Loizos Chapter (23-44)

Loizos' "For the Record: Documentation filming from Innocent Realism to Self-consciousness" discusses the various point of views of the filmmaker/camera, focusing on John Marshall's subject and filmmaking beginning in the early 1950s of the "Bushmen," otherwise known as San of the Kalahari desert. He presents the lives of individuals and focuses on their growth and development within their culture and environment, with an intense authenticity. As we watched in class, "N!ai, the story of a !Kung Woman," it seemed that the people being filmed were not characters, but subjects, and they were having their stories told by themselves, as accurately as possible. The film portrayed the young girl as she grew into a woman in a realistic light, based on the fact that it was social commentary from her perspective, and it was informing the viewer of her personal struggles, and the struggles of her people over the years.

With the help of Timothy Asch, Marshall began to incorporate the technique of "sequence filming." Asch also began to use the newly developed film technique of continuous synchrous-sound. Asch came to work with Chagnon, who used a "demanding behaviour-science approach to anthropology" (Loizos 24) with his portrayal of the Yanomami.

Loizos also mentions the collaboration of Dunlop, Tucker and Tonkinson in which they filmed Aboriginal groups in Australia, using methods of re-enactment and reconstruction with their subjects, who aimed to show the filmmakers the way they used to live before their culture was taken over by the missionaries. It is interesting, because one might ask if it is still authentic because it is the original culture of the people themselves that they are reanacting, or if it is controversial because it is being repeated for the sake of ethnography.

As ethnographic film advanced over time, cultures became weary to allow their sacred rituals and practices to be recorded, as the case with Sandall in Australia, post-1960s when they had the chance to view themselves. With the modernization of ethnographic film techniques and sound technology, the Aboriginal cultures who were made the subjects of the films became involved in controversy regarding ethics, and the sacred nature of their rituals which were being recorded.

Dunlap, in collaboration with the anthropologist Godelier, filmed the Baruya people of Papua New Guinea in 1969, with their consent, which seems like an breakthrough in the ethics between the spectator and the subject.

Loizos also brings up the example of the project between Asch and Linda Connor, filming the subject Jero Tapakan. This project seems revolutionary for ethnographic film for the fact that Asch specifically "wanted there to be no chance of the films helping Westerners see themselves as superior to the people filmed, so any unusual behavior would have to be contextualised through commentary" (Loizos 39), and also wanting to include the inner throughts of the people, as to acheive truth and reality throughthe accuracy of his ethnographic film. The fact that he was interested in presenting Jero as a person, as an individual and was concerned with expressing the truth, emotions and authentic life of Jero seems groundbreaking. As opposed to being a nameless, faceless member of a culture, Jero became a person with a story to be told.