Table Of Content

American Ethnographic Film and Personal Documentary The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Ahmanson Foundation Humanities Endowment Fund of the University of California Press Foundation. The publisher also gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Humanities Endowment Fund of the University of California Press Foundation, the LEF Foundation, and Hamilton College. American Ethnographic Film and Personal Documentary The Cambridge Turn Scott MacDonald UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley Los Angeles London University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2013 by The Regents of the University of California The author gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in the form of an Academy Film Scholars grant. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data MacDonald, Scott, 1942– American ethnographic film and personal documentary : the Cambridge turn / Scott MacDonald. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-520-27561-4 (hardback) — ISBN 978-0-520-27562-1 (paper) — ISBN 978-0-520-95493-9 (ebook) 1. Documentary films—United States—History and criticism. 2. Ethnographic films—United States—History and criticism. I. Title. PN1995.9.D6M315 2013 070.1′8—dc23 2012045799 Manufactured in the United States of America 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has printed this book on Rolland Enviro 100, a 100% post-consumer fiber paper that is FSC certified, deinked, processed chlorine-free, and manufactured with renewable biogas energy. It is acid-free and EcoLogo certified. For Jordan Belson, Robert Breer, Chick Callenbach, Mani Kaul, George Kuchar, Chris Marker, Robert Nelson, Anne Charlotte Robertson, and Amos Vogel. Your passing will not dim your accomplishments or our gratitude for them. CONTENTS Introduction A Tentative Overview of Boston-Area Documentary Filmmaking • Ethnographic Film and Personal Documentary • Pragmatism: Learning from Experience • The Mission of American Ethnographic Film and Personal Documentary: The Cambridge Turn • Subjects for Further Research • Acknowledgments 1. Lorna and John Marshall Beginnings: Lorna Marshall and First Film • John Marshall: The Hunters • Idylls of the !Kung • Pedagogy • Expulsion from Eden: Bitter Melons and N!ai, the Story of a !Kung Woman • The Pittsburgh Police Films and Brakhage’s Eyes • Putting Down the Camera and Picking Up the Shovel • The Road Taken: A Kalahari Family • A Process in Time 2. Robert Gardner East Coast/West Coast: Early Experiments • Gardner and the Marshalls • Dead Birds • The Experience of Filmmaking as Thought Process • Robert Fulton: Reality’s Invisible—“Serious Playing Around” • Screening Room: Midnight Movies • City Symphony: Forest of Bliss • The Return of the Repressed: Ika Hands • Still Journeying On: Unfinished Examinations of a Life • Studio7Arts: Sharon Lockhart’s Double Tide and Robert Fenz’s Correspondence 3. Timothy Asch Dodoth Morning and the Ethnographic Deadpan • Asch and the Yanomamo • The Ax Fight 4. Ed Pincus and the Emergence of Personal Documentary The Miriam Weinstein Quartet and Richard P. Rogers’s Elephants: Fragments of an Argument • Ed Pincus’s Diaries (1971–1976) • Alfred Guzzetti: Family Portrait Sittings • Guzzetti: It’s a Small World • Guzzetti: Time Exposure 5. Alfred Guzzetti and Personal Cinema Air • Experimental Video: “Language Lessons” • Scylla and Charybdis • Still Point 6. Ross McElwee Finding a Muse: Charleen • Finding a Voice: Ann Schaetzel’s Breaking and Entering and McElwee’s Backyard • Dopplegänger: Sherman’s March • Nesting Dolls: Time Indefinite • On the Road Again: Six O’Clock News • Occupational Hazards: Bright Leaves • Orpheus: In Paraguay and Photographic Memory 7. Robb Moss Riverdogs: A Possible Eden • The Tourist: “Freelance Editing” • Voyage of Life: The Same River Twice 8. Panorama: Other Approaches to Personal Documentary Steven Ascher and Jeanne Jordan: Families in Transition • Michel Negroponte: Getting Involved • Leacock and Lalonde • The Subject Rebels: Nina Davenport’s Films and Ed Pincus and Lucia Small’s The Axe in the Attic • The Political Is the Personal: John Gianvito’s Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind and Jeff Daniel Silva’s Balkan Rhapsodies • Alexander Olch’s The Windmill Movie: “This Little Séance of Flickering Light” • Amie Siegel’s DDR/DDR 9. Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Sensory Ethnography Ilisa Barbash, Lucien Castaing-Taylor, and Sweetgrass • “Sheeple”: Castaing-Taylor’s Audio-Video Installations • The Sensory Ethnography Lab: J.P. Sniadecki, Stephanie Spray, Véréna Paravel, and Leviathan Epilogue Appendix: Sources for Films Notes Index Introduction Knowledge of sensible realities thus comes to life inside the tissue of experience. It is made; and made by relations that unroll themselves in time. 1 WILLIAM JAMES, ESSAYS IN RADICAL EMPIRICISM A TENTATIVE OVERVIEW OF BOSTON-AREA DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKING Over the years, particular forms of filmmaking have been identified with particular cities: Hollywood, with commercial melodrama, obviously; Mumbai, with a certain form of Indian musical; and New York and San Francisco with American avant-garde filmmaking. And in his remarkable book, The Most Typical Avant-Garde: History and Geography of Minor Cinemas in Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), David James argues convincingly for the Los Angeles area’s centrality not simply in the history of commercial filmmaking but in the histories of a wide range of alternative cinemas. One of James’s accomplishments is to recognize that the makeup of a particular urban area can facilitate the production of specific forms of cinematic art and particular kinds of cinematic critique. During the past fifty years, the Boston area has been the fountainhead of 2 American documentary filmmaking. Much of the most interesting and influential nonfiction filmmaking of recent decades has been made in and around Boston, or by men and women who have had significant connections with the Boston area. And filmmakers working in Cambridge at the MIT “Film Section” and at Harvard have made formative changes in how documentary is understood and in what kinds of documentaries get made. Surprisingly, however, relatively little attention has been accorded this phenomenon. Even in the Boston area itself, at least until very recently, very few have seemed to recognize the city’s 3 significance for this crucial dimension of film history.