‘The Azhu Marriage System of the Naxi …’ (1965) – dir. Yang Guanghai and others
Background – This series was produced by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and consisted of films shot in many different parts of China, with ethnic minorities of very different cultural traditions. They were shot on 35mm black and white film and the production values were generally very high.
Source : Through the efforts of Karsten Krüger, Rolf Husmann and others, the series was transferred onto DVD with English translations by the IWF at Göttingen and made available for distribution in the West in 1998. With the closure of the IWF in 2015, this material was transferred to the German National Science Library at Hannover (TIB) and will become available again once the situation with rights over the films has been clarified.
In the meantime, selection of the films in the series is available in the Film Library of the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology at the University of Manchester and there may be similar collections elsewhere.
For the moment, the only access via the web known to The Silent Time Machine is via a film by Jenny Chio about the series, made while the author was a graduate student at Goldsmiths College, London, and which contains extracts from a number of the films. This can be accessed on Vimeo here
Film Content – The films in the Chinese Historical Ethnographic Film Series invariably emphasised the benefits that the communities portrayed had gained from the ascent to power of the Communist Party by virtue of the fact that it had put an end to a variety of abuses from which these communities had suffered, be at the hands of feudal landlords, corrupt officials of the Kuomintang regime, European colonial powers or Japanese invaders. They also tended to deride the efficacy of the traditional religious practices shown in the films, emphasising that modern medicine was the only way to cure illness. Much of the action was evidently staged, and most films were covered with execrable music.
Even so, notwithstanding these features, these films offer a remarkable ethnographic account of life as it was lived in ethnic minority communities in the decade or so after the Communist Party had come to power but before the Cultural Revolution.
Jenny Chio’s film available on Vimeo contains extracts from the following original films –
The Kawa (1958) – dir. Tan Bibo
The Li (1958) – dir. Feng Jin
The Ewenki on the banks of the Argun River (1959) – dir. Lu Guangtian, Zu Yaozhi and Zhang Dafeng
The Kucong (1960) – dir. Yang Guanghai
The Dulong People (1960-61) – dir. Yang Guanghai
The Jingpo (1960-62) – dir. Qui Xiafei, Li Peijiang and Chen Heyi
The Serf System in the Town of Shahliq (1960, 1962) – dir. Hou Fangrou, Liu Boquian, Liu Zhixiao and Wang Genyi
The Oroqen (1963) – dir. Yang Guanghai, Qui Pu, Zhao Fuxing and Lu Guangtian. This is one of the most substantial films in the series and is described at greater length here
The ‘Azhu’ Marriage System of the Naxi (Moso) from Yongming (1965) – dir. Yang Guanghai, Zhan Chengxu and Qiu Pu
The Hunting and Fishing Life of the Hezhe(n) (1965) – dir. Lori Zhongbo, You Zhixian and Qiu Pu
Naxi Art and Culture in Lijiang (1966) – dir. Qiu Pu, Yang Guanghai and Zhan Chengxu
Masked dance on the Mortlock Islands – Hamburg South Seas expedition (1909)
10:50 mins., b&w, silent
Production : Hamburg Ethnological Museum
Source : IWF/TIB. An on-line version of the film may be viewed here.
General Background – This film consists of a series of mostly single-shot ‘views’ taken during the course of the expedition of the Hamburg Ethnological Museum in 1908-1910 to the ‘South Seas’, that is, to various islands in Micronesia, New Britain (then the German colony of Neu-Pommern) and the northern coast of Papua New Guinea (then the German colony of Neu-Guinea).
This expedition was conceived and co-ordinated by Georg Thilenius (1868-1937), the director of the Museum, but he remained in Hamburg. In the field, during first year, which was dedicated to the exploration of German Melanesia, the expedition was led by a tropical medicine specialist, Friedrich Fülleborn (1866-1933), while in the second year, dedicated to Micronesia, it was led by the ethnologist and trained doctor Augustin Krämer (1865-1941).
These cinematographic ‘views’ were but one very modest element in the extensive collection of local artefacts, photographic plates, drawings and sound recordings that the expedition brought back to Hamburg. It is not clear who took the ‘views’, but it seems to have been various different members of the expedition. Whoever it was, their competence as film-makers was clearly very limited.
Film Background – This particular assembly of the views appears to have been put together in the late 1930s, under the direction of Herbert Tischner (1906-1984) of the following generation of German Melanesianists. In the sort of ‘study guide’ that he wrote to accompany the film, Tischner acknowledges the poor technical quality of the material but argues that their value as a record of by-then disappeared customs outweighed their deficiencies and hence justified their ‘publication’.
It is not clear what proportion of the total amount of material filmed during the expedition that this film represents in its current form. It certainly does not represent all the material, since of the various dances that Tischner describes, there is one missing from the film, the first, suggesting that at some point, this was omitted, either because it was lost, or more probably, because the technical quality was very poor.
Tischner gives no reason for the order in which the ‘views’ have been placed in the assembly. It certainly does not correspond to the order in which they were shot since the film begins with Micronesian dances and ends with Melanesian crafts, whereas in reality the expedition visited Melanesia in the first year, and Micronesia in the second. It seems rather to have been ordered on a thematic principle, with dances first and crafts second.
Another curiosity is that the Micronesian dances are shot from very far away, while the Melanesian dances and the crafts are shot from much closer, suggesting that different operators were involved in the two different years of the expedition.
It seems very likely that the ordering of the assembly, giving priority to dance, was chosen on account of the theory, widespread in German anthropology in the early twentieth century, and reiterated in Tischner’s study guide also, that dance was extremely important to ‘Naturvölker’ as a means of expressing social sentiment.
Tischner acknowledges, however, that the Expedition had managed to discover very little about the significance of the dances, which he considers particularly lamentable since in recent times, he explains, even local men had often forgotten their meaning and, if they performed the dances at all, they did so merely to please their womenfolk.
Film Content – As described in Tischner’s study guide, the film contains the following sequences:
Paddle Dance – this was a dance performed on the Micronesian island of Ponape, in the Eastern Carolines, and was unusual in the region in that both men and women were involved. It was performed on a special stage on the occasion of the inauguration of a new canoe, and involved highly decorated ceremonial paddles, carved from the breadfruit tree. But although Tischner offers a very beautiful drawing of one of these paddles in the study guide, the dance is missing from the film.
Masked Dance – this is now the dance with which the film opens and is performed by a group of men on a beach in the Mortlock Islands (see above). The masks were carved from wood and painted white and black with limestone paste and soot. Tischner claims that these dances were originally intend to ward off the typhoons that afflict these islands, and that the name of the masks, tapuanu, is a reference to a spirit being, suggesting some deeper religious significance. In the film, the sequence lasts only 45 seconds, and has clearly been performed explicitly for a camera placed so far away from the action that it is difficult to see what is going on. The European trousers of some of the performers hint at a degree of acculturation.
Stick Dance– this is performed by the same group of men in the same location and involves two lines of men facing one another who joust with sticks about 1.25 long. Women wearing European dresses scurry past in the background. Tischner says that it takes place ‘in honour of certain spirits’.
Dances on Truk – These were shot on the cluster of Central Caroline islands now known as Chuuk and are all performed by women. The first two sequences, totalling only about a minute, are probably of the same dance in which two women are standing, one of whom performs a hula-like dance with much wiggling of the hips, while all the other women move energetically while sitting down. But again the event is filmed from very far away and it is only possible to see the women’s backs. The third dance from Truk, longer at just over a minute, is somewhat better filmed, in that the women stand in a line before the camera, but the film material itself is clearly damaged and as the dance is obviously a performance on demand, it lacks a certain vitality.
Drum Dance – this sequence of 45 seconds, with the camera much closer to the action, was shot on the south coast of New Britain (formerly Neu-Pommern), and shows three men wearing tall, conical headdresses who are dancing in circle and playing small, typically Melanesian hourglass-shaped drums at the level of their knees. The film is material is fogged but the performance is good.
Spear Dance – around 40 seconds, and also shot much closer to the action, this sequence shows a group of men, again on the south coast of New Britain, dancing back and forth with spears beside the sea or a river. Unfortunately, the film material is badly damaged. Tischner comments that these Melanesians dances are often associated with feasts for which large amounts of food is marshalled. On mainland New Guinea, he adds, as many as 800 pigs might be slaughtered, but this was exceptional even for Melanesia and certainly would not have been possibly on the materially much poorer Micronesian islands.
Pottery on the New Guinea mainland and in the Admiralty Islands – two sequences showing different stages of pottery-making. The first is about 1 min 20 seconds with two breaks, though with no significant change of angle, while the second is nearer 1 min 30 seconds. Both sequences are shot close to the subjects, though the first one particularly is fogged. Tischner comments that whereas pottery is widespread in Melanesia, it is unknown in Micronesia and most of Polynesia, where receptacles of wood and shell are used instead.
Fire making on the Admiralty Islands– a single shot of 1 min 26 seconds, also shot close to the action. The two subjects look off to someone off-screen as well as at the camera, probably because there was a certain amount of anxiety as to whether the fire would ignite before the end of the roll of film.
Weaving on St. Matthias Island– this sequence was shot on an island lying north of New Ireland (then Neu-Mecklenberg) and as such on the boundary between Melanesia and Micronesia. This is the only sequence in the assembly in which there is an obviously purposeful change of angle, clearly designed to show the weaving from both the front, in a shot of one minute, and from the side, in a further shot of 30 seconds. As weaving is unknown elsewhere in Melanesia, Tischner speculates that it has been introduced from Indonesia via Micronesia.
‘Spirit dance’ of the inland Kate – Richard Neuhauss (1909)
6:32 mins., b&w, silent
Source : A version of this film was distributed for a period by the IWF but was incorporated into the collection of the German National Library (TIB) when the IWF closed down. It has recently been made available on the TIB portal here.
Background
This film was shot by the eminent medical doctor and anthropologist Richard Neuhauss in the course of his two year visit to German New Guinea in 1908-10. As the title of the film indicates, it concerns the ‘Kate’, a highland Papuan group who then lived in the forested hinterland of the Gulf of Huon.
This name, today more usually spelt as ‘Kâte’ and interchangeable with ‘Kai’, literally means ‘forest’. In a companion text published some twenty years after Neuhauss had died, the German Melanesianist Hans Nevermann (1902-1982) explains that ‘Kai’ is the term used of them by their neighbours on the coast, the Jabim. At the time that Neuhauss was in New Guinea, the Kâte were estimated to number around 3000-4000 people.
Film Content
The technical quality of the film, both in terms of the material itself and in terms of film craft skills, is, at best, no more than modest. In terms of content, it can be divided into three parts. The first part, lasting around a minute, offers what Neuhauss himself described as a ‘study of facial expressions’ and consists of a series of head and shoulder shots of two men, standing with a white sheet behind them, as they laugh and shout.
The second part, also of roughly a minute’s duration, then documents two everyday activities: a woman cooking bananas in what appears to be a rough ceramic pot on an open wood fire, and two men (poorly framed in the left hand corner of the image) relaxing by the sea shore and smoking cigars of rolled up tobacco leaves.
The remainder of the film consists of four dances, all shot from a considerable distance and seemingly performed for the camera as there is no evidence of any local audience. The dancers are mostly finely attired with skirts and tall headdresses, and they beat out a rhythm on typically Melanesian hourglass-shaped drums. Unfortunately, the framing is again often poor, with the dancers lost over to one side of the frame.
These four dances are respectively identified in the intertitles as a ‘knee dance’ (the dancers are squatting down as they dance), a ‘war dance’ (the dancers form two lines and engage in mock combat with spears or staves) and then two ‘spirit dances’, one from the coastal region, one from inland. The headdresses in the latter case are particularly elaborate (see image above).
However, the description given by Neuhauss himself of a screening in Berlin in 1911 suggests that he shot much more than this. On this occasion, he showed around 40 minutes of material, which, in addition to the above, also included a sequence of men and women returning from the fields, the women carrying heavy burdens in nets hanging from their foreheads, the men carrying only their weapons in case of attack. Other topics included the processing of sago and coconut , fishing from canoes, clearing the rainforest and the crossing of a rushing mountain stream by a bridge made of lianas. What has happened to all this additional material is not clear, but it seems quite probable that it has been lost.
By the time that Nevermann wrote his companion text in the 1930s, the way of life portrayed in the film had been radically changed through the combined impact of missionaries and of incoming miners attracted by the discovery of gold deposits in the area.
Source : three extracts from this material, as well as more general information about the tjintjingalla ceremony are available on the Museums Victoria website here
Although Spencer shot considerably more footage of the Arrernte, most of this was of secret ceremonies and therefore is not now normally available to anyone other than initiated Arrernte men. The tjintjingalla, on the other hand, was neither sacred, nor secret and was open to women and children, as well as to modern viewers.
This material was shot in April 1901 and is one of the earliest sets of moving images made of Aboriginal people.
Source : This footage has been put up on YouTube by the Tiwi Land Council and is viewable here
This is remarkably early footage of a Tiwi pukumani, a funeral event conventionally held two to six months after a person’s burial during which a number of poles, as seen in the film, are erected in commemoration of the deceased.
Although this footage is not attributed on the YouTube site, there can be little doubt that it was taken by W. Baldwin Spencer since he was travelling in this region of Australia with his camera at this time, and because the wooded setting is very similar that of certain photographs that he took around this time, possibly on the same occasion.
Source : EYE Dutch East Indies collection, viewable here
Extract from the EYE catalogue
“A reportage about the various crafts, customs, and the culture of the Karo-Batak, an ethnic group in Sumatra. The film concludes [last minute only] with Western gymnastics exercises being performed by indigenous schoolchildren”
110 mins., b&w, silent – Dutch titles and intertitles.
Production : Soverdi
Source : EYE Dutch East Indies collection, viewable here
Ethnodrama, shot on island of Flores. On the film itself is dated to 1923, but this maybe the year on which the ‘true story’ on which this fiction is based took place. Year of production in EYE catalogue given as 1930
EYE catalogue entry :
“Christian mission propaganda film about a Christian girl’s arranged marriage to a Muslim .The parents of Christian girl Ria Rago have arranged for her to marry Dapo, a Muslim. She refuses and, after a beating, flees to the mission sisters who offer her a safe haven. Her father and his cronies aren’t long in finding her, however, and she is taken back into the kampong. After months of torture, Ria still won’t give in. She escapes again and manages to reach the mission post where she collapses. On the brink of death, she is administered the last rites. Ria’s father decides to call off the marriage and returns the dowry to Dapo. On her deathbed Rita forgives her parents.”
Source : EYE Dutch East Indies collection, but not currently viewable on-line
EYE catalogue entry:
” Film about the thwarted love between a village girl and a young fisherman. This Sundanese language film by Mannus Franken tells the story of an Indonesian Romeo and Juliet. Machmoed and Wagina love each other but village tradition forbids marriage between a villager and a fisherman. The theft of the village elder’s sacred dagger sets in motion a whole train of disastrous events. In the end the dagger is found and Machmoed and Wagina live happily ever after.
Pareh, een rijstlied van Java was made especially for the local Javanese population and was meant to encourage the Javanese to leave their island and move to the much more sparsely populated Sumatra. To make the message more convincing, local Javanese were hired to play the parts. Only the Wayang puppeteers and Gamelan players were professional artists. Franken’s film was commissioned by the Centrale Commissie voor Emigratie en Kolonisatie van Inheemschen (the central committee for emigration and colonisation of native peoples).
Mannus Franken (1899-1953) was one of the founding fathers of the Dutch Filmliga and director of the celebrated Amsterdam Liga theatre De Uitkijk. He is best known for his co-direction, with Joris Ivens, of both Rain/Regen (1929) and Breakers/ Branding (1929).”
Source : EYE Dutch East Indies collection, viewable here
Informational film. Year of production 1917.
EYE catalogue entry:
“Shots of various Karo-Batak crafts: cotton processing, weaving of reeds, rope making, working with iron, silver and gold, the manufacture of pottery, and the cutting and drying of tobacco. In staged settings, the people of Karo-Batak demonstrate their skills. The shots also give a picture of the environment, architecture, clothing, and jewellery of the Karo-Batak.”
Source : EYE Dutch East Indies collection, viewable here
Background – This film was shot in 1917, released in 1920 and directed by L.P. de Bussy who made several films about the Karo-Batak for the Dutch Koloniaal Institut. In common with his other films, the cinematography consists primarily of a series of static wide shots and the occasional pan. However, the quality of the images is generally high and as such, the film offers a valuable record of Karo-Batak ritual procedures at that time.
Content – The film consists of two quite distinct parts. Only the first six minutes concern the Batak funeral; the remaining two minutes concern a series of dances and ceremonial activities aimed at the alleviation of drought.
The funeral section follows various different stages of the event: farewell dances by the relatives as the body is cremated on an open pyre, a ‘welcoming’ dance by the relatives (presumably for those who have come to attend the funeral), the transport of the bones remaining from the cremation in an elaborate funeral tower, perhaps ten metres high, across the countryside to the burial ground. Musket are fired en route. At the burial site, a cloth is laid out, presumably for the bones, though these are not shown being placed on the cloth. We only seem some mourners engaged in lamentations from behind.
After another shot showing a priestly figure engaged in an unexplained religious ritual of some kind (above), the funeral part of the film concludes with the manufacture of a fake corpse which is placed outside the village fence in order to fool malignant spirits.
The ceremonial activities to alleviate drought seem by contrast to be very light-hearted. They appear to be based on the principle of ‘sympathetic magic’ in that as well as a women’s rain dance in which the dancers appear to be dancing with bamboo water containers, they consist largely of dancing and mock fighting in the river (see above).
Paddle Dance
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