offers an overview of the very substantial body of films of ethnographic interest produced by French filmmakers working in Africa before Jean Rouch arrived on the scene. It identifies a number of genres. For the first two decades this work largely took the form of short films of reportage, mostly shot in North and West Africa by anonymous operators working for newsreel agencies. Then, in the 1920s, longer and technically more complex films based on transregional and even transcontinental expeditions began to appear. Films offering an inventory of cultural traditions in particular French colonies also emerged in this decade. Also to be considered are films based on extended field research, from the 1930s onwards. We conclude with a brief analysis of the originality of Jean Rouch as he developed a new form of ethnographic filmmaking in the late 1940s.     

The cultural construction of gendered bodies: Biology and metaphors of production and destruction*

One way of conceiving of the anthropological task is that of countering the degradations and “dehumanizations” of the “other” to which the species is prone by promoting “transcendent humanization.” However efficiently and professionally anthropologists gather their materials and form them into their ethnographic and ethnologic analyses, may not this “ethical impulse” be postulated as the “final cause” of our efforts? But what could such a sonorous phrase mean ? And what is its relationship to the systematic study of the “differences that make or do not make a difference” in culture to which anthropology has long been devoted? I will argue that it involves a dynamic of categories and that this dynamic is itself an object of systematic study. Recently, for example, some anthropologists have been writing “against culture,” seeing the culture concept and associated theory more as barriers than as benefits to pan‐human understanding. I will argue that this is an instance of “transcendent humanization.” One cannot but be sympathetic to the thrust and merits of this argument. But at the same time one wants to ask what implications it holds for the systematic study and understanding of the other. This article, then, examines some elementary vectors in the “dynamic of the categorical” involved in these and related recent debates which also may be seen in terms of transcendence and humanization: the debate over relativism and the recently emergent debate over “enlightenment mythmaking” in anthropology.     

The “ethnographic surrealism” of Jean Rouch

Using James Clifford's notion of “ethnographic surrealism,” this paper focuses on the “surrealist” features of the film work of Jean Rouch. First, drawing extensively from an interview held with Rouch in May 1988, I outline the influence that the “ethnographic surrealism” of the 1930s had on Rouch. I then go on to discuss “surrealism” in Rouch's use of the camera, choice of subject matter, techniques of narration, and relationship to his subject. I conclude by demonstrating that Rouch's current work at the Cinémathèque Française and the Comité du Film Ethnographique offer excellent examples of his ability to cross disciplinary boundaries and thus extend the original spirit of “ethnographic surrealism” into the present.     

From Bachelor Threat to Fraternal Security: Male Associations and Modular Organization in Human Societies

Humans live in modular societies with a minimum of two levels of organization, the conjugal family and the local community. Yet any human community is likely to contain at least one other social unit whose evolutionary significance has not always been recognized: a same-sex association, such as a men’s “club” or “brotherhood.” The purpose of this article is to explore the role of all-male associations in relation to the conjugal families that are often taken to be the main constituents of human groups. What has been called bachelor threat in other mammalian species is a major problem in human societies, which may include follower males as well as all-male units. Yet tensions between married men and bachelors are often eclipsed by the need for warriors to defend the local community. The ethnographic record includes many cases in which fraternal security takes precedence over conjugal bonds, resulting in the physical segregation of the sexes, including husbands and wives. At the extreme, a husband usually sleeps at a men’s house while making regular visits to his conjugal family. Though this pattern is classically associated with tribal Amazonia and Melanesia, it is seen here as part of a continuum of variation in small-scale societies worldwide. These societies reflect a series of historical compromises, it is argued, between bachelors and elders, on the one hand, and between men’s associations and conjugal families, on the other.     

Mystery of mysteries: Darwin and the species problem

Darwin offered an intriguing answer to the species problem. He doubted the existence of the species category as a real category in nature, but he did not doubt the existence of those taxa called “species”. And despite his scepticism of the species category, Darwin continued using the word “species”. Many have said that Darwin did not understand the nature of species. Yet his answer to the species problem is both theoretically sound and practical. On the theoretical side, Darwin’s answer is confirmed by contemporary biology, and it offers a more satisfactory answer to the species problem than recent attempts to save the species category. On the practical side, Darwin’s answer frees us from the search for the correct theoretical definition of “species”. But at the same time it does not require that we banish the word “species” from biology as some recent sceptics of the species category advocate. © The Willi Hennig Society 2010.     

Civilization,wilderness and secrecy: Making two Nigerian films

This paper draws on fieldwork and filmmaking experiences and explores the interpretive process shared between the object, filmmaker, and audience. Mammy Water: In Search of the Water Spirits in Nigeria [1989] is the result of extensive field research and close collaboration between the local community, the researcher/filmmaker and team. Mammy Water priviledges local views on the subject over the academic discourse taking place elsewhere. This has evoked diverse reactions. Some miss the (Western) analytical level, others engage in the discourse itself, or assume the film's own position. The issue of cultural perspective is carried even further in cinematography. Both films discussed here were made not only in close collaboration with African communities but also photographed by an African cinematographer, Alhaji Yusufu Mohammed. His camera evokes diametrically opposed reactions from African and Western viewers. Where Westerners perceive “distance”, African audiences perceive “closeness”, where Westerners perceive a scene as “staged”, African audiences perceive it as “natural”. This contrast of perception is further highlighted in Owu: Chidi Joins the Okoroshi Secret Society [1991], mostly filmed by Alhaji, but complemented by two video inserts by my daughter, Saskia Jell, who produced additional behind‐the‐scenes footage in Coming to Nigeria.

Reviewers have raised another important topic. Owu points to three different levels of secrecy surrounding the masquerade and initiation into Oguta's Okoroshi society. This in turn raises questions on if and how to represent secrecy and the dichotomy between civilization and wilderness on film.

A discussion of post‐production at the IWF introduces a negative dimension and questions the undue impact of politics, German rigidity, and other impediments.

In conclusion, my films are strongly grounded in long‐term field research, and indebted to the people whose cultures I have researched, as well as to Alhaji Yusufu Mohammed's cinematic representation. Situated between Africa and the Western world, my films contain elements of both African and Western cultures, as they attempt to mediate between them. 1 am looking to the genre of ethnographic film primarily for its effort to create meaning in interpreting and representing cultures, for its position between the cultural worlds, and for its possibilities for transcultural communication. This goal could be served by a plurality of methods, different film styles, and varied authors within the same genre.