Ethnographic Film History and Relationship Between Filmmakers and Anthropologists - Essay Example

Ethnographic film History and Relationship between a filmmaker and Anthropologist. These are the film that relate to ethnology methods. Initially ethnographers documented their professional work in films during their field studies. Technology has changed, and film makers make them in digital and video media. Their main aim involves study of a people’s culture and non-anthropologists also produce them. There have been a lot of disagreement on views on how to define them and their role in the anthropological discipline. There has no actual date that states the origin of this film. The initial instances of these films were the footages that projectionists and film makers took during their travels. They took footages of distant cultures in the places they visited. Colonizers also used them to educate the countries they colonized during their travels. They viewed them later during the journey or after returning home. Some argue that they begum in 1895 when Lumiere shown his film named ‘Arrival of Train’. During that time, the travelling agents also shown their clips during their travel. However, the anthropologist disagrees that this inspired the production of ethnographic films. They claim that the people who acted this film did not have acting experience and non-western. The cultures of this people had no exposure to the modern world and lived in the non-urban area. These factors disregard that these films originated during that time. After the First World War museums and universities started using ethnological films in their anthropological teachings. Commercial producers such as Paul Fejos trained anthropologists on how to use filming tools during their researches. They also collaborated with institutions and museums to produce high quality movies (Beate 67). Robert J Flaherty produced and shown his film “Nanook of the North’ in 1920. The film consisted of documentaries and stage crafts. He intended to naturalistically to portray people who lived in the arctic regions. He did not have any anthropology background but the subjects in his movie interacted with him well. People saw his pictures portray the unknown Eskimo way of life real. This made him the godfather of ethnological films together with his previous films he had recorded. Later in Gregory and Mead released their film ‘Hunter’. It documented the complex rituals that take place in New Guinea. This became the most viewed ethnographic films in different American institutions. Other ethnographic films that followed: Napoleon Chagnon, The story of a Kung Woman and The Feast. Marcel, Dieterlen and Rouch flourished production of ethnographic films in France. Discovery of 16mm cameras and light tape-recorders led to evolution of Visual anthropology. Then followed enhancement of filming techniques in visual anthropology by Rouch. Then Robert and Karl introduced editing and filming as a serious research technique. Then ‘Dead Birds’, a film produced later combined all these enhancements during its filming and production. In 1970’s, Judith and MacDougall started to produce ethnographic films with subtitles. Later different production techniques such as reflex ion and experimental montages become introduced in filming of ethnographic films by Minh-Ha. These summarize a brief history of how ethnographic films evolved in the world. There have been conflicts between the filmmakers and the archaeologist. Archaeologists argue that the ethnological films they produce do not satisfy the required criteria. Lack of scientific knowledge among the filmmakers contributes to this problem. They further argue that the filmmakers only primarily concerned with meeting documentary film conventions. This makes them not to meet the convention of ethnological films. These conventions require their images and sound tracks to be anthropological in nature. The film makers depend on verbal or written words to make their films anthropological. This again makes them fail to meet the conventions of ethnological films. They also borrow artistic or humanistic ideas from documentaries and other films which had no anthropological purposes. This makes ethnological films not to be original or exclusive in their nature. This makes them portrays visual style in documentaries similar to those in ethnological films. The archaeologists argue that visual styles in the ethnological films should be different and scientific in nature. For instance, the sound tracks in films such as ‘The Winter Sea Ice’ borrowed from the documentary film traditions. The film does not translate the Eskimos dialogues. According to the archaeologists there should be an anthropological translation of the film. Some of the confusion the film makers exhibit might be inherited from ethnographic writers who made similar mistakes. They argue that the film makers should correct the confusion in their work. The ethnographic film should contain the elements of culture as exhibited in the archaeological work. Failure to observe with other things such description of the culture fails to meet the conventions required. From this, we can see the archaeologist criticize the film maker for their failure to meet the conventions required for an ethnological film. They require a scientist to produce films that should be scientific in nature. According to the film makers most of the anthropologist do not participate in making of the film. They provide written materials for them to produce. They also use the archives and archaeological information available to them when producing this films. In the past institution such as Harvard has collaborated with the film makers during the making of the films (Beate 78). Documentaries have mean different things to filmmakers and anthropologists. Anthropologist intended to share their data with each another. For instance, ‘Mead and Bateson intended to share their research data with other scholars in the world during production of their. They produced ‘Bathing Babies’ in 1942 for this purpose. These followed Production of ethological films by Ray Birdwhistell on the dance as a cultural behavior. He intended to share his research data with other researchers. Different organizations have started to archive and share information on documentaries. For example, Smithsonian Institution archive and provide information about filmed human behaviors. These facilitates passing information to different people since people watch Cultural film footages in this archives examine their culture. There exist so many written theories in relation to the human culture that exists in archaeological literature. The archaeologists want to visualize these theories to make them more relevant and understandable to people. They achieve this through the use of films and other visual media such as pictures. They also want to amuse the public during their teachings. Archaeologists observed visual media attracts people. They developed an interest in teaching the public using documentaries. Most of The institutions use visual media to teach. The Education-film movements started practicing this since 1920 (Beate 12). Works Cited Engelbrecht, Beate. Memories of the Origins of Ethnographic Film. Frankfurt am Main [u.a.: Lang, 2007. Print. Read More