Category: Films

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Hagoromo: A Japanese No Play (c.1925) – Ananda Coomaraswamy (?)

31 mins., b&w, silent

Source : NAFC, catalogue no: AS-89.2.9

This film forms part of the Ananda Coomaraswamy Film Collection held at the NAFC. The maker of the film is not indicated in the film credits, but certain stylistic features – notably the introduction of a series of characters  at the beginning of the film and the typewriter-based credits – are similar to those of a number of other films that Ananda Coomaraswamy himself made. This suggests that this may have been one of the films that he shot on his second trip to Asia accompanied by his wife, Stella, a professional dancer with a particular interest in Asian dance.

The film is very simple from a stylistic point of view. It begins with an introductory title explaining the origins of the Noh drama form in the fourteenth century as well as the origins of the Hagoromo legend. (Long preliminary explanatory titles are another typical feature of Coomaraswamy’s films). Thereafter the film merely records the play itself, shot from a distant position in front of the stage. The camerawork is no more than serviceable.

The theatrical performance is accompanied by music played by musicians who are also seen on the stage. The story of the play concerns a fisherman who finds an angel’s wings. After some initial reluctance, he restores them to her so that she may return to heaven. Before she departs, the angel – who appears to be a male dancer with whitened face – dances a very slow dance for the fisherman.

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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.

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

 

 

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Delhi: Great Capital of India {Delhi: Die Grosse Stadt in Vorderindien} (1909) – Anon

Worshippers leave the Jamia Masjid mosque -‘Delhi: Great Capital of India’ [1909] – Anon
4 mins., stencil-coloured, silent: titles in German

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]

 

 

 

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India travel footage (1933-37) – Robert Haupt

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.

Text : Zimmerman 1995, pp. 79-80.

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Musical performance in French West Africa and Angola, footage (c.1934) – Laura Boulton *

Dogon women dancing to the sound of calabashes – Musical performance footage, French West Africa (c.1934) – Laura Boulton

40 mins., b&w, silent

Source : NAFC

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.

Text : Boulton 1969

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Bénarès, Indes (1928/1985) – Georges Thibaud and Roger Dumas

15 mins., b&w, silent, intertitles in French

Source :  Musée Albert-Kahn

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.

Text : Deprez 2017

 

 

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Danseuses de S.M. Sisowath, roi de Cambodge, Les [The Dancers of H.M. Sisowath, King of Cambodia] (c.1925) – Anon

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.

 

 

 

© 2018 Paul Henley