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Abstract
Based on a series of conversations with Colin Young that have taken place over more than thirty years, this article explores how a certain set of practical and institutional circumstances, in combination with a series of philosophical and aesthetic ideas about the nature of cinema, first led to the emergence over the late 1960s and early 1970s of the approach to ethnographic filmmaking that would become known as “Observational Cinema.” Although it was those whom Colin Young trained, inspired or simply influenced who worked out the practical filmmaking applications of his ideas, it was he who initially formulated the foundational concepts underpinning this approach to ethnographic filmmaking. As such, although he has been a “filmmaker-maker” rather than a filmmaker himself, Colin Young has a rightful claim to be considered, in the sense defined by Roland Barthes, as the original “author” of Observational Cinema.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This article represents a substantially revised and expanded version of an article first published in the volume that arose from the Origins of Visual Anthropology conference organized by Beate Engelbrecht in Göttingen in June 2001 [Henley Citation2007]. I am particularly grateful to Paul Hockings, David MacDougall, Judith MacDougall, and Colin Young himself, for commenting upon this revised version. I am also indebted to Suzette Heald, James Heaton, Richard Henley, Paul Hockings, David MacDougall, Sally Hancock and Norman Miller for supplying the images used in the Figures.
Notes
1 The centrality of the concept of “conversation” to Observational Cinema praxis was flagged in “Turkana Conversations,” the name that the MacDougalls gave to the trilogy of films they made with the Turkana. Similarly, but quite independently, although finally settling on “Vermont People,” Di Gioia and Hancock had initially thought to call their series “Vermont Conversations.” See Young [Citation1982: 5–6].
2 In the mid-1960s, when Colin and he first met, Edmund Carpenter (commonly referred to as “Ted”) was head of the Anthropology Department at San Fernando Valley State College (later to become the State University of California at Northridge). Before that he had been at the University of Toronto, along with Marshall McLuhan and Paul Hockings (then a graduate student). For a stimulating account of Carpenter’s extraordinarily diverse career, see Prins and Bishop [Citation2001–02, also 2007]. Carpenter died in July 2011.
3 It was Colin’s senior colleague in Theater Arts at UCLA, Hugh Gray, sometime Dominican priest, RAF pilot, classical scholar, screenwriter, and translator of André Bazin, who first introduced Colin to Frances Flaherty, which in turn led him to be invited to the Flaherty seminar.
4 The full title of the UNESCO conference was “Roundtable on Ethnographic Film in the Pacific Area.” A more detailed account of the event, including a listing of the principal participants, has been given by Ian Bryson [Citation2002: 101–102]. The Young-with-Carpenter report makes for interesting reading, particularly its conclusion [81–84], which anticipates some of the arguments that Young would later put forward in his “Observational Cinema” essay. The report as a whole, which is available on the web [see References, below], was later incorporated into the more general UNESCO catalog on films of ethnographic significance made in the Pacific region, edited by Jean Rouch [Citation1970].
5 The system of “quarters” is a distinctive feature of the University of California academic year, which like the traditional British university system of “terms,” divides the year up into three teaching periods, each of ten weeks’ duration, referred to as the Fall, Winter and Spring quarters.
6 Having found her first choice as cameraperson too partial to the newly invented zoom lens, Judith asked David to assist her for the remainder of the shoot since they shared a commitment to the observational approach [J. MacDougall Citation2007: 137]. Paul Hockings drove the car for tracking shots [pers. comm., May 2017].
7 See D. MacDougall [Citation2007: 128], J. MacDougall [Citation2007: 137]. By way of explanation for this “tough love” pedagogical approach, Colin used to tell his NFTS students an anecdote about his friend and fellow Glaswegian, the feature film director Alexander MacKendrick, perhaps best known for Sweet Smell of Success [1957], a major film that starred Burt Lancaster. During its production MacKendrick became aware that a particular take featuring Lancaster was not working, but was at a loss to suggest how the great actor might improve his performance. All he could think to say was, “Burt, just do it round the other way, would you?” To his great satisfaction, Lancaster then came up with an ingenious solution that MacKendrick could never have imagined himself.
8 Both Hockings [Citation1988] and McCarty [Citation1995] have written amusing accounts of the production of this film, which I have drawn upon freely here. See also Hockings’ reminiscence in this journal [31(1-2): 180–189].
9 The Village presented peasant life on the Dingle Peninsula just before a period of radical change. The following year, Dunquin was chosen as the location for the blockbuster feature film, Ryan’s Daughter, directed by David Lean and produced by M-G-M. A great deal of money was pumped into the village during the production, as a new (though supposedly old) village had to be constructed; while the release of the film in 1970 led to a steady influx of tourists, an effect that continues to this day. As a result, coupled with the effect of Ireland’s entry into the European Community in 1973, the generalized poverty shown in The Village was alleviated and the village school re-opened, again teaching in Gaelic. But greater wealth also resulted in a more differentiated class society, and today many families in the village hold a copy of The Village as a reminder of more egalitarian times. This process of social change is described in Village Ghosts [2009], the follow-up film that Hockings made in collaboration with local director Brenda Ní Shúilleabháin [Paul Hockings, pers. comm., August 2012, June 2017]. The Village is being remastered and re-released through DER. See Messenger’s positive review [Citation1972].
10 David MacDougall recalls just how innovative this project was from an editorial point of view: “I used a double-screen Moviola capable of running three sound-tracks—one of the few such machines in existence, I should think. It was a nightmare, the machine constantly chewing up film and mag track [the magnetic soundtrack tape]. I spent most of my time repairing broken sprocket holes. But I enjoyed making dancers jump from one screen to the other” [pers. comm., July 2012].
11 See, for example, D. MacDougall [Citation2007: 127]. In commenting on a draft of this article in July 2012, Paul Hockings stressed that although he was a member of the Anthropology Department at the time he did not share Goldschmidt’s view. See also Hood [Citation1982: 208-210 and 269-283] in which another of Colin Young’s allies in the foundation of the Ethnographic Film program, the ethnomusicologist Mantle Hood, presents his ideas about the methods appropriate to filmmaking for academic ethnomusicological purposes. Although there are some points of overlap with the Observational Cinema approach, there are also significant differences, notably the suggestion that in the ideal case the action to be filmed should be rehearsed beforehand and should be covered by three cameras. I am grateful to John Baily for drawing this publication to my attention.
12 Pers. comm., July 2012.
13 Walter Goldschmidt, head of the Anthropology Department and also co-director of the Ethnographic Film Program, had carried out field research in Uganda, so it seems very likely that this is why Hawkins and his team chose this particular country for their project.
14 Walter Goldschmidt had done fieldwork among the neighboring Sebei, collaborating with his wife Gail in a study of female circumcision, and this may have influenced the precise choice of subject matter and location. However, according to David MacDougall [pers. comm., June 2017], “Hawkins had talks with a number of anthropologists, including Thomas O. Beidelman and Raymond Apthorpe, looking for a subject. One idea, I believe, was to make a film with the poet Okot p'Bitek about the Luo (Acholi), and I remember meeting him at the time. The idea of making the film about the Gisu with Suzette Heald only developed later, after several other ideas were discarded.”
15 For the Jie shoot, the MacDougalls were allowed to hold on to the equipment that they had used in the Gisu project, so they sold their return air tickets and bought an old Land Rover, while for stock they made do with some short ends left over from the Gisu shoot, plus some black-and-white stock that they were able to buy with $1000 that Colin and Richard Hawkins were able to find for them back in UCLA [J. MacDougall, pers. comm., July 2012; see also the account by D. MacDougall in Grimshaw and Papastergiadis Citation1995: 26-29].
16 When it was eventually released, notwithstanding its technical limitations, Imbalu: Ritual of Manhood of the Gisu of Uganda, with a running time of 75 minutes, was the subject of considerable acclaim within ethnographic film circles. In 1990 it was awarded a Special Commendation at the 2nd International Festival of Ethnographic Film, which was held at the University of Manchester and sponsored by the Royal Anthropological Institute.
17 The four films of the “Vermont People” series were Duwayne Masure [1971], Chester Grimes [1972], Peter Murray [1975] and Peter and Jane Flint [1975]. The series was brought to a premature end by the tragically early death of David Hancock at the age of 30, in 1976. See Grimshaw and Ravetz [Citation2009: 53-78] for a sensitive analysis of these greatly under-appreciated films.
18 See Sherman [Citation2007] for an overview of Prelorán’s career. Working with Prelorán in the Orinoco Delta was the avant-garde experimental filmmaker Mildred “Chick” Strand, also a student then in the Ethnographic Film Program. She shot her own short film, Mosori Monika, released in 1969, which examined the impact of missionaries on the Warao as seen through the eyes of women on both sides of the encounter [Ramey Citation2011: 266-268]. During 1970 Prelorán was a Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Film Study Center where Gardner was the Director; and during the tenure of this Fellowship Prelorán produced the English-language version of Imaginero. (On Gardner’s website, this film is described as having been “made in collaboration with Robert Gardner.” See http://www.robertgardner.net/imaginero/.)
19 Another indicator of the general interconnectedness of the people working in ethnographic film in the USA in the late 1960s, is that the daughter of the de Menils, Adelaide, an experienced photographer who had recently completed an extensive documentation of the material culture of the peoples of the Canadian Northwest Coast, became the life partner of Edmund Carpenter around this time [Prins and Bishop Citation2007: 224].
20 Hockings worked at M-G-M as the research director (along with Clark Howell and Louis B. Leakey) on a major NBC television film, The Man Hunters [Noxon 1970], which concerned the important palaeontological discoveries being made around this time. According to Hockings, although Walter Goldschmidt had been Chair of the Department and nominally co-director of the Ethnographic Film Program, he had actively dissuaded his students from enrolling in it [pers. comm., June 2017].
21 Although David MacDougall shot To Live with Herds while still enrolled as a Master’s student at UCLA, it was not actually completed until after he had moved to Houston. It was another film about the Jie that he had shot on the same field trip, the much shorter Nawi [1970], which was edited first and was presented as his MFA graduation thesis film [pers. comm., July 2012].
22 The “Faces of Change” series, in 26 parts, has recently been extensively remastered and re-released through DER. See http://www.der.org/films/faces-of-change.html
23 David MacDougall has explained to me [pers. comm., n.d.] that the unfortunate conjunction of titles arose because at the time that Principles of Visual Anthropology was going to press, he himself was away in the field in Africa, Colin Young was in the UK, and the editor was in Chicago, with the result that it was only after publication that the potential for confusion came to the attention of any of the parties involved.
24 These films were Let’s Get Married [1985], My Family and Me [1986] and A Hard Life [1996]. For further details, see http://www.lesfilmsduquotidien.fr/catalogue.html
25 The other anthropologists to benefit from the NFTS programme were John Baily, now Emeritus Professor of Ethnomusicology at Goldsmiths’ College, University of London, who continues to be an active maker of ethnomusicology films; Marcus Banks, who as Professor and, until recently, the head of the School of Social Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at Oxford, oversees a visual anthropology Master’s program there; and Felicia Hughes-Freeland, who also set up a visual anthropology program at the University of Wales at Swansea, although she is now retired. As a further extension to the RAI/Leverhulme scheme, Anna Grimshaw, who is now Professor of Visual Culture at Emory University, Atlanta, but then was newly appointed as a Lecturer at the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology, attended the NFTS for a period in the academic year 1991–1992.
26 This transcript represents the amalgamation of two different recorded conversations, one in January 1988, the other in April 2001. The text of the latter appeared in the earlier version of this article [Henley Citation2007]. A line of three dots … represents an excision from that version on grounds of redundancy. I have also reordered the interview slightly so that its themes are introduced in a more systematic manner.
27 After seeing his early film, Trobriand Cricket, Colin Young recruited Gary Kildea to study documentary filmmaking for a period at the NFTS (Colin Young, pers. comm., July 2017).
28 Leacock acted as the principal cameraman on what turned out to be Robert Flaherty’s last major film [Leacock Citation1986, Citation2007].
29 Steve Morrison, currently Rector of Edinburgh University, was the first graduate of the NFTS in 1974. At the time of this interview in 2001, he was a senior executive of Granada Television. In May 2017, in Colin’s presence, he was invited to give the now-annual Colin Young Lecture at the NFTS in honor of Colin’s 90th birthday.
30 This “conversation” took place in Colin’s private house near Tonbridge, in a quiet corner of the county of Kent, in southeast England. Along with the Maysles brothers and Pennebaker, Richard Leacock was a leading member of the Direct Cinema group. Although British in origin, he studied at Harvard and was based on the East Coast of the USA for most of his active filmmaking career, though he later retired to Paris, where he died in March 2011. D.A. Pennebaker is the only surviving principal member of the group, and he has had a long and distinguished career as a documentarist. His most recent major work, with Chris Hegedus, is Unlocking the Cage [2016], which concerns the campaign of lawyer Steven Wise to establish animals’ rights not to be imprisoned in zoos.
31 On the notion of the “crisis structure” in the films of the Direct Cinema group, see Mamber [Citation1974: 115–140].
32 This is a reference to a classic French feature film, directed by Jean Renoir and released in 1939.
33 This is a reference to a classic Neo-realist film directed by Vittorio de Sica and released in Citation1948.
34 I had in mind here the arguments of William Rothman [Citation1997: 109–111], although he approaches the question from a somewhat different angle.
35 The contrast referred to here is between the film pioneers, the Lumière brothers, whose early films in the 1890s mainly consisted of scenes of everyday life in France, shot in an entirely naturalistic manner, and their contemporary, Georges Méliès, who used the new medium to make films on fictional and fantastical subjects, with an innovative use of special effects.
36 David MacDougall adds that the only parts of the original narration that were preserved, and then only in a very sparse form, were those that were in the nature of personal observations and which he chose therefore to perform himself. The factual information was transferred to the intertitles that now introduce each of the five sections of the film [pers. comm., July 2012].
37 The Éclair NPR (Noiseless Portable Reflex) was a French 16mm camera that first appeared in the 1960s and was specifically designed for hand-held use while shooting with synchronous sound. Rouch assisted with its design. It was significantly lighter than earlier models and was therefore much favored by Observational Cinema camera-people, though still very much heavier than any modern digital camera.
38 In the early 1970s, when this original exchange took place, Roger Sandall was a Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Sydney. However, prior to that, though originally from New Zealand, he had worked for many years as a film director at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, and had earlier still worked at editing film trailers in New York (where he met Margaret Mead). Whoever may have had the primacy in oral usage, Sandall would appear to have been the first to use the adjective “observational” in print to refer to a particular kind of documentary [Sandall Citation1972]. He died in 2012.
39 Leslie Woodhead, a leading British documentarist, was one of the principal directors who worked on “Disappearing World,” the long-running anthropological series produced by Granada Television. Along with the anthropologists David Turton and Marilyn Strathern, Woodhead was also one of the founders of the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology at the University of Manchester in 1987.
40 As postgraduate students, both Timothy Asch and Asen Balikci had studied ethnographic fieldwork methods with Margaret Mead, who was particularly concerned with the pedagogical applications of ethnographic film. Both had also later been actively involved in the production of Man, A Course of Study (MACOS), a major pedagogical program based in Harvard under the direction of the psychologist Jerome C. Bruner, that sought to develop curriculum packages for high school students based on samples of ethnographic film. See Lutkehaus [Citation2004].
41 This is a reference to the program run by George Stoney for the National Film Board of Canada that involved screening rushes back to the subjects and then developing further ideas for the film with them. When it first began in 1968, this program was based on 16mm technology, though it did later move on to using early models of the portable ½ in. videotape deck. Among many possible references, see Todd Hénaut [Citation2007].
42 When he retired as director of the NFTS in 1992 Colin went to work for the Ateliers du cinéma européen (ACE), an organization set up in Paris in 1993 with the aim of assisting in the training and development of independent European producers [http://ace-producers.com/]
43 See Henley [Citation2006], in which I argue that the use of narrative devices is a “guilty secret” in the sense that although they are an essential feature of most ethnographic filmmakers’ repertoire, due to a lingering sense that the role of the camera should be to provide entirely objective accounts of the world, the use of such devices is rarely discussed in the ethnographic film literature.
44 See Hockings [Citation1988: 154–155] for a vivid description of this occasion, which took place in December 1968. Among other details, Hockings reports how “One middle-aged scholar … rushed up to the projectionist and attacked him, angrily shouting something about how this film was nothing but a vast accumulation of ordure.”