Category: Films

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Jubilé du Maharajah de Karputhala, Le [The Jubilee of the Maharajah of Karputhala] (1927/1985) – Georges Thibaud and Roger Dumas

20 mins, b&w, silent

Production : Archives du planète

Source : Musée Albert-Kahn, also Bibliothèque nationale de France (Salle P, NUMAV 10038)

The cameraman Roger Dumas was sent to India by Albert Kahn in 1927-28,  to film the Golden Jubilee of his friend, the Maharajah of Karputhala, Jagatjit Singh Bahadur, though while he was there, Dumas also visited various other places in India, mostly the palaces of other Maharajahs, but also Amritsar and Benares (today Varanasi).

This film was not viewed for The Silent Time Machine project, but it would appear to be an edited version by Georges Thibaud of the footage shot of the jubilee by Dumas. This was released by the Musée Albert-Kahn in 1985.

Thibaud also appears to have edited a version of the material shot by Dumas in Varanasi, described here.

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.

Text : Deprez 2017

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Legong – Dance of the Virgins. A Story of the South Seas (1935) – dir. Henry de la Falaise

Legong – Dance of the Virgins (1935) – dir. Henry de la Falaise

56 mins., colour, inter titles in English for dialogue, extra-diegetic music

Production : Bennett Pictures Corp. (the company of De la Falaise’s wife, the actress Constance Bennett)

Source : distributed in DVD by Milestone and Les Films du paradox. There are also many extracts, usually unacknowledged, on YouTube.

An ethnodrama set in Bali and built around a central story about the competition between the beautiful young ‘maid’ Poutou and her not-quite-so-beautiful half-sister, Saplak, for the love of Nyong, a handsome young man who has arrived from the north of the island.

After making her feelings known to Nyongo, albeit non-verbally, Poutou and her father await his marriage proposal.  However, Nyong chances upon Saplak bathing in a pool, is entranced by her beauty and proposes to run away with her instead. Finding the loss of face unbearable, Poutou throws herself from a high bridge and the final part of the film follows her cremation.

The story itself is very lame, the characterisation shallow, the music often execrable and there is much that is simply too good to be true about the setting. However, the cast were all local Balinese, including the principal characters, and there are many exquisitely filmed sequences, shot in Technicolor,  of everyday life in the market and in the streets, but also of the ceremonial events.

These include the same tjalonarang ceremony that is shown in Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson’s Trance and Dance in Bali, in which Rangda the Witch is pitted against Barong the Dragon. The location looks so similar that one wonders whether it might even be the same place, with some of the same participants.

The film culminates in two sequences that feature some remarkable dancing. The first is of the djanger, in which, apart from the female principal, all the participants are seated, while the second is of the legong, performed by the two principal female characters, Poutou and Saplak. The cremation sequence over the last five minutes, which is also spectacular,  appears to have been for the most part a genuine event rather than one performed only for the film.

The film was shot in 1933 and released in 1935 in various different versions. In the US version, the close ups of naked breasted women were removed by the censor, while in the British version scenes with even the slightest suggestion of violence were cut. The Milestone/ Les Films du paradox DVD is based on a restored version of the film that reincorporates the parts cut by the censors.

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Danse javanaise [Javanese Dance], Jongleur javanais [Javanese Juggler], Lutteurs javanais [Javanese Wrestlers] (1896) – Alexandre Promio

Javanese dancers performing in Crystal Palace park, July-August 1896 – Lumière ‘view’ shot by Alexandre Promio

three short films, all less than a minute, b&w, silent.

Production :  Lumière, catalogue nos. 30, 53, 56

Content :  these ‘views’, as the Lumière short films were known, were shot in the Crystal Palace park at Sydenham, south London, and show members of a Javanese performance troupe performing for the camera, with their fellow performers as an audience.

They were shot by the Italian-born cameraman, Alexandre Promio, while he was on a visit to London in July and August 1896. Promio was responsible for at least a quarter of the total number of 1428 ‘views’ that the Lumière company produced.

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Chez les Muruts, peuplade sauvage du nord de Bornéo [Among the Muruts, a Savage Tribe of north Borneo] (1911) – Anon

6:46 mins., b&w (tinted?), silent with English inter titles

Production : Pathé Frères, production no. 4616

Source : CNC at the BnF

Background : the Murut are an ethnic group who  live widely distributed across the northern part of the island of Borneo, mostly in the Malaysian state of Sabah in the extreme northwest, but also in neighbouring parts of the Malaysian state of Sarawak, in Brunei and the Indonesian province of North Kalimantan.

Traditionally, they lived in hilltop long houses, were slash and burn cultivators and practiced headhunting. They were renowned also for their body tattoos.

Although this appears in the Pathé Frères catalogue, given the remoteness of the region, rather than send their own operator, it is possible that they bought this film from the Charles Urban Trading Company which sent cinematographer Harold Lomas (c.1873-1926) there on three occasions: in 1903, 1904 and 1908. The fact that the intertitles are in English lends greater credence to this possibility.

Lomas’s expeditions were paid for by the British North Borneo Company, a trading company which administered the then-colony of North Borneo. In 1915, led by a charismatic figure claiming supernatural powers, the Murut attacked the offices of the company.

Content: The film itself  is very simple. It is shot from a single static position, though with some variation between wide shots and close-ups. The inter titles are factual and explanatory, for example: “The Muruts live in tribes from fifty to sixty individuals dwelling together in the same hut”.

At first, the subjects pose, obviously ill at ease. A man makes a cigar from leaf. A family climbs into a long house. We see some jaw bones, said to be of animals (but given their history of headhunting, perhaps they are human?). A chief’s grave is shown from a distance. Then they show their weapons.

The film concludes with various dances (which are said to be “diverse and have a certain originality”), on a patch of grass beside a house, to the unheard sound of gongs. Men and women dance in a circle, a young girl plays on a flute with several heads, another girl does a sort of scissor dance between two bamboos operated by two other girls. A man dances alone with a long sword.

In the copy held by the CNC, the film ends in mid-dance, with no end credits, suggesting that originally it may have been longer. The subject matter of the last part of the film provides further evidence that this material may have been filmed by Lomas since the title of one of his films in the Urban catalogue is entitled, Head-Hunters of Borneo at their Peace and War Dances (1903).

Text: McKernan 2013: 51-52.

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Cinghalais: danse des couteaux [Sinhalese knife dance] (1897) – Alexandre Promio (?)

These are three  consecutive short films: 51 secs., 50 secs., and 49 secs. All b&w, and silent.

Production : Lumière, catalogue nos. 771-773

Source : CNC at the BnF

These three ‘views’, as the short Lumière films were known, were shot in December 1897, when a group of Sinhalese performers visited Lyons, where the Lumière company was located. They have been tentatively identified as the work of Alexandre Promio, the Italian-born operator who shot around a quarter of the total number of 1428 ‘views’ that the Lumière company produced.

In the first ‘view’, six male dancers in long skirts and turbans, and bearing knives, dance in a circle around a central person striking small cymbals. A drummer with a long drum stands to the left. The film is shot from single wide static position, at about 5 metres. The second and third ‘views’ are of the same dancers and dance, with only slight variation.

These ‘views’ could possibly be the first moving images taken of a South Asian cultural phenomenon, and perhaps even of South Asian people more generally.

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Aïnos à Yeso, Les [The Ainu of Yeso] (1897) – Constant Girel

44 secs. and 47 secs., b&w, silent

Production : Lumière, catalogue nos. 1275 (741) and 1276 (742). These were only 2 out of a total of 13 films shot by the operator François-Constant Girel between January and December 1897. Further details of the others are given here.

Source : CNC at the BnF. The first of the two films may be viewed here

These two films were shot near Muroran, on the island of Yeso (today Hokkaidô) in northern Japan in October 1897. The first film shows a men’s dance, and the second, a woman’s dance.

In the first film, four bearded men, of various ages (one wearing glasses), in long cloaks, with swords at their waist, dance in circle, in what is more of a step than a dance, clapping as they do so. Shot from a single static camera position in front of dancers, at a distance of about 3 metres. Children watch from behind. It ends in midshot.

Ainu women

The second film concerns a women’s dance. It is set in the same location as the men’s dance but it is shot from a slightly different angle. The women wear much less elaborate cloaks than the men, and scarfs around their heads. They bend over clapping, first towards camera, then away from it. Men walk through shot in foreground. Children, women, men watch from behind.

Text: Aubert and Seguin 1996, p.353.

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Ainu Bear Ceremony (1931) – Neil G. Munro

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27 mins., b&w, silent

Source : Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI)

Extract from the RAI catalogue:

“The RAI has reedited the original film of this ceremony among the Ainu people of Japan. In the bear ceremony, now no longer performed, a specially reared bear was reverently killed and its flesh and blood eaten by the participants. The film shows a series of ritual acts with some commentary on their meaning.”

Neil Gordon Munro (1863-1942) was a Scottish doctor who lived in Japan for almost 50 years. From 1930 until his death, he lived in the Ainu village of Nibutani in Hokkaido. His book, Ainu Creed and Cult, first published posthumously in 1962, has since been republished in 46 editions in three languages!

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Calf Sacrifice {Kalbopfer} (1962) – dir. Peter, Prince of Greece and Denmark

10 mins., b&w, silent

Production and Source : IWF, ‘published’ in their Encyclopaedia Cinematographic.

Content : This film was originally shot in 1949 and concerns a cremation ceremony among the Toda adivasi (‘tribal’) group of the Nilgiri Hills, South India.

The film-maker, Prince Peter (1908-1980)  was a soldier and member of the Greek royal family who had studied anthropology at the London School of Economics in 1935-36.

[Thanks to Paul Hockings for drawing the existence of this film to our attention]

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Apa Tani rushes (1946-47) – Ursula Graham Bower

Apa Tani woman – ‘Apatani rushes’ (1946-47) – Ursula Graham Bower

38 mins., 15 mins. in b&w, 23 mins in colour, silent

Source : this material may be viewed via the Pitt Rivers Museum website here.

Content : this material was shot by Ursula Graham Bower, when she was living in the Subsansiri District of Arunachal Pradesh, where her husband, F.N. ‘Tim’ Betts had been appointed the Political Officer. This material appears not to have been edited in any way, and much of it is damaged or discoloured.

The quality of this material, both in terms of technical film-craft and in terms of content, is considerably inferior to the footage that Graham Bower previously shot in Nagaland.  Much of the material consists of distant and often unstable shots of landscape. While there are some interesting passages relating to ritual events, some impressive shots of the rice paddies and some intriguing personal portraits, it is clear that Graham Bower did not have the rapport with the subjects that she had during her more prolonged stay in the Naga Hills.

In general, there is also a more personal ‘home-movie’ feel to this material compared to her Naga material. There are quite a number of shots of European men, including presumably her husband, as well as some shots of Graham Bower herself, indicating that her husband must have done some of the shooting.

Some of this material appears to have been used in an edition of the BBC Television series, Travellers’ Tales, produced by David Attenborough and broadcast on 29 February 1956. According to the schedule, Graham Bower was joined on the programme by Christoph von Fürer- Haimendorf, described as ‘the first European’ to enter the valley ‘of these savage and dramatic people’.

 

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Naga Hills, later colour footage (1940-44) – dir. Ursula Graham Bower

Hgangi festival – ‘Naga Hills, later colour footage’ (1940-44) – dir. Ursula Graham Bower

37.5 mins., colour, silent, with English inter titles

Source :  accompanied by ethnographic notes, this film is viewable here, where it is also downloadable. A version without ethnographic notes is available on YouTube here.

Unfortunately, these versions appear to have been transferred to a digital format at an incorrect speed. Ursula Graham Bower would have shot her material at 16-18fps, which was the standard speed for 16mm cameras in the 1930s, but it would appear that the material has been transferred at the more recent standard of 24 or 25fps, with the result that the movements of the subjects appear unnaturally rapid.

Content : although this material has clearly been edited, and there are some carefully made inter titles, there is no principal title, nor credits.  Graham Bower’s field diaries indicate that she was shooting on the then relatively recently released Kodachrome.

The footage includes a diverse range of sequences, but all of them were shot among the Zemi Naga, many of them at a time when the Naga Hills were threatened by Japanese invasion.

More intimate domestic and personal sequences, such as one of Graham Bower’s Naga interpreter’s ear adornments and another of a young man playing a one-stringed bow instrument, are interspersed with shots of collective activities, including a fish poisoning expedition, the carrying of a large tree trunk that will serve as the beam of a collective house and the dragging in of a large gravestone in preparation for the Hgangi festival at Laisong, the principal village of the area.

There are also various sequences of young men’s sports, including spear-throwing and jumping over a stone obstacle known as a hazoa, and sequences of women engaged in weaving and spinning.

The material ends with a sequence of the playing of drums and dancing at the Hgangi festival, though this is interrupted by an unusual sequence in which Naga men are being issued with guns by British colonial officers in preparation for the threatened Japanese invasion.

© 2018 Paul Henley