8½ mins., colour, silent with German titles and intertitles.
Production: Encyclopaedia Cinematographica, IWF.
Source: Encyclopaedia Cinematographica, IWF collection at TIB, the German National Library, see here. A copy is also held at the Museu de Anthropologia e Ethnografia (MAE) at the Universidade de São Paulo, which can be accessed via the on-line catalogue here.
Background: this is one of 67 short films made among the indigenous peoples of Amazonia in the period 1944-1965 by Harald Schultz. This is the only film that he made among the Cashinahua who, in 1951 when he shot this film, were living on the Curanja, a left bank tributary of the upper Purus river and had only very recently entered into contact with the outside world.
In order to visit them, Schultz had to get special permission from the Peruvian government, because their village lay about 100 kms within Peru though it seems that they had migrated there from Brazilian territory in the relatively recent past.
Although the film was shot in 1951, it was not ‘published’, i.e. released, by the Encyclopaedia Cinematographica (EC) until 1962. Although it conforms in certain respects with the norms of the EC, it is somewhat discrepant in that it incorporates two quite different events. Typically in an EC film, these would each be dealt with in a separate film.
A study guide was published in 1971, after Schultz’s death in 1966. This was written by Schultz’s widow, Vilma Chiara, though as she had not accompanied him on his trip to the Cashinahua, one assumes that this text must have been based on his notes. It is available here.
In 1984, Patrick Deshayes and Barbara Keifenheim showed this film to a Cashinahua community, along with some footage of the then present-day Germany, and filmed their reactions. By this time, the Cashinahua had undergone a considerable degree of social and cultural change as a result of contact with the outside world, which by then had extended over more than thirty years. The reactions of the Cashinahua are presented in a English-language version of the film released by the IWF in 2009, entitled Naua Huni – Watching the White World.
Film Content:
The film is more or less equally divided between the collective fishing expedition and the subsequent celebration.
In preparation for the fishing expedition, women gather the poisonous leaves of the báka shrub, which is cultivated and grows in the vicinity of the village. A man then pulverises these leaves in a mortar. A boy seated on a beautifully carved bench looks on.
The study guide tells us that men, women and children then walked upstream for three days until they reach a point on the river at which fish are known to be particularly abundant. Here we see the baskets containing the báka powder being emptied into the river. Everyone then moves downstream to wait for the fish, which will either be killed outright by the poison or at least made very sluggish.
The men shoot the fish that are still alive with bow and arrow while women and children collect the dead or almost dead fish by gathering them up in baskets or by hitting them over the back of the head with a machete and then picking them out by hand. A man then lights a fire by the drilling method and the fish are smoked on a grate positioned over the fire.
On returning to the village, at the midpoint of the film, people begin decorating themselves in preparation for the feast. The study guide observes that due to a lack of knowledge of the language, Schultz was unable to establish whether this was directly connected to fishing or merely a general festivity.
A woman paints a man red with urucu and plucks his eyebrows. She then cuts his hair with scissors which the study guide reveals were supplied by Schultz himself. Some men bring out some headdresses from long boxes. Another man puts a long macaw feather through the septum of his nose. A young girl has some thin sticks inserted through her septum.
The dance then begins with men dancing in a long line through the house and onto the village plaza. Apparently only men dance, since women merely look on and the children play. The dancers are wearing beautiful headdresses, with an array of different coloured feathers – yellow, white and red. They begin to dance in a circle on the village plaza but the film then ends very abruptly.
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