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ABSTRACT
Articulating the concept of a Fourth Cinema, Maori filmmaker, Barry Barclay highlighted its intrinsic radical possibilities for Indigenous documentary production. Departing from Solanas and Getino’s Third Cinema theory, Barclay argues ‘that some Indigenous film artists will be interested in shaping films that sit with confidence within the First, Second and Third cinema framework’. To take this view of documentary work by Indigenous filmmakers living in geographic territories where mainstream documentary was most influenced by John Grierson’s interventions and legacy – Canada, New Zealand and Australia – recognises their presence in documentary’s radical tradition. Fourth Cinema documentaries of seemingly unchallenging ‘exteriority’ (i.e. with ‘surface features: rituals, language, posturing, décor, the use of elders, the presence of children, attitudes to land, rituals of a spirit world) are repositioned by the concept. When viewed through the ‘right pair of [Indigenous] spectacles’, their ‘interiority’ (i.e. ‘the ancient core values’ ‘outside the national orthodoxy’) is revealed. Fourth Cinema documentaries are thus not only radical when ‘documenting injustices and claiming reparations’ (Ginsburg). They also sit firmly within documentary’s radical tradition by celebrating the Indigenous – ‘making records of the lives and knowledge of elders’ (Ginsburg) offering valuable knowledge to Indigenous and settler eyes.
Acknowledgement
We would like to thank Donna Cowan of the NFB, Canada and Prof. Annie Goldson for facilitating access to the films.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 Certainly, a need for new film-forms could be argued, given the extent to which previous western radical filmmaking – by, say, many in the Workers’ Film and Photo Leagues of the 1930s – had been inhibited because of self-imposed requirements to obey the First Cinema’s rules of movie-making (Winston Citation2008, 122). The Third Cinema challenge to develop new cinematic languages then, consciously or unconsciously, informs much radical cinema in the North from the 1960s on, for example Michelle Citron’s Daughter Rite or Marlon Riggs’ Tongues Untied.
2 Barclay does not problematise the idea of an ‘Indigenous film artist’: ‘As I see it … [a] Maori film is a film made by a Maori’ (Barclay Citation[1990] 2015, 20]. It has been noted that ‘the capital intensive, collaborative, intercultural, and transnational nature of cinema makes for a situation in which it is nearly impossible to conceive of a film that is shaped by Indigenous protocols or personnel on all relevant levels’ (Woods Citation2008). Houston Wood, however, is dealing with feature films made by or about Indigenous people. Even by 2008 and certainly now, the scale and nature of documentary production, by contrast, make it far easier to identify a single creative voice – as is, perhaps, best evidenced by the general rise of subjective personal documentaries this century. Therefore, following Barclay we acknowledge that, despite western determinations, the ‘Indigenous film artist’ can be identified and that Barclay’s assertion of ‘confidence’ in the Indigeneity of the films they produce can likewise be accepted.
3 This paper focuses primarily on Fourth Cinema documentary production in countries which share this Griersonian tradition but, as Faye Ginsburg has reported, initially (i.e. from the 1970s on) the ‘most active centres of indigenous media production [including conventional and satellite broadcasting, were] among the Inuit, Yup'ik, Hopi, Nambiquara, Kayapo, Warlpiri, or Pitjanjajara’ (Ginsburg Citation1991, 104) i.e.: in the USA, Russia and Brazil as well as Canada, Australia and New Zealand. However, the development of Indigenous broadcasting – as opposed to documentary production – is not our focus (see previous footnote).
4 We are concerned only with the use of film and video (in both analogue and digital form) for the making of documentaries – not the making of features films, nor the establishment of broadcasting stations, nor the production of ‘record footage’ on equipment left them by anthropologists – a tradition from the ‘Through Navajo Eyes’ project (1966) to the ‘Video in Villages’ project of the Brazilian Centro de Trabalho Indigenista of 1993 and beyond.
5 Deane Williams points out that these visits need a degree of contextualising. For example, Grierson had visited Canada in 1931 and discovered the existence of a government film unit whose equipment and practices influenced his decision making as the executive of the EMB unit. In fact, in Williams’ view, in the early 1930s, Grierson adapted ‘the British model for documentary film to the Canadian system’.
6 In 1978, MacDougal had taken the unusual step of inviting First Nation people to an International Ethnographic Film Conference he and his wife Judy hosted at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Study in Canberra where they were then resident. This ‘remarkable and volatile mix of people’ (MacBean Citation1998, 211) produced a conference ‘marked by vigorous disputes’ (Sandall Citation1978, 217) with the base assumptions of ethnographic filmmaking extensively criticised.
7 Hands of History profiles Doreen Jensen (Gitxsan), Rena Point Bolton (Stó:lo), Jane Ash Poitras (Cree) and Joane Cardinal-Schubert (Kainai) four contemporary Indigenous artists whose work demonstrates a continuum from traditional to contemporary arts practice spanning centuries.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Gail Vanstone
Gail Vanstone is the coordinator of the Culture & Expression program at York University, Canada. She is concerned with the affordances of new technology for documentary and women’s film production. She is the author of D is for Daring, a history of the feminist film unit Studio D at Canada’s National Film Board and, with Winston and Wang Chi, The Act of Documenting.
Brian Winston
Brian Winston is the Lincoln Professor at the University of Lincoln, UK and is a visiting professor at North-East Normal University, Changchun and the Digital Culture Research Centre at the University of the West of England, Bristol. He is the author (with Vanstone and Wang Chi) of The Act of Documenting and editor of The Documentary Film Book. In 1985, he won an Emmy for documentary script-writing.