Grass before Kong – “Natives” in the films of Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack. In Joshua A. Bell, Alison K. Brown, and Robert J. Gordon, eds., Recreating First Contact: Expeditions, Anthropology, and Popular Culture, pp.55-71. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press.
Evans, Brad and Aaron Glass, eds. (2014)
Return to the Land of the Head Hunters: Edward S. Curtis, the Kwakạwakạ’wakw and the Making of Modern Cinema. Bill Holm Center for the Study of Northwest Art in association with University of Washington Press.
aspect ratio
‘Aspect ratio’ refers to the relationship between the width of an image and its height. From the earliest days of cinema, the standard ratio was 4:3. This was later accepted as the industry standard by the Academy of Performing Arts in Hollywood (the body that awards the ‘Oscars’), so it is sometimes referred to as the ‘Academy’ ratio.
When television began in the 1930s, it also adopted the 4:3 ratio as standard. After the Second World War when cinema started to move towards more wide-screen formats, television continued with the 4:3 ration. Most documentary films, whether they were made for television or not, also continued to be shot in a 4:3 ratio.
Eventually, in the 1990s, television also began to move towards more widescreen formats, and today 16:9 has become the standard both for television and for documentary film-making generally.
Throughout the period covered by The Silent Time Machine project, the standard aspect ratio for ethnographic film-making was 4:3.
diegetic, extra-diegetic, intra-diegetic
‘Diegesis’ refers to the world created by a theatrical work or a film. ‘Extra-diegetic’ refers to something that comes from outside that world.
In non-fiction film-making, the most common use of the term ‘extra-diegetic’ is in relation to music. If the music on the soundtrack has not been recorded in synch with the action of a given film, but is, rather, a piece that comes from elsewhere, i.e. if it has been recorded in a studio, or for some other purpose than for the film that is being made, then it is said to ‘extra-‘ or ‘non-diegetic’.
If the music on the soundtrack has been recorded at some point during the filming of a given film but is then used, out of synch, to cover a different sequence in that same film, it is sometimes referred to as ‘intra-diegetic’.
Burma: pwe festival (c.1925) – Ananda Coomaraswamy (?)
6 mins., b&w, silent (English intertitles)
Source : NAFC, Film no. AS-89.2.6.
This films documents the pwe festival that takes place on the occasion of the dedication of a house or a monastery in Myanmar (formerly Burma). The dancers, who are young girls, are accompanied by musicians playing drums, xylophones and flutes.
Tacked onto the end of the performance in the film, there is another section, preceded by a title simply saying ‘Burma’, which consists of a series of poor quality shots of day-to-day life in Pagan, the old Burmese capital.
This film forms part of the Ananda Coomaraswamy Film Collection, but there is no introductory title specifically indicating that Ananda Coomaraswamy himself shot it, as was the case with a number of other films in the collection. However, there are certain stylistic similarities, not least the lengthy explanatory inter title at the beginning of the film, as well as the highly descriptive wide-angle camera framing. On the other hand, the technical quality of the image is rather better than in many of the earlier Coomaraswamy films.
If Coomaraswamy did make this film, he would have done so on his second Asian tour, so either he had improved his technique by then or perhaps he asked someone more experienced or skilled to shoot it for him.
Holi Festival near Mathura (c.1924) – Ananda Coomaraswamy (?)
5:30 mins, b&w, silent
Source : NAFC, film no. AS-89.2.3.
This film forms part of the Ananda Coomaraswamy Film Collection at the NAFC. However, although there is an opening title, there is no specific preliminary title indicating that Coomaraswamy was responsible for the cinematography, as there is in a number of his other films.
This film documents the gathering of large crowds of Muslim pilgrims for a holi spring festival near the city of Mathura, in Uttar Pradesh, in northern India. It includes a range of shots of people arriving, of ferris wheels operated manually, of a man playing a large drum, of dancing.
In contrast to the performances in Coomaraswamy’s formal dance films, this is an event that was clearly happening under its own impetus and the filmmaker was not able to control it. Perhaps for this reason, the camerawork is even less accomplished than in these other films.
Yakkun Netuma: Devil Dancing in Ceylon (c.1920) – Ananda Coomaraswamy
4 mins., b&w, silent (English intertitles)
Source : NAFC, Film no. AS-89.2.2 (second part)
This film presents a form of dancing performed by professional dancers that is intended to cure the sick through a form of exorcism.
It was shot by Ananda Coomaraswamy himself and is technically weak. The film also ends before the dancing has ended. But the quality of the dancing itself is very impressive.
Indian Dramatic Dances (c.1920) – dir. Ananda Coomaraswamy
14 mins, b&w, silent (English intertitles)
Source : NAFC, Film no. AS-89.2.2 (first part)
Preliminary titles explain that the film will concern the training of young girls as dancers. It then offers some examples of dancing from Mathura in northern India and from Conjeevaran in southern India. The final example, which is very brief, is of Muslim Kashmiri girls dancing in a garden framed by a beautiful arch. The performances appear to have been put on specifically for the purposes of the film.
The film was ‘photographed’ by Ananda Coomaraswamy himself and the technical quality is uneven. However, some of the dance performances themselves are very impressive.
Delhi: Great Capital of India {Delhi: Die Grosse Stadt in Vorderindien} (1909) – Anon
Production : Pathé Frères
Source : can be viewed here
A beautifully shot film, that has been stencil-coloured, though some of the brightness of the original colours has been lost. Within a clear temporal narrative structure, it presents a series of moments during the celebration of Muharram, a major Muslim festival. This is in origin a Shiite festival at which, as seen in the film, models of the tombs of Hassan and Husayn, the martyred grandsons of the Prophet Muhammad, are carried through the streets.
After a brief initial establishment shot, probably taken from the minaret of the Jamia Masjid, or Great Mosque of Delhi, there are some preliminary shots of street performers before we see the parading of the models of the tombs. The second half of the film consists of a sequence inside the mosque, first showing worshippers in an intimate sequence as they wash their feet, then showing them from afar as they kneel in prayer within the mosque courtyard. The film concludes with a beautiful framing shot of the worshippers leaving the mosque (see above).
Although Muharram was ostensibly a Shiite festival, at the time that this film was made, many different groups – local neighbourhoods, craft guilds, castes, even associations of prostitutes – would have participated, which would explain why many of the models being carried in the film look more like Hindu temples than Islamic tombs.
In fact, it is unlikely that there were any Shiites present at all, since Delhi is overwhelmingly Sunni, and the Jamia Masjid is the principal Sunni mosque of the city. Certainly, Shiites would have been exasperated by the joyful carnival-like atmosphere of the procession shown in the film, as indicated by the presence of the acrobats and jugglers in the opening sequence.
In Indian cities in colonial times, there were often rival Muharram processions, with the Shiite processions being more sombre, as befitting what they considered to be, in effect, a funeral procession. Today, Muharram is no longer celebrated in Delhi since it has come to be seen as an exclusively Shiite festival.
[Many thanks to Faisal Devji, Reader in Indian History at the University of Oxford, for advising on these notes about the film]
Haupt, Robert (active 1933-37)*
Robert Haupt was an American teacher based at the Woodstock School for Missionaries’ Children in Landour, a hill-station close to Mussoorie, in the foothills of the Himalayas. Between 1933 and 1937, he travelled extensively around the India and what would become Pakistan, shooting some sequences of ethnographic interest in the process. Further details here.
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