Roger Sandall's Films and Contemporary Anthropology , livre ebook

ROGER SANDALL S FILMS AND CONTEMPORARY ANTHROPOLOGY
ROGER SANDALL S FILMS AND CONTEMPORARY ANTHROPOLOGY
Explorations in the Aesthetic, the Existential, and the Possible
Lorraine Mortimer
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2019 by Lorraine Mortimer
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Mortimer, Lorraine, author.
Title: Roger Sandall s films and contemporary anthropology : explorations in the aesthetic, the existential, and the possible / Lorraine Mortimer.
Description: Bloomington, Indiana : Indiana University Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019016937 (print) | LCCN 2019980372 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253043979 (paperback) | ISBN 9780253043948 (hardback) | ISBN 9780253043955 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Sandall, Roger-Criticism and interpretation. | Ethnographic films-History and criticism.
Classification: LCC PN1998.3.S2517 M67 2019 (print) | LCC PN1998.3.S2517 (ebook) | DDC 791.4302/33092-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019016937
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019980372
ISBN 978-0-253-04394-8 (hdbk.)
ISBN 978-0-253-04397-9 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-0-253-04395-5 (web PDF)
1 2 3 4 5 24 23 22 21 20 19
To my sons,
Cass and Declan, and
my Perth family,
Siyad, Samira, Yasir, Yazn, Sam, and Sarah.
WARNING
Members of Aboriginal communities are respectfully advised that a number of people mentioned in writing and/or depicted in photographs in the following pages have passed away.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 Trusting the Material: Ma z (1962)

2 Environments Fit for the Spirit: The Flahertys, Sandall, and Some Anarchist Anthropology

3 They Were Still Participants: The Ritual Films (1966-76)

4 The Colors of the Infinite: Camels and the Pitjantjara (1969)

5 What You Thinkin About, Little Horse? : Coniston Muster: Scenes from a Stockman s Life (1972)

6 Harmony and Fire: Making a Bark Canoe (1969) and A Walbiri Fire Ceremony: Ngatjakula (1967 and 1977)

7 More Optional and More Fragile: Weddings (1976)

8 In the Floating Desert with Jayasinhji Jhala, Part 1: The Tragada Bhavai: A Rural Theater Troupe of Gujarat (1981), A Zenana: Scenes and Recollections (1982), and The Bharvad Predicament (1987)

9 In the Floating Desert with Jayasinhji Jhala, Part 2: Close Encounters of No Kind (2002) and Nomads (1984)

A (Relative) Conclusion

Appendix 1: The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies List of Roger Sandall s Filmed Material

Appendix 2: Roger Sandall s List of Films He Made (Produced, Directed, and Edited), Film Awards, and Special Screenings

Appendix 3: Innovation in Sound Recording Made during the Filming of the AIAS Ritual Films according to David MacDougall

Appendix 4: Availability of Sandall s Nonrestricted Films

Filmography

Bibliography

Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I T WAS TO STUDENTS IN CINEMA STUDIES AND then in anthropology and sociology at LaTrobe University that I showed the film Coniston Muster , which sparked off much enthusiasm and many good conversations in ethnographic film and documenting cultures courses. Researching and writing this book would not have been possible without the generous help of many people in varying capacities: For hours of film watching and/or conversation, for access to their personal archives, for answering my continuous barrage of questions, and for sharing materials with me, special thanks to Nic Peterson, Jayasinhji Jhala, and Philippa Sandall. For reading parts or all of the manuscript, as well as providing other assistance, I thank Cass Mortimer Eipper, Nic Peterson, Jayasinhji Jhala, Ian Bryson, Jacqueline Lambert, John Morton, Paul Hockings, David MacDougall, and Lyndall Ley Osborne (from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies). I also thank Linda Connor, Judith MacDougall, Jeremy Beckett, Jeremy Long, Peter Sutton, Adrienne McKibbens, Barrett Hodsdon, Felicity Rea, Annie Peters, Penny Harvey, Chris Geagea, Chris Gregory, Judith Robinson, Emma Sandall, Michael Matteson, and Andrew Pike, of Ronin Films.
The library staff at the University of Sydney helped me with research materials as did Sean Bridgemann at the National Film and Sound Archive. And the staff of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies in Canberra, including Eleanor Galvin, Amy Chesher, Heath Garrett, and Kelly Wiltshire, were extremely helpful, often going that extra mile for me. I have Joe Firinu from the Central Land Council in Alice Springs to thank for being a go-between-between myself and members of the family of the book s star, Coniston Johnny, and for obtaining permissions to use images of him. I m indebted to his daughters, Amy and Daisy Campbell. Lastly, many thanks to my editor, Janice Frisch. Any errors and opinions expressed in the book are, however, my own.
ROGER SANDALL S FILMS AND CONTEMPORARY ANTHROPOLOGY
Fig. 0.1. Roger Sandall at Berkeley in 1964. Photographer unknown .
INTRODUCTION
I N 1966, A UNESCO R OUND T ABLE ON E THNOGRAPHIC Film took place in Sydney, Australia. Because of this meeting, as the filmmaker-anthropologist and Catholic anarchist Jean Rouch suggested, visitors discovered that it was on this same continent that contemporary social anthropology and the first real attempts to record on film ways of being, doing, and thinking were born. Yet despite their evident relationship, the trajectories of ethnographic film and anthropology have tended to remain separate. Fifty years after that conference, many anthropologists in the English-speaking world still neglect or ignore what film can offer for our understanding of living in the world. 1
This book s purpose is to reunite film and anthropology in an exploration that is both fertile for today and goes by way of the past, of hidden history, through works by Roger Sandall, a New Zealand-born filmmaker schooled at Columbia University, who was part of a vibrant avant-garde and social documentary film culture in New York in the 1960s. Mentored by Margaret Mead in anthropology and Cecile Starr in the fine arts, Sandall was recommended by the Museum Of Modern Art s Willard Van Dyke to become a one-man film unit at the newly formed Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (AIAS) in 1965.
Sandall attended the UNESCO conference, and his work was known and respected by the likes of Rouch, John Marshall, and Robert Gardner. He would go on to win First Prize for Documentary at the Venice Film Festival in 1968, along with other awards. Yet his films are scarcely known, even in Australia now. Some are restricted and locked away in vaults. As my narrative unfolds, I address the reasons for the neglect and ignorance surrounding his body of work and discuss the making of films of Aboriginal men s ceremonies, along with issues surrounding the ethics and politics of cultural secrets. Sandall s nonrestricted films are examined in their own right-and I argue that they are as worthwhile and relevant today as they were at the time of filming.
Those at the UNESCO conference were not only struck by the number and diversity of the films that had been made in Australia but by the ferment of ideas at the Sydney event. There was questioning of the authority of the filmmakers vis- -vis their subjects, along with impassioned discussions about authenticity, ethics, and aesthetics in anthropology and on film. Colin Young, who had been invited by UNESCO with Edmund Carpenter to report on North American ethnographic films in the Pacific region, was also inspired by how diverse and interesting the inhabitants of the world of ethnographic filmmaking were. Young met Sandall, who became a colleague and friend for life, and when he returned to the University of California, Los Angeles, he began working with colleagues across departments to set up an ethnographic film program there. Yet despite the program nurturing some of the best filmmakers in the field, like David and Judith MacDougall, anthropology still largely remains a discipline of words. A lack of real engagement and depth of thinking still typifies many anthropologists attitudes to film. 2
Conversely, it was through the medium of film that I came to questions of being in the world-which at the same time involved a long-term questioning of the inadequacy and reductiveness of so much abstracted theory. Going to university to study languages, I was seduced by anthropology. I was nevertheless frustrated to study a subject, ostensibly about people, where actual persons seemed missing from accounts-swallowed up in systems of economics, kinship, religion, politics, and so on. My youthful hunch became my adult intellectual conviction that by ruling out of consideration elements of living that couldn t be translated into abstract systems in tidied-up written monographs, whole bodies of evidence in the aesthetic realm (with aesthetic used in its wide a