George Dorsey in naval attaché’s uniform, probably therefore in the period 1919-1921
In a varied career, George Dorsey was Curator of Anthropology at the Field Museum, Chicago, when he made Native India (1916) in the course of an expedition to the subcontinent, possibly in 1914.
Best known in anthropological circles for his earlier work on Native American groups, he later became a US naval attaché in Madrid and then Lisbon as well as an adviser to President Woodrow Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.
He then appears to have attempted to become a freelance creative writer in New York but in 1925, returned to academic life as an anthropology lecturer at the New School of Social Research.
This is a television film based on footage that Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf shot during an expedition that he made in 1962 with this wife Elisabeth (‘Betty’) to a then-remote high altitude district of central Nepal, known as ‘Dolpo’, close to the border with Tibet. It was “presented” – i.e. the editing was overseen – by Joan Duff for the BBC series, Travellers Tales, while the series editor was Brian Branston, who worked with Haimendorf on a number of BBC television projects. An archival version of the BBC television schedule for 1965, available here, indicates that The Land of the Dolpo was broadcast in September of that year.
The voice-over commentary may now seem very dated, but this film includes some remarkable footage of the distinctive Bon Buddhist practices of the region, as well as of horse-racing at a traditional fair in the Muktinath valley. It is also of particular historical interest as it includes footage of a group of refugees recently arrived from Tibet following the imposition of Chinese direct rule.
The original rushes are also available, in rather better quality, via the Haimendorf playlist on Alan MacFarlane’s ayabaya website here. See, among possible others, films nos. 1, 60, 70, 72-74, 80-83, 86-87.
48 mins, colour, voice-over in English, with some post-synchronised sound.
Source : this film can be downloaded from the Digital Himalayas website here
This is a BBC television programme, jointly co-produced with the Bavarian television station, Bayarischer Rundfunk, that is extensively based on footage shot by Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf among the Konyak and Wanchu Naga of North East India (the former head hunters of the title) as well as among the Apa Tani of the same region (who did not hunt heads). It was “presented” for television – in effect, the editing of the footage was overseen – by Anne Winder, who would later become a leading BBC producer. An archival version of the BBC television schedule for 1972, available here, indicates that it was broadcast as part of The World About Us series in January of that year.
The film is structured around Haimendorf’s return visit in 1971 to a region that he had first visited in the 1930s and he provides a framing voice-over in his aristocratic Germanic accent. The film exudes the same general ethos as the early Disappearing World films that were being broadcast by Granada Television around the same time, though Haimendorf’s archival footage marks it out as distinctive.
Notwithstanding the prioritising of the Naga in the general story-line of the film as well as the title, the Apa Tani archival material is equally interesting, particularly the footage of the traditional aerial acrobatics performed on the occasion of the Spring Festival. Some of the Naga footage had previously appeared in Wanchu Nagas (1962).
Brian Branston was a BBC producer who in the early days of anthropology on British television collaborated with anthropologists on a number of occasions in preparing their footage for broadcast.
Similarly, in a programme broadcast in January 1967, as indicated here, Branston acted as the producer of a television version of The Hadza (1966), directed by Sean Hudson and the anthropologist James Woodburn.
Branston also produced his own television programmes combining natural history with scenes of local life in Oceania, Amazonia and among the Inuit of Pelly Bay (Nunavut). He was also a writer of popular books about pagan religious beliefs in Saxon England and among the Vikings.
This is a television film based on footage shot by Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf in the course of a lengthy expedition during which, accompanied by his wife, Elisabeth (‘Betty’), and a team of porters, he travelled overland from Gorkha in western Nepal, through Katmandu, right across to the eastern frontier with the Darjeeling District of India. The title is somewhat misleading in that the film includes scenes not only of the life of the Gurkhas, but also of other groups that the expedition visited along the way, including the Gurung, the Tamang, the Sherpa and the Rai. The material was “presented” – that is, ordered and edited – by the BBC producer, Brian Branston, who worked on several programmes with Haimendorf, while the voice-over, which was scripted by Haimendorf himself, was performed by the then 33-year-old David Attenborough. An archival copy of the BBC television schedules, available here, indicates that this programme was first broadcast in August 1959.
At least part of the footage on which the Sherpa sequences in the film are based is available independently on the web, under the title Among the Sherpas of Nepal, here. Probably on account of the fact that it is in colour, this footage is sometimes erroneously dated to the 1970s, but as it appears in Land of the Gurkhas, it must have shot before 1959. Interestingly, when incorporated into this film, the Sherpa footage was not only transferred to black and white stock (as colour television did not exist in the UK at that time), but was also horizontally “flipped”, so that the right hand part of the image appears on the left and vice versa. The reason why this was done is unclear, but it may have been a by-product of copying from the original colour stock to monochrome stock.
An ethnographic expedition film shot by Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf, who studied the Naga over many years. However, it is clear that Haimendorf did not know the subjects of this film at all well: in the opening sequence, some older women hide from the camera, and there are a number of shots of villages and groups of people taken at considerable distance. In another sequence, Fürer-Haimendorf hands out small gifts to the subjects from behind the camera. The film ends with a sequence of an aeroplane dropping supplies.
Although the film has clearly been edited, beginning and ending with general shots of the mountain environment, there is no systematically developed narrative. Instead, the film offers a series of sequences, showing traditional house styles, some craft activity or simply groups of people standing in front of the camera. Towards the end of the film, the subjects perform a mock assault on an enemy, apparently in some government post, since they creep along a neatly defined stone-lined path.
However, within these limitations, this film offers some remarkable images of traditional Naga dress and architecture. There is also a very interesting sequence of a group of men striking a vast slit gong.
Texts: see Fürer-Haimendorf 1969, and also the website, The Nagas: Hill Peoples of Northeast India which may be accessed here.
Ursula Graham Bower in Arunachal Pradesh, 1946-47 [Courtesy Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford].
Ursula Graham Bower was one of the first women to shoot ethnographic films, though she had little formal training as either film-maker or anthropologist.
She spent the period 1938-1944 living in the Naga Hills of Northeast India, at first carrying out anthropological research with the Zemi and from 1942, co-ordinating local resistance to the threatened Japanese invasion of India . Despite the wartime conditions, she managed to procure some 16mm film-stock, and shot around two hours of material. About half of this is in colour, which represents an early use of colour film by an anthropologist.
Most of this material, along with some ethnographic notes, has been put up on the web by Alan MacFarlane and may be viewed here, where it is also downloadable.
After the war, now married, Ursula moved to Arunachal Pradesh, also in Northeast India, and lived there from 1946 to 1948 with her husband, Tim Betts, who had been appointed Political Officer in the Subansiri district. Here she shot a further 40 minutes of footage on the local Apa Tani and Dafla (now known as Nyishi) groups, some in black and white, some in colour. This can be viewed, along with some further footage on the Naga, via the Pitt Rivers Museum website here.
Graham Bower’s footage is remarkably well-shot and although limited in quantity and somewhat fragmentary, it is of considerable historical and ethnographic interest. The high degree of rapport that she had with her subjects, particularly the Naga, comes through very clearly in her material and was unprecedented among ethnographic film-makers of her period.
Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf introduces ‘Trading Societies of Western Nepal’ (1976)
An Austrian anthropologist and from 1951 to 1976, Chair of Asian Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf shot some 50-60 hours of silent 16mm footage, mostly in India and Nepal, at various points between 1940 and 1973.
The early footage is in black and white, but already by the 1950s, he was also using colour film. In addition to the films that he made in South Asia, Fürer-Haimendorf also shot footage during visits in the 1960s to the Philippines, New Guinea, Sri Lanka, Egypt and Mexico. He also made many hours of audio recordings to accompany his films.
Between 1959 and 1972, Fürer-Haimendorf collaborated with the BBC producer Brian Branston to make four films for broadcast based primarily on the material that he himself had filmed on various expeditions in India and Nepal, almost invariably accompanied by his wife Betty, who appears in most of these films. He also edited two free-standing films of his own. All these films are listed on the South Asia page here. However, the great majority of his footage was shot for research purposes and/or to support teaching and seminars, and was rarely, if ever, shown to wider audiences. Much of it was edited in no more than a preliminary fashion.
Among leading anthropologists of his generation in the English-speaking world, Fürer-Haimendorf was by far the most prolific maker of ethnographic films, though this is not widely recognised since so little of his work was distributed. This situation has been to some extent remedied by Alan Macfarlane, one of Fürer-Haimendorf’s last doctoral students, who has put up a large selection of his films as a YouTube playlist. This can be accessed via Macfarlane’s ayabaya website here.
A filmic tribute to Christoph and Betty Fürer-Haimendorf by Mark Turin can be seen here
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