Felix Speiser on Ambrym island, Vanuatu, New Hebrides, 1911.
Felix Speiser is a foundational figure in the history of Swiss ethnology. Having studied under Felix von Luschan in Berlin in 1907-08, he was appointed Professor of Ethnology at the University of Basle in 1917, the first such post in the country.
Although he is probably best known for his work in the New Hebrides (1910-12) and, later, in Melanesia (1929-31), he also carried out a brief period of fieldwork in 1924 among the Aparaï of the Paru river, in northern Brazil, close to the border with French Guiana (now Guyane).
During his Brazilian expedition, Speiser made a film, though this was not edited and released until 1945. A further restoration took place long after his death, in 1994. The title of this film is Yopi: Chez les Indiens du Brésil. Even today, it remains very difficult to see.
Speiser is reported to have made a second film, Mystères du Pacifique, dated to 1930. However, this does not feature in the UNESCO catalogue of ethnographic film in the Pacific region (Rouch and Salzman 1970) and whether it has survived is not clear.
Aus dem Leben der Taulipáng in Guayana: Filmdokumente aus dem Jahre 1911. Study Guide for Scientific Film no. 856/1962. Göttingen: Institut für de Wissenschaftlichen Film
Koch-Grünberg, Theodor (1979-1982) Del Roraima al Orinoco. 3 vols., Caracas: Ediciones del Banco Central de Venezuela.
Originally published in five volumes between 1917 and 1923 in German as Vom Roraima zum Orinoco. Ergebnisse Einer Reise in Nordbrasilien Und Venezuela in Den Jahren 1911-1913.
Theodor Koch-Grünberg and visual anthropology in early twentieth-century German anthropology. In Christopher Morton and Elizabeth Edwards, eds., Photography, Anthropology and History: expanding the frame, pp.193-219. Ashgate.
Ethnographic film practices in silent German cinema. In Joshua A. Bell, Alison K. Brown, and Robert J. Gordon, eds., Recreating First Contact: Expeditions, Anthropology, and Popular Culture, pp. 41-54. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press.
Hans Krieg was a Bavarian zoologist who participated in various German scientific missions to South America. During an expedition to the Paraguayan and Brazilian areas of the Gran Chaco in 1931-32, of which he was the leader, Krieg shot the material for Indian Life in the Gran Chaco, though this was only released in 1950. Krieg was a talented zoological illustrator and he also made a number of films on zoological subjects.
Prior to the Second World War, Krieg was a leading academic proponent of National Socialism, but he survived the war and the institutional purge that followed it, to become the director of the Bavarian Natural Sciences Collection as well as a well-known popular writer on zoological topics. However, he made no further contributions to ethnographic film-making.
Umutina man, upper Paraguay river, Mato Grosso – photographed by José Louro, 1922. [Acervo do Museo do Índio/ FUNAI – Brasil, CRNV294].
José Louro Fernandes, usually referred to simply as José Louro, was a Brazilian photographer and film-maker who worked over a twenty year period, from 1915 to 1935, mostly for government organisations directed by Colonel (later General) Cândido Rondon. In the early years of the 20th century, Rondon was a major figure in Brazilian public life, having played a leading role in the ‘opening up’ of the Amazonian interior of the country, first as head of his own Rondon Commission, and later as the director of the Inspetoria de Fronteiras.
In 1928, Louro made No Río Içana, which primarily concerns the Wanano people of the Uaupés river in the upper Rio Negro region, in the extreme northwest of Brazil, on the border with Colombia. From an ethnographic point of view, with the exception of Luiz Thomaz Reis’s work, Rituais e festas borôro(1917), this is the most interesting film produced in Brazilian Amazonia prior to the Second World War. For this reason, it was chosen as the film that runs permanently on the About page of the Silent Time Machine website. Sadly, it also seems to have been the only film that Louro made.
The biographical documentation for Louro is scant and it has not been possible to discover anything about his personal background, dates of birth or death, nor even identify a photograph of him. What is clear, however, is that unlike many of those who worked on the projects associated with Rondon, Louro was not a member of the Brazilian military, but rather a civilian photographer by profession. His participation in Rondon’s projects also appears to have been intermittent.
When Louro was first recruited to the Rondon Commission, it was to work as a photographer. He showed from the beginning that he was not only both technically and aesthetically highly skilled, but also had the rare ability to establish a close rapport with his indigenous subjects. Of all the many photographers who worked on the projects associated with Rondon, he was surely the most talented.
Takwatib headman Timóteo, Jiparana River, 1915 (Rondon 1946, p.152)Woman of Timóteo’s group, Jiparana River, 1915 (Rondon 1946, p.153).
Louro’s first photographs were taken in the course of expeditions in 1915-1916 and 1919 to the headwaters of the Jamari, Jiparana and Cautario rivers in what is now Rondônia in the extreme west of the country, close to the Bolivian border. In the course of these expeditions, Louro produced some remarkable images of the indigenous groups of these regions, many of which were only then entering into contact with the outside world, and many of which, as result of disease and the depredations of extractive industries, have since become extinct. Among these groups were the Takwatib (Tacuatepe), two of whom are shown in the images above.
Some years later, in 1922, Louro was commissioned to take a series of photographs of the telegraph stations set up by the Rondon Commission throughout Rondônia and adjacent headwater regions in Mato Grosso. In the course of doing so, he also took further striking photographs of the Paresí (Ariti, Haliti), the Nambikwara and the Umutina (see the image at the head of this entry).
Paresí hunter holding a device to which he attached foliage as a hide when approaching animals, Utiariti, 1922 (Rondon 1946, p.99).
Louro was clearly greatly appreciated by the Rondon Commission at this point since in the collection of its photographs that it published in 1922 to celebrate the centenary of Brazilian independence, the number of photographs by Louro is greater than that of any of the other twelve named photographers whose work is included there. However, there then appears to have been an interlude in his participation in Rondon’s projects.
It seems that it was only in 1927, when he was recruited to the Inspetoria de Fronteiras as an assistant to the film-maker Luiz Thomaz Reis, that Louro began making films. In the first year of his appointment, while Reis was engaged in making Viagem ao Roroimã with Rondon on the frontier with Venezuela (see the filmography of Reis here), Louro was sent on a smaller, subsidiary expedition up the nearby Uraricoera River, during the course of which he took some magnificent photographs of Ninam Yanomami (‘Xirianá’) and Ye’kuana (‘Maiongong’). He may also have carried out a limited amount of filming.
The following year, 1928, while Reis went to make another film with Rondon, Parimã, about the frontier regions with the French and Dutch Guianas, Louro was again assigned to a subsidiary expedition, this time led by Major (later Marshall) Boanerges Lopes de Sousa, to the upper Rio Negro. It was during this expedition that Louro shot No Rio Içana. This showed him to be as talented a cinematographer as Reis, if not more so.
Louro also participated in the expeditions led by Rondon in 1929-1930 along the Araguaia River and the frontiers of Mato Grosso do Sul and Paraná in the southwest of the country. During these trips, he took photographs of the Kadiweu and Kaiowa as well as of frontier installations and natural phenomena, including some extraordinary wide angle images of Iguazu Falls. He may also have assisted Reis on the two films that he made during the course of those expeditions, Posto Alves de Barros and Matto Grosso e Paraná. What is certain is that, unfortunately, Louro made no films of his own.
Caduveo, Mato Grosso do Sul, 1930 (Rondon 1946, p.320).
In February 1935, Louro was appointed as a cinematographer by the Inspetoria Especial de Fronteiras, the organisation that succeeded the inspectorate led by Rondon which had come to end with his resignation for political reasons in 1930. However, only five months later, in July 1935, Louro was replaced, for unspecified reasons, by Reis’s daughter Argentina, without seemingly having made any films.
It has not been possible to establish any details of José Louro’s life after that point.
A posed synoptic image of Yagua life by Paul Fejos, director of ‘The Yagua’ (1944).
57 mins., b&w, sound: synch but not subtitled indigenous speech, and a combination of extra-diegetic music and field recorded music used intra-diegetically.
The Yagua are a small indigenous community whose territory lies in the Amazonian region of northeastern Peru and neighbouring parts of Colombia. Paul Fejos made this film in the course of a nine-month period of research in a Peruvian Yagua community from December 1940 to August 1941. During this time, in addition to making the film, he gathered the material that enabled him to publish a very respectable ethnographic report about the Yagua (see ‘Text’ below).
The first part of the film is based around a story of the migration of a Yagua community, from one settlement in the forest to another (though it is not at all clear what motivates this move). Two young men go ahead and scout out a suitable site, then return to lead the remainder of the community there on a large raft. The shaman remains behind and burns the old house down, but then joins the others on the raft.
However, at the new site, in an echo of the initial story of A Handful of Rice, the migrants encounter a problem, namely, that a tiger (albeit a very small one) is getting into the chicken coop. They hatch a plan to set a trap to catch the animal, which after various failed attempts, they eventually do. The tiger is then killed, its skin stretched out on a frame, and the film ends with a ceremonial celebration of entirely dubious authenticity.
The story of this film is very weak, and many of the cultural practices shown are inventions of the film-maker (including most probably the raft expedition). But the actors are obviously indigenous people and they perform – both women and men – in a remarkably unselfconscious manner, even when they are doing things that they would not normally do. Equally remarkably, they are speaking their own language, in synch, though it is neither subtitled nor voiced over, so it is often difficult to know what they are saying.
A father sings to his recently deceased son at a place in the forest that they had visited together – Os Umutina (1945) – dir. Harald Schultz.
22 mins., b&w, sound, titles in Portuguese
Production : Serviço de Proteção aos Índios (SPI), Ministério da Agricultura.
Source: This film is held at the Museu do Índio, Rio de Janeiro, though the copy available for public viewing lacks sound. It can also be viewed on-line here, though in addition to the lack of sound, there has clearly been a technical problem with the upload of the second half of the film.
The film is also available as part of the Encyclopaedia Cinematographica collection held by TIB, the German National Library as detailed here. A transcript of the voice-over commentary in both Portuguese and German is available here.
The TIB also holds many other shorter films by the director, Harald Schultz. These include Totenkulttänze [Dances of the Cult of the Dead] released in 1962 and shot at the same time as Os Umutina. This concerns three dances performed at an annual ritual commemoration of the dead. It is silent, has a running time of 4 ½ mins and, significantly, it is in colour.
A study guide in German relating to this shorter film is available here. This provides background context that is also useful for understanding the main film.
Here Schultz explains that he was working with a mixture of 16mm and 35mm stock using a Bolex camera for the former and a Bell & Howell for the latter. The stock was mostly black and white since due to the fact that the Second World War was going on at the time, it was not possible to get sufficient colour stock to shoot the whole film. Schultz also made location sound recordings of music.
Schultz seems to have decided to reserve the colour stock for shooting the most important ritual performances. While this is understandable, this decision had the unfortunate consequence that these events were not included in the main film, presumably precisely because they were in colour. Instead, they were reserved for a separate film that was not released until more than fifteen years later and which did not carry any sound.
Background: Traditionally, the Umutina lived on various small right-bank tributaries of the upper Paraguay River, in western Mato Grosso, between the Sepotuba and Bugres rivers. Their language is considered to be distantly related to Bororo, and there are also certain cultural features that are common to both groups, though there are also some major differences.
‘Umutina’ is a relatively recent term, dating only from the 1930s and first used by other indigenous groups to refer to them. In earlier texts, they are often referred to as the Barbados (literally, the ‘bearded ones’) on account of the light beards that men traditionally wore, unusually for an Amazonian indigenous people.
The Umutina came into violent contact with non-indigenous people in the late nineteenth century and were not pacified by the SPI until 1911. At that time, their population is estimated to have been around 300 individuals, but an outbreak of measles in 1919 reduced them to 200. Due to the effects of further epidemics, by the time that Harald Schultz first came to study them in 1943, they had been reduced to 73 individuals, of whom 50 were living on the SPI post.
Harald Schultz among the Umutina (photograph in Schultz 1954, p.73).
The remaining Umutina were then living in a single village of three or four houses on a tributary of the upper Paraguay River. This is the group that is the subject of this film. Schultz made three visits to this village, totalling eight months, spread over three years, 1943, 1944 and 1945. The material for the film was shot in the course of the latter two visits. It is also this group that is the principal subject of the fieldwork memoir that Schultz published in 1954 and which alluded in its title to the fact that at that time, there were only 23 of them.
In 1945, while Schultz was visiting them, this group suffered an outbreak of whooping cough, and despite his attempts to aid them medically, they were reduced to only 15 people. Shortly afterwards, they too moved into the SPI post.
The Umutina continue to live on the site of the former SPI post and have been assigned a territory in the vicinity. By 2014, their population had increased to 515 but they are now extensively intermarried with the Paresí and Nambikwara who also live at the former SPI post and they no longer speak their own language. (More detailed information about the life of the Umutina today is available here).
Os Umutina and Totenkulttänze therefore represent the final period of the Umutina’s existence as an autonomous people living freely in the forest.
In the study guide for the supplementary colour film, Totenkulttänze, Schultz remarks that his filming was cut short when he suffered ‘a serious accident’. In fact, as described in his fieldwork memoir, this consisted of the severe wounding that he suffered when his aggrieved interpreter (an Umutina man who had grown up outside the group) attacked him with a knife, almost killing him.
The technical quality of the Schultz’s cinematography in Os Umutina is remarkably good. In contrast to most of his many later films, which primarily consist of very short works of descriptive documentation, this film is clearly intended to be a documentary in the sense that the material has been skilfully re-ordered and cut in accordance with the editorial codes of the period.
In his preface to Schultz’s fieldwork memoir, which was published in 1954, Herbert Baldus, who was Schultz’s principal academic patron and a foundational figure in modern Brazilian anthropology, described this work as “one of the best films that has yet been made of a South American tribe”. It was a view that he would reiterate in the obituary that he wrote about Schultz after the latter’s sadly premature death in 1966.
Film Content :
The film is organised into two parts. In the first, after a preliminary map showing the location of the traditional territory of the Umutina, the film opens with a series of portraits of individuals of various different ages, illustrating their remarkable forms of body decoration and hair styling..
This is a followed by a series of sequences on crafts, broadly defined, including house-building, the making of bowstrings and arrows, digging sticks and the curing of animal skins.
In the midst of these, there is a particularly interesting sequence of an old man feeding some macaws. The voice-over explains that the Umutina consider that after death, their relatives’ souls may take up residence in certain animals and particularly birds, which they then adopt as pets and look after with great care. This does not, however, prevent them from using their feathers to make their body ornaments.
After death, one of the three human souls are thought to take up residence in animals, particularly birds. The Umutina therefore look after their pets, such as these macaws, with particular attention.
The film then moves on to themes of subsistence, with the voice-over commenting that for the Umutina, daily life is normally a constant struggle for food. A man is shown shooting a large fish with bow and arrow, another is shown cutting down a tall tree with an axe acquired through trade with non-indigenous people. His purpose is to get at the beehive in its upper branches: honey, we are told, is much appreciated by the Umutina.
The final section of the first part begins with a man setting light to the roof of a house. It is explained that this is done when a family moves to a new location to prevent bad spirits congregating at the old site. However, when a family member is buried within the house, they leave the house to decay naturally.
A father sings mourning songs for his baby boy who has recently died. Beyond, the bereaved mother is comforted by her sister. In the middle, beneath a cloth, lies the grave of the recently buried child (see also the image at the top of this entry).
This introduces the theme of mortality which is then continued with a sequence in which the father and other male relatives are shown singing mourning songs following the recent death of young male child.
The second part of the film begins with a sequence showing a fishing expedition that involves the damming and poisoning of a river. This is followed by a brief sequence about horticulture and the cultivation of maize, the principal crop.
But the main business of this part of the film are the ceremonies that take place at the time of the maize harvest, early in the rainy season, when the struggle for subsistence is less intense than usual.
A woman caresses the foot of one of the dancers whom she believes has embodied the spirit of her dead husband. [Not shown in the film, see the Totenkulttänze study guide, p.6]The main purpose of these ceremonies is to commemorate the dead whose spirits are attracted to the event and take up residence in the bodies of the dancers. The ceremonies take place within a specially prepared clearing in the forest, at one end of which a house for the spirits is built. This is enclosed on all sides in the traditional Umutina manner, and the entry of women is strictly forbidden. Within it, the dancers dress in the palm-leaf cloaks that they will wear for the ceremony.
The film shows the structure being built and then various sequences of dancing. As night falls, a guttural singing in imitation of bird calls and the sound of flutes announces the arrival of the spirits of the dead. A second form of dance begins and the dancers go into a sort of ecstasy as the spirits enter their bodies.
In a final intervention, the voice-over reflects on whether the spirits know that the end is nigh for a “once great indigenous tribe”.
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