Author: Paul Henley

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Beauty Salon in the Jungle {Skönhetssalongen i djungeln} (1936) – dir. Paul Fejos *

9:40 mins., b&w, sound – Swedish narration and titles.

Production : Svensk Filmindustri and Nordisk Film

Source : ?

This is one of several short films that Paul Fejos made in Madagascar.

The opening titles identify this film as being part of a series called Svarta horisonter (literally , black horizons) but the voice-over also distinguishes the film from the kind of film made in the past in Africa, that is “exotic travelogues with clear racist connotations”. However, this is pronounced over a short sequence in which a Swedish hunter is confronted by a rhinoceros, which he shoots dead, while his African porters climb a nearby tree.

The main body of film shows the daughter of a Bara chief having her hair styled. The voice-over adopts an ironic tone, but this is more sexist than racist in that when the chief’s daughter’s hair is being twisted into shape, it suggests that like their white “sisters”, African women are prepared to suffer to achieve a beautiful hair-style. The final part of the film shows what it claims is the current hair fashion of Anastosy men.

Text : Andersen (2017)

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Danses soudanaises [Dances of French Soudan] (early 1920s) – dir. J. Lejards *

The Hare mask – ‘Danses soudanaises’ – dir. J. Lejards

2:06 mins (Baby-Pathé version), b&w, silent – French titles and intertitles

Source : Stephendelroser playlist

A reportage film that shows a short playlet involving masked dancers as performed by the Dogon of the Bandiagara Escarpment in what is now Mali, but was then still the French Soudan (hence the title of the film).

Although the interpretation of the meaning of the playlet is dubious, the film offers some interesting shots of Dogon masks, including the Hare mask, above (erroneously identified in the film as being of a ‘little monkey’).

The film-maker, J. Lejards was a Pathé cameraman who made various films in West Africa, and also later in Cambodia and Andorra. This film was clearly shot on the same occasion as Les Danses Habés, which shows the masked dancing performed at a dama, the ceremony to bring a period of mourning to an end. In the background in Danses soudanaises, one can see the kanaga masks, in the shape of a double-armed cross, that are a defining feature of the dama ceremony (see the image above).

The Stephendelroser website dates this film to 1915, but  it seems very unlikely that a Pathé cameraman such as Lejards would have been making films on ethnographic topics in West Africa at the height of the First World War.

Rather more likely is that it would have been shot in the early 1920s, at the same time as Lejards was shooting a number of other films in West Africa, including La Ville de Djenné (1921). Djenné is also in what then the French Soudan, and is only about 200 kms by road from the Bandiagara Escarpment where this film was shot. Even with the transport available at the time, it is easy to imagine Lejards moving from one location to the other.

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Ville de Djenné, La [The Town of Djenné](1921) – dir. J. Lejards *

2 mins., b&w, silent, 2 mins

Production : Pathé- Baby

Source : Stephendelroser Baby-Pathé playlist on YouTube

A reportage film made by the enigmatic figure of J. Lejards, a Pathé cameraman who was active both in West Africa and Southeast Asia in the 1920s. This film is dated on the playlist to 1921, and is one of several films that are attributed to Lejards around this time.

It shows some brief glimpses of the celebrated adobe architecture of Djenné and makes the claim that the grand mosque (the largest adobe building in the world) was designed by a French colonial officer, a M. Bleu. There are also some intimate shots of Songhai and Bambara women dancing to drum music.

 

 

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Voyage en Angola [Journey through Angola] (1929) – dir. Marcel Borle

 60 mins., b&w, silent – French intertitles.

Source : Musée d’Ethnographie Neuchâtel 

An expedition film shot by Marcel Borle during a Swiss scientific mission to Angola (1928-1929). It is mostly concerned with the journey itself, and is of limited ethnographic interest, but during the latter part of the film there are some sequences showing the expeditionaries meeting some local indigenous people and some brief sequences of masked dancing.

Text : Castro 2016. See also a report on the plans of the expedition that appeared in August 1928 in De Cinema, a Lisbon monthly journal, here

 

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Gardner, Robert (1925-2014)

 

In general style, manner and ambition, as well as in purely chronological terms, the main body of Robert Gardner’s work belongs to the period of ethnographic film-making that follows on after the early period that is the focus of The Silent Time Machine website.

But although widely and justly regarded as a highly original innovator, in some respects his work represents a reprise of earlier modes of non-fiction film-making.

In technical terms, the clearest expression of this was his refusal to use synchronous sound recorded on location, even after this became practically feasible in the course of the 1960s.

In stylistic terms, it is evident in the poetic aesthetic that he brought to his work, in which the subjects of the film are primarily foils for the philosophical reflections of the film-maker.

This is particularly true of his first two films, Blunden Harbour and Dances of the Kwakiutl, both made in collaboration with William Heick and released in 1951, which, in their asynchronicity and poetic voice-over, as well as in their technical simplicity, have much in common with films of ethnographic interest made earlier in the century. 

Text: MacDonald 2015: 48-77, Henley 2020: 256-287.

 

© 2018 Paul Henley