25 mins., b&w, silent (but with later voice-over annotation by Robert Haupt)
Source : NAFC Collection no. AS-80.3.1. A clip is viewable here.
This footage was shot by an American school-teacher based in India, Robert Haupt. Along with miscellaneous sequences on diverse subjects such as his own school, his hunting expeditions and the London to Melbourne air race, it also incorporates some sequences of ethnographic interest, including various scenes from a mela at Allahabad and then at another festival at Nagpur, in which sadhus subject themselves to various forms bodily self-mortification (walking on coals, suspension from hooks in their backs).
Other scenes include a brass carver in Jaipur, street scenes in Mumbai, everyday village life and various shots of fishing boats and women engaged in heavy manual labour in Goa. The NAFC also hold an audio recording of Haupt speaking to the images, identifying and commenting on the subject matter.
Matthew Stirling at the Tombe camp in the West Papua Highlands 1926.
Matthew Stirling studied anthropology under Alfred Kroeber at the University of California, graduating in 1920. He is best known in ethnographic film history for By Aeroplane to Pygmyland, the footage that he shot while leading the Dutch-American expedition to New Guinea in 1926.
However, this corresponded to what was merely an early and transitory phase in a lengthy career that was mostly dedicated to Mesoamerican archaeology, a subject about which he also made a number of films.
Technically accomplished but mute footage of music-making, first in Angola, and then in French West Africa. Includes some remarkable images of xylophone players in Angola, and of dancing among the Dogon of Sangha in present-day Mali, including not only their well-known masked dancing, but also a particularly interesting sequence of women dancing with calabash gourd drums, a form that to the best of our knowledge does not appear in the later films of Marcel Griaule and Jean Rouch.
Umutina man, upper Paraguay river, Mato Grosso – photographed by José Louro, 1922. [Acervo do Museo do Índio/ FUNAI – Brasil, CRNV294].
José Louro Fernandes, usually referred to simply as José Louro, was a Brazilian photographer and film-maker who worked over a twenty year period, from 1915 to 1935, mostly for government organisations directed by Colonel (later General) Cândido Rondon. In the early years of the 20th century, Rondon was a major figure in Brazilian public life, having played a leading role in the ‘opening up’ of the Amazonian interior of the country, first as head of his own Rondon Commission, and later as the director of the Inspetoria de Fronteiras.
In 1928, Louro made No Río Içana, which primarily concerns the Wanano people of the Uaupés river in the upper Rio Negro region, in the extreme northwest of Brazil, on the border with Colombia. From an ethnographic point of view, with the exception of Luiz Thomaz Reis’s work, Rituais e festas borôro(1917), this is the most interesting film produced in Brazilian Amazonia prior to the Second World War. For this reason, it was chosen as the film that runs permanently on the About page of the Silent Time Machine website. Sadly, it also seems to have been the only film that Louro made.
The biographical documentation for Louro is scant and it has not been possible to discover anything about his personal background, dates of birth or death, nor even identify a photograph of him. What is clear, however, is that unlike many of those who worked on the projects associated with Rondon, Louro was not a member of the Brazilian military, but rather a civilian photographer by profession. His participation in Rondon’s projects also appears to have been intermittent.
When Louro was first recruited to the Rondon Commission, it was to work as a photographer. He showed from the beginning that he was not only both technically and aesthetically highly skilled, but also had the rare ability to establish a close rapport with his indigenous subjects. Of all the many photographers who worked on the projects associated with Rondon, he was surely the most talented.
Takwatib headman Timóteo, Jiparana River, 1915 (Rondon 1946, p.152)Woman of Timóteo’s group, Jiparana River, 1915 (Rondon 1946, p.153).
Louro’s first photographs were taken in the course of expeditions in 1915-1916 and 1919 to the headwaters of the Jamari, Jiparana and Cautario rivers in what is now Rondônia in the extreme west of the country, close to the Bolivian border. In the course of these expeditions, Louro produced some remarkable images of the indigenous groups of these regions, many of which were only then entering into contact with the outside world, and many of which, as result of disease and the depredations of extractive industries, have since become extinct. Among these groups were the Takwatib (Tacuatepe), two of whom are shown in the images above.
Some years later, in 1922, Louro was commissioned to take a series of photographs of the telegraph stations set up by the Rondon Commission throughout Rondônia and adjacent headwater regions in Mato Grosso. In the course of doing so, he also took further striking photographs of the Paresí (Ariti, Haliti), the Nambikwara and the Umutina (see the image at the head of this entry).
Paresí hunter holding a device to which he attached foliage as a hide when approaching animals, Utiariti, 1922 (Rondon 1946, p.99).
Louro was clearly greatly appreciated by the Rondon Commission at this point since in the collection of its photographs that it published in 1922 to celebrate the centenary of Brazilian independence, the number of photographs by Louro is greater than that of any of the other twelve named photographers whose work is included there. However, there then appears to have been an interlude in his participation in Rondon’s projects.
It seems that it was only in 1927, when he was recruited to the Inspetoria de Fronteiras as an assistant to the film-maker Luiz Thomaz Reis, that Louro began making films. In the first year of his appointment, while Reis was engaged in making Viagem ao Roroimã with Rondon on the frontier with Venezuela (see the filmography of Reis here), Louro was sent on a smaller, subsidiary expedition up the nearby Uraricoera River, during the course of which he took some magnificent photographs of Ninam Yanomami (‘Xirianá’) and Ye’kuana (‘Maiongong’). He may also have carried out a limited amount of filming.
The following year, 1928, while Reis went to make another film with Rondon, Parimã, about the frontier regions with the French and Dutch Guianas, Louro was again assigned to a subsidiary expedition, this time led by Major (later Marshall) Boanerges Lopes de Sousa, to the upper Rio Negro. It was during this expedition that Louro shot No Rio Içana. This showed him to be as talented a cinematographer as Reis, if not more so.
Louro also participated in the expeditions led by Rondon in 1929-1930 along the Araguaia River and the frontiers of Mato Grosso do Sul and Paraná in the southwest of the country. During these trips, he took photographs of the Kadiweu and Kaiowa as well as of frontier installations and natural phenomena, including some extraordinary wide angle images of Iguazu Falls. He may also have assisted Reis on the two films that he made during the course of those expeditions, Posto Alves de Barros and Matto Grosso e Paraná. What is certain is that, unfortunately, Louro made no films of his own.
Caduveo, Mato Grosso do Sul, 1930 (Rondon 1946, p.320).
In February 1935, Louro was appointed as a cinematographer by the Inspetoria Especial de Fronteiras, the organisation that succeeded the inspectorate led by Rondon which had come to end with his resignation for political reasons in 1930. However, only five months later, in July 1935, Louro was replaced, for unspecified reasons, by Reis’s daughter Argentina, without seemingly having made any films.
It has not been possible to establish any details of José Louro’s life after that point.
Developed in France in the interwar period. Instead of having perforations down the side of the film strip, it had a single perforation in the horizontal band between the frames of the film strip.
This was the format used for the Baby-Pathé series.
The cameraman Roger Dumas was sent to India by Albert Kahn in 1927-28, mainly to film the golden jubilee of his friend, the Maharajah of Karputhala, Jagatjit Singh Bahadur. However while he was there he also visited various other places in India, mostly the palaces of other Maharajahs, but also Amritsar and Benares (today Varanasi).
This film appears to have been edited by Georges Thibaud on the basis of Dumas’ footage, and released by the Musée Albert-Kahn in 1985. Thibaud also appears to have edited another film about the the golden jubilee event filmed by Dumas, which was also released by the Musée Albert-Kahn in 1985.
This film offers a general portrait of Varanasi that begins with scenes of everyday life – the ghats, clothes washing, unloading of sand and wood, a snake charmer – and an account of the history of the city through inter titles, including the invasion of the city by Muslims in the 12th century. This is followed by scenes around a Hindu temple, and a sequence contrasting the cremation of the rich and the poor.
The film ends, curiously, with a sequence showing the construction of a mosque with mud bricks. It has been suggested that this sequence was not actually filmed in Varanasi by Dumas, but rather in the vicinity of Karputhala (Deprez 2017: 212)
The website of the Musée Albert-Kahn refers here to Indes divines, described as a montage of rushes shot by Dumas in India, but also possibly by Stéphane Passet, another Archives de la planète cameraman who travelled in India for two months in December 1913 and January 1914.
Female dancer dressed as a male character (as indicated by the raised epaulette) – ‘Les danseuses de S.M. Sisowath, roi de Cambodge’ (1920s) – Anon
6:18 mins., b&w, silent.
Production : ICF (Indochine Cinémas et Film), the French colonial government film production company
Source: this film can be viewed here. It is also held by the NAFC, where the catalogue number is AS-89.2.12
This film shows performances by the Royal Ballet of Cambodia – traditionally composed almost exclusively of female dancers – shot in three different locations: outside in a tropical garden, then on a roof terrace, finally inside what appears to be a palace room with mirrors (one shot shows the camerman reflected in the mirror, busily turning the handle of his camera).
This is a much more substantial corps de ballet than in the Coomaraswamy films, and the dancers are accompanied by a considerable number of musicians with xylophones. The quality of the film production suggests professional involvement: in the latter part of the film, there are many striking close-up shots of hands, feet, costumes, faces. However, while being technically superior to the Coomaraswamy films, this film is in some ways less interesting from an ethnographic point of view since it does not follow the performance of particular legends.
On the YouTube site where this film is available, it is proposed that it was made in the ‘early 1900s’, which may be influenced by the fact that King Sisowath’s Royal Ballet performed at a colonial exhibition in Marseilles in 1901. However, the location is clearly in Cambodia, and is probably the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh, while the quality of both the film stock and the shooting suggests a much later date, though certainly before 1927, since Sisowath died in that year.
Although there are no credits, it is possible that the film was shot by Brut and/or Lejards, two skilled Pathé cameramen who were in Phnom Penh around this time while shooting À travers Cochonchine et Cambodge, an extended reportage film released in 1925. This also features a very well executed sequence of the Royal Ballet dancers.
For all these reasons, the 1925 date suggested in the NAFC catalogue seems appropriate.
The Cambodian Royal Ballet corps continued to perform until it was dispersed by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, and many of the performers perished during the ensuing genocide. But with the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, the corps was recreated and in 2003 the ballet form was added to the UNESCO list of examples of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. For further details see here.
The giant Seng Hum – a character in ‘Cambodian Dramatic Dances: the Story of Prince Chet Chey’ (1920) – dir. Ananda Coomaraswamy
12:14 mins., b&w, silent.
Source : this film can be viewed here. It can also be seen as part of the Ananda Coomaraswamy Film Collection at the NAFC, where it is available as part of the film AS-89.2.1Cambodian Dramatic Dances. This also includes a dance based on the legend of Prea Somut and his elopement with Princess Butsumali, described here.
This film shows a performance by the Royal Cambodian Ballet, apparently in the grounds of the Angkor Wat temple complex, of the legend of Prince Chey Chet and the quarrel between his jealous wives. The performers are from a hereditary cast of dancers and as was customary, they are all prepubescent girls, even those performing the male roles. The troupe is relatively few in number, and there is only one accompanying xylophone player, indicating that this was probably put on specifically for Ananda Coomaraswamy.
The film begins with a lengthy inter title explaining the context of the film with the aid of a series of stills of some of the performers. A seccond, shorter inter title, apparently produced on a typewriter, reveals that ‘the photography’ was by Ananda Coomaraswamy himself. The film then follows the story of the legend with the aid of further inter titles produced on a typewriter. The quality of the cinematography is uneven, with many jump cuts, but the film still manages to capture the grace of the dancers and the general flavour of the story.
This is one of a series of films that Coomaraswamy made in the course of a trip around various Asian countries accompanied by his then lover and later wife, the dancer Stella Bloch, an American of Polish-Jewish heritage.
The Cambodian Royal Ballet corps continued to perform until it was dispersed by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, and many of the performers perished during the ensuing genocide. But with the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, the corps was recreated and in 2003 the ballet form was added to the UNESCO list of examples of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. For further details see here
Princess Butsumali and Prea Somut resolve to elope – ‘Cambodian Dramatic Dances’ (1920) – dir. Ananda Coomaraswamy
9 mins., b&w, silent.
Source : this film can be viewed on the web here. It can also be seen as part of the Ananda Coomaraswamy Film Collection at the NAFC, where it is available as part of the film AS-89.2.1Cambodian Dramatic Dances, which also includes a dance based on the legend of Prince Chey Chet and the jealousy between his two wives, described here.
This film shows a performance by the Royal Cambodian Ballet – evidently in the grounds of the ancient palace of Angkor Wat – of the legend of the elopement of Prea Somut with the Princess Bustumali. The performers are from a hereditary cast of dancers and as was customary, they are all prepubescent girls, even those performing the male roles. This appears to be an informal performance put on at the request of the filmmaker, Ananda Coomoraswamy : the dancers are relatively few in number and there is only one player of an accompanying xylophone.
The film was shot by Coomaraswamy himself, as the opening titles reveal. Though the resolution of the image is a little murky, the technical quality is reasonable for the period, with a variety of shots. It follows the story of the legend with the aid of inter titles which have clearly been produced on a typewriter.
This is one of a series of films that Coomaraswamy made in the course of a trip around various Asian countries accompanied by his then lover and later wife, the dancer Stella Bloch, an American of Polish-Jewish heritage.
The Cambodian Royal Ballet corps continued to perform until it was dispersed by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, and many of the performers perished during the ensuing genocide. But with the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, the corps was recreated and in 2003 the ballet form was added to the UNESCO list of examples of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. For further details see here.
Ananda Coomaraswamy in 1916, shortly before he started making his films about Asian dance
Ananda Coomaraswamy’s contribution to the history of ethnographic film consists of a series of films about Asian dance that he shot himself in the 1920s. These films now form part of the Ananda Coomaraswamy Film Collection housed by the NAFC in Washington.
Of mixed Anglo-Tamil descent and brought up in England, Ananda Coomaraswamy trained initially as a geologist at University College, London. But while carrying out doctoral fieldwork in Sri Lanka in 1902-06, he became interested in Sinhalese art and returned to London committed to the idea of educating Western audiences about the art of the Indian sub-continent. This led eventually to his appointment to a curatorial position as Keeper of Indian Art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, USA, in 1917. Thereafter he would become an internationally renowned writer, not only on Indian art, but more generally on the philosophy of art, metaphysics and religion.
Stella Bloch in Asian dance costume
Shortly after he arrived in the US, Coomaraswamy came to know Stella Bloch, a dancer of Jewish-Polish ancestry, who was associated with Isadora Duncan’s dance troupe in New York, and who also had a particular interest in Asian dance. They married in 1922.
Even before then, in the autumn of 1920, Coomaraswamy and Bloch travelled extensively through Asia, studying local dance traditions in India, Sri Lanka, Java, Bali, Cambodia, China and Japan. It was probably during this trip that Coomaraswamy began to make his films about Asian dance. They travelled through Asia again in 1924 and it seems that Coomaraswamy shot further films during this second trip.
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