A Resource for the Study of Early Ethnographic Film
31 mins. , b&w , silent. Shot on 16mm at 16fps.
Source : Powell-Cotton Museum
Background and Content : In making this film, Diana Powell-Cotton may have been assisted by her younger brother Christopher, then a colonial administrator in Uganda.
It offers a series of sequences of everyday life and crafts in Uganda. \
On the same trip, Diana Powell-Cotton also made a film about the Kumam of Teso District.
Texts : UNESCO catalogue, p.258, Nicklin 1981.
available in a short version variously estimated between 33 and 50 minutes, and a long version, between 62 and 80 mins, b&w, silent. Shot in 16mm at 16 fps .
Source : Powell-Cotton Museum
Background and Content : This film by Diana Powell-Cotton provides a general ethnography of the Kumam, a people who live in the Teso district of Uganda.
On the same expedition, Diana Powell-Cotton also made a more general film about everyday life and craft activities in Uganda.
Texts : UNESCO catalogue, p.257; Nicklin 1981.
25 min, colour, French voice-over, post-synchronised sound
Production : IFAN/CNC/ Musée de l’Homme.
Source : Jean Rouch (DVD collection) Éditions Montparnasse, 2005.
Text : Henley 2009: 56-62
40 mins, b&w, voice-over narration and intra-diegetic local music.
Production : Hogarth.
Source : distributed by Concord Media. An extract is viewable here.
A television version of this film, under the title Hope for the Hadza?, produced by Brian Branston, was broadcast in July 1967, as indicated in the television schedule of the period here.
6:22 mins., b&w, silent
Production : SHB films
Source : Filmarchiv Austria
A series of sequences, edited by Paul Spindler, taken from the original rushes shot by Rudolf Pöch during his 1907-09 expedition to southern Africa. Apart from an initial sequence of a dance (above),this edited version consists of a series of single shot sequences of technical processes.
The original rushes contain a number of sequences which Spindler excluded possibly because they conflicted with 1950s ideas of what an ethnographic film should contain.
Text : Spindler 1974
85 mins., col., silent.
Source : NAFC, catalogue no. AF-91.13.5.
[Notes based on NAFC catalogue entry]
Footage shot in and around the Ndaka (Bantu) village of Epulu, in the Ituri Forest in the northeast region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire and the Belgian Congo). This material appears to have been shot primarily under the direction of Joseph Allen Towles, but Colin Turnbull may also have been involved, and in the copy held by the NAFC, Turnbull provides a commentary on the material.
It is generally well shot but it is not clear by whom: certainly it was not by Towles as he appears in shot. Towles and Turnbull were partners in life as well as anthropological work and when Towles died in 1988 of complications arising from AIDS, Turnbull donated not only their joint work, but also all his own work to the Avery Research Center, where it forms the “Joseph A. Towles Collection”
This footage shows how both subsistence and ritual practices bring the villagers and the local Mbuti ‘pygmies’ into contact. Sequences cover a range of topics, including house types, the harvesting of rice, the local market, and digging and kneading clay for use in house construction. They also cover the first nkumbi male initiation ceremony to take place in the Ituri forest since the Simba Revolt of 1964. They show the nkumbi camp, the training of initiates, masked dancers and an initiate’s head being shaved. Also included is a flag-raising ceremony at a nearby government post in commemoration of independence from Belgium in 1960.
In his commentary, Turnbull analyses the various stages of the nkumbi ceremony but surmises that some of the material must be lost because only the latter part of the ceremony is shown. He also comments that the painting of the bodies of the initiates with a blue colour was an innovation that had been adopted around the time of the Simba Revolt. It was associated at that time with blue plastic, but also with violence and death.
See also Turnbull’s earlier edited film on the nkumbi ceremony, made in collaboration with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation cameraman, his cousin Francis S. Chapman in 1954.
Texts : Turnbull (1962), Turnbull (1965), Grinker (2000)
108 mins., col., sound
Source : NAFC, catalogue number AF-91.13.3
[Notes based on NAFC catalogue]
Footage shot among the Mbuti ‘pygmies’ of the Ituri Forest, still then part of the Belgian Congo (later to become Zaïre, and more recently the Democratic Republic of Congo). It focuses strongly on the relations between Ndaka (Bantu) villagers and the nomadic, forest-dwelling Mbuti. Subsistence activities shown include: an Mbuti forest camp, the construction of domed leaf houses, barkcloth manufacture, hunting forest deer with nets, the collection of honey. There is also a sequence of boys playing on a tree swing.
Ritual sequences show: a camp on the banks of the Epulu River for the month-long seclusion of pubescent Mbuti girls prior to their initiation during the elima ceremony, the elima ceremony itself, and an Ndaka village wedding ceremony. The bride is shown being anointed with palm oil (a sign of wealth) and carried on a palanquin into the village, where she is regaled by dancers.
This footage was shot by a Canadian Broadcast Corporation cameraman, Francis S. Chapman, based on the field research of anthropologist Colin Turnbull. The HSFA also hold a shorter set of black and white rushes (AF 91.13.6, 35 mins.) accompanied by a recording of Turnbull commenting on them. These rushes show life in a forest camp, and nkumbi male initiation ceremonies at Ngawana village of Musafu and the Bira village of Eboyo.
Chapman and Turnbull also produced an edited colour film about the nkumbi initiation ceremony (Mbuti Film Study, AF-91.13.4)
They also collaborated on making audio recordings of Mbuti music, released in 1992 in the Smithsonian Folkways series. For details, see here
Texts : Turnbull (1962), Turnbull (1965), Grinker (2000)
35 mins., b&w, silent
Source : NAFC, catalogue number AF-91.13.6
This is rather random footage of the Mbuti ‘pygmies’ of the Ituri Forest, then in the Belgian Congo (later Zaïre and now the Democratic Republic of Congo). It includes sequences of Mbuti camp life near an Ndaka (Bantu) village; nkumbi male initiation ceremonies in the Ngwana village of Musafu and the Bira village of Eboyo; and at the colonial Station de Chasse on the Epulu River organized for capturing elephants and okapis for export.
This footage was based on the field research of anthropologist Colin Turnbull, who comments on the material in the NAFC version, and was shot by his cousin, Francis S. Chapman, a Canadian Broadcast Corporation cameraman. The NAFC also hold a longer set of rushes in colour (AF 91.13.3, 108 mins.), also accompanied by a recording of Turnbull commenting on them. These rushes cover a wide range of topics, including subsistence activities and the female elima initiation ceremony.
Chapman and Turnbull also made an edited colour film about the nkumbi ceremony (AF-91.13.4). Further details here.
They also collaborated in making audio recordings of Mbuti music, released in 1992 in the Smithsonian Folkways series. See here for further details
Texts : Turnbull (1962), Turnbull (1965), Grinker (2000)
70 mins., col., silent.
Source : NAFC, catalogue no. AF 91.13.4
[Notes based on NAFC catalogue entry]
This film concerns the nomadic hunting and gathering Mbuti ‘pygmies’ of the Ituri Forest, then still in the Eastern Province of the Belgian Congo (later to become Zaïre, and more recently the Democratic Republic of Congo), and their sedentary Ndaka (Bantu) village neighbours, with whom they maintain important economic and ritual relations, and with whom they even cohabit for certain periods. The film focuses primarily on the various different phases of the nkumbi male initiation ceremony which involves both Mbuti and Ndaka Bantu boys. Nkumbi means “to share the blood” and the ceremony reflects one aspect of the close ties between Mbuti and Ndaka villagers.
The film shows how the boys are first secluded in the nkumbi forest camp, where they are subjected to ritual whipping, and training in dancing wearing keefa (raffia skirts) The liminal status of the initiates at this point is signalled by their daily covering with white pempa clay, symbolizing their social death. After they have been initiated by a village “doctor”, the nkumbi camp is burnt, the initiates are enclosed in a banana leaf “womb” from which they are then “reborn”. The new public status of the initiates is then recognized as they dance through the Ndaka village of Epulu, led by a ritual “doctor” in a leopard mask. They are also marked with bengafi scars around chest and ribs which identify them are adult males who have “shared the blood.” Their final reincorporation into social life is achieved by washing in the river, being covered with palm oil (a Ndaka symbol of wealth), and going in procession to the centre of the village. Here they dance on stools to signal their status as sexually active adults.
This film was based on the field research of anthropologist Colin Turnbull and was shot by his cousin, Francis S. Chapman, a Canadian Broadcast Corporation cameraman. The NAFC also hold a longer set of colour rushes (AF 91.13.3, 108 mins.), from which this film appears to have been extracted, as well as a recording of Turnbull commenting on them. These rushes cover a wide range of topics, including subsistence activities and the female elima initiation ceremony.
Chapman and Turnbull also produced some black and white rushes including sequences in an Mbuti forest camp, nkumbi male initiation ceremonies at Bira and Ngwana villages, and the capturing of elephants and okapi at the colonial Station de Chasse. Further details here.
They also collaborated in making audio recordings of Mbuti music, released in 1992 in the Smithsonian Folkways series. For further details see here.
Texts : Turnbull (1962), Turnbull (1965), Grinker (2000)
58 mins., col., sound – voice-over commentary, extra-diegetic music.
Production : Avery Research Center for African History and Culture, College of Charleston, South Carolina.
Source : NAFC catalogue number AF 91.13.2.
Background – The NAFC also holds the rushes from which this film was apparently cut (AF 91.13.1). Although this film appears to have been primarily the work of Colin Turnbull, it is also credited in the NAFC catalogue to Joseph A. Towles, who was Turnbull’s partner in life as well as colleague in the field. It is not clear who shot the material, nor who edited it since there are no credits. The NAFC catalogue dates the film to 1964, but in fact Turnbull and Towles did not carry out their fieldwork until the period 1965-67.
This film serves, in effect, as a complement to Turnbull’s highly controversial book, The Mountain People (1972) in which he claimed that the Ik people of north-eastern Uganda, though traditionally hunter-gathers, had been obliged to become sedentary, and not being accustomed to this mode of being, their society and culture had broken down completely.
Film Content – The film is a very strange work, opening with a juxtapositioning of images of a seemingly harsh African landscape, with corny extracts from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons on the soundtrack, along with a constant voice-over commentary by Turnbull in which he makes some scarcely credible assertions as to the breakdown of sociality among the Ik; for example, that mothers only look after their children until they are three, whereafter they are left to fend for themselves. Most Ik are said to be dead by 30, though we see images of older people. There is a recurrent return to a montage of shots showing Ik people in extremis.
Later on, the images become a little more intimate as they show a group of women working in what seems a perfectly sociable manner. They are very tall, like their neighbours the Turkana, and they live in Turkana-like villages. But a tall physique is very atypical of hunter-gatherers in Africa – casting doubt on whether we are indeed observing devolved hunter-gatherers in this film. They appear to be agriculturalists, and later in the film, one sees plenty of cattle. They certainly do no appear to be destitute.
This contradiction between the assertions of the voice-over and the content of the images continues for the rest of the film. Men are shown working industriously and conversing pleasantly with one another. The village itself seems highly ordered. Yet the commentary would have us believe that in this society, not only do parents abandon their children, but children abandon their parents. This proposition is directly contradicted by an image of a young man carrying a seemingly invalid older man.
A field study carried out by an anthropological linguist, Bernd Heine, almost 20 years later, suggested that Turnbull’s command of the Ik language was very poor and that he appears to have formed a highly erroneous view of Ik social life.
Texts : Turnbull (1972), Heine (1985), Grinker (2000)
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