Heinz Forthmann e Darcy Ribeiro: cinema documentário no Serviço de Proteção aos Índios, SPI, 1949-1959. Doutorado em Multimeios. Campinas.
Available as a pdf via this link.
East African footage (1906) – Karl Weule *
Karl Weule shot 38 short films during the course of a research trip in 1906 to the region around Lindi in southern Tanganyika, German East Africa (today Tanzania). A particular focus of this material was dance, though this was not spontaneous, but rather performed for the camera at Weule’s request.
This material was not viewed for The Silent Time Machine project, but from the account given by Wolfgang Fuhrmann, it is clear that its technical quality was very limited. Weule had no previous experience, nor training as a film-maker, and it appears that he had difficulty in framing the subjects and exposing the film correctly. The images were often unstable.
Although Weule himself thought the results were ‘superb’, this view was apparently not shared by the Ernemann company that had supplied him with the equipment, since they concluded that only 12 out of the 38 films were worth developing. In Weule’s view, however, around 2/3 of the films were of acceptable quality and according to his account, these were all much appreciated by non-specialist audiences.
Text : Fuhrmann 2015, pp. 133-148.
Fuhrmann, Wolfgang (2015)
Imperial Projections: Screening the German colonies. Berghahn: Oxford and New York.
Weule, Karl (1864-1926)*
Karl Weule was a German geographer and ethnologist. Having studied at Leipzig and Göttingen Universities, he became an assistant to Adolf Bastian at the Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin. In 1899, he was appointed the assistant director of the Museum für Völkerkunde in Leipzig (today part of the Grassi Museum complex), and in 1907, he became its director.
The year before, in 1906, Weule went on a research expedition to Lindi in what is today southern Tanzania, during which he shot 38 short films and made phonograph sound recordings. In making these films, he concentrated particularly on dances, performed for the camera at his request.
However, Weule had had no prior training, nor any previous experience, and from the description of his film work provided by Wolfgang Luhrmann, it is clear that the technical quality of his film-making was very limited.
Text : Fuhrmann 2015, pp. 133-148.
Dunlop, Ian (1979)
Ethnographic film-making in Australia: the first seventy years (1898-1968). Aboriginal History 3(1-2): 111-119.
Reprinted in 1983 in Studies in Visual Communication 9(1): 11-18.
The original article can be downloaded for free here.
Brownlow, Kevin (1980)
Silent films. What was the right speed? Sight and Sound, Summer 1980, pp. 164-67.
An on-line version can be accessed here.
Stone Age People in New Guinea, A, footage (1936-37) – Beatrice Blackwood
26 mins, b&w (sepia), silent
Production : Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford
Source : this material may be viewed here.
Beatrice Blackwood was one of the few women to shoot ethnographic film footage before the Second World War. At the time that she shot this material in 1936-37, she was a member of staff of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford.
The principal purpose of her trip to the highland interior of Morobe Province in New Guinea was to make a collection of the artefacts produced by the Anga people (then often referred to as the ‘Kukukuku’), in particular their stone tools. She shot the film footage, not to make a free-standing film as such, but simply to document how Anga artefacts were made with a view to using this footage for research purposes or to support the display of the material that she brought back.
In addition to the making of stone tools and other artefacts, Blackwood also shoot footage on a number of other topics, including fire-making, women working in their yam gardens and looking after their children, as well everyday views of village life. A particularly intriguing sequence shows some boys swinging bull roarers in the forest prior to an initiation ceremony though, sadly, she was not then permitted to film the ceremony itself.
The final part of Blackwood’s material concerns various groups living around Salamaua, on the coast of Morobe Province, and across the sea on the southwestern shore of New Britain. Topics of particular interest covered in this part of the footage include the manufacture of barkcloth and the binding of a baby’s head in order to elongate it. Her footage concludes with the dramatic arrival by canoe of some splendidly decorated men who have come to celebrate the coronation of King George VI at a ceremony organised by the local colonial district officer.
The camera that Blackwood was using, the 16mm Simplex Pockette was designed for the amateur market, and was advertised as being the first commercial camera that took pre-loaded cassettes of film. However, being an amateur model, the lens was not of superior quality, which would account for the somewhat soft images of Blackwood’s material. It is also unlikely that she had had any training in the use of the camera.
But regardless of its technical deficencies, Blackwood’s footage is neverthless of both ethnographic and historical interest.
For further background see the film Captured by Women, directed by Alison Kahn, also available on the Pitt Rivers Museum website here.
Rutz, Werner (1963)
Theodor Koch-Grünberg, Pionier der völkerkundlichen Filmarbeit in Südamerika. Mitt. d. Institut für den Wissenschaftlichen Film 16: 5-6.
Rassool, Ciraj (2015)
Re-storing the Skeletons of Empire: Return, Reburial and Rehumanisation in Southern Africa. Journal of Southern African Studies 41(3): 653-70.
Link to article: DOI: 10.1080/03057070.2015.1028002
Niles, Don (2000)
Comments. In the booklet accompanying the CD collection, Papua New Guinea (1904-1909): the Collections of Rudolf Pöch, Wilhelm Schmidt and Josef Winthuis, pp. 16-142. Series 3, Sound Documents from the Phonogrammarchiv of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna.
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