The Village,a Transitional Film

The Village, probably the first observational film to have been completed, is a “transitional” film made in 1968 at UCLA. This was during a period of creative ferment there when the departments of Theater Arts and of Anthropology came together to explore the possibility of working out a new film language that would enable the production of films that might be more useful to anthropology. This article examines what this film offers that was new at the time, and considers to what extent it was also rooted in old forms.