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The film festival of the Royal Anthropological Institute – a personal memoir on its thirtieth anniversary.

Paul Henley

The film festival of the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI) has been in existence since 1985. It has been a peripatetic event, moving from one host institution, usually a university, to another, mostly on a biennial basis. Like the RAI itself, it is aimed at those who are interested in archaeology as well as anthropology, and it has been primarily directed by academics on a voluntary basis, working in collaboration with the staff of the RAI in London. As I write, the most recent edition of the festival took place just over six months ago, in June 2015, at the Watershed, an arts cinema complex located in the refurbished harbourside area of Bristol docks, in the southwest of England. It was the 14th edition and consisted of the screening of some 60 films over the course of four days. Many of these films were in competition for one or more of eight different prizes, including an Audience Prize, while others were shown hors concours as part of thematic programmes devised by the organisers. In addition, there were a number of workshops and discussions on particular topics, including one on the potential of interactive documentary as a mode of ethnographic film-making and another ‘making of’ session on a recent television series on the Hamar pastoralists of Ethiopia, which had employed a fixed multicamera set-up to film their daily domestic life. However, in contrast to many previous editions of the festival, on this occasion there was no accompanying academic conference.

By common consent, the quality and variety of the programme at Bristol were both excellent, continuing the high standards that the festival has achieved over the thirty years of its existence. So too were the technical facilities and the support of the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Bristol. Even so, this edition posed certain issues that have confronted the RAI festival ever since its inception - as I know from personal experience, having been involved to some degree in every edition to date. Firstly, attendance at the screenings was disappointing: some of the films that would later be awarded prizes, and whose makers had come from a long way to support, played to very small audiences. Secondly, some of the films selected for screening and even some of those awarded prizes provoked controversy since they had been made by filmmakers with neither debt nor allegiance to academic anthropology and without any prior prolonged ethnographic research. On what grounds therefore, some participants asked, had they been included in the programme of an ethnographic film festival?

On the “ethnographicness” of the RAI Film Festival

A broad range of practical factors may impact on attendance at any film festival, including location and transport facilities, the precise calendar dates, the cost of registration and accommodation, and the effectiveness of publicity - to name only the most obvious. Yet the quality and nature of the programme also has an effect and it is here that there is a relationship to be considered between the level of attendance and what, after Karl Heider, we might call the “ethnographicness” of the films on offer (Heider 1975, 46). The important point to take on board here is that “ethnographicness” is a relative rather than an absolute quality and as such can be applied to a broad range of films, some of which will be more ethnographic than others.

The RAI has generally taken the view that if we were to restrict ourselves to films that are very strongly or obviously ethnographic in the sense that they have been made both by and for academic anthropologists and are based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, we would be unlikely to end up with a selection of films that was sufficiently strong either in number or in quality to sustain a stimulating festival with an international profile. Besides, to restrict ourselves in this way would be entirely contrary to the historical mission of the RAI, which, since its foundation in the nineteenth century, has been to act as a two-way bridge between the academic world and the broader public, not only providing a means whereby anthropologists and archaeologists can communicate their knowledge to non-academic audiences, but also a means of introducing ideas and interests from the outside world into the academy. Given this historical mission, it behoves us particularly to ask not only what academics can do for ethnographic filmmaking by non-academics, but also what non-academic filmmakers can do for the practice of ethnography by academic anthropologists.

Typically, the RAI festival now receives over 300 submissions for one or more of its prizes. In selecting amongst this vast field of entries, the RAI has tended to adopt a rather catholic definition of the term “ethnographic”. In common with the practice in contemporary academic anthropology generally, in this definition, “ethnography” is no longer considered merely synonymous with the culturally exotic. That may still be the most widespread popular view, but this was an association that became obsolete in the academic world at least 80 years ago when anthropologists began to carry out ethnographic studies on the streets of Chicago. In this more modern definition, ethnography, be it filmic or textual, is typically taken to involve the study or exploration of the customary and recurrent forms of social and cultural life, regardless of the degree of cultural exoticism entailed. It may involve an account of exceptional events, of a political, or ritual nature, for example, but in the unfolding of those events, customary relations, ideas and values will in the ideal case be invoked, even highlighted or brought to light when normally they remain hidden. An ethnographic film defined in this way will often also be about particular individuals, and may even constitute highly personalised portraits, but it will be through these individuals’ idiosynractic life experiences that the film will offer a broader view onto the culture or society of which they are part.

There is also a methodological and even an ethical dimension to this present-day definition of the ethnographic. In the ideal case, an ethnographic film will be based on the prolonged cohabitation of the filmmakers with the subjects and the film that emerges from this cohabitation will be one that is built upon the relationship of trust developed between subjects and filmmakers during this period. The resulting film will be at the very least non-judgemental, and may even be partisan in the sense that its aim will be to present the way of life of the subjects, not just as they understand it intellectually, morally or politically, but even, to the degree that the audiovisual medium allows it, as they experience it. In this way, an ethnographic film should be aiming to access what Bronislaw Malinowski, the original Ethnographer with a capital ‘E’, called the “subjective desire of feeling” and which he also pronounced, in those less gender-aware days, to be “the greatest reward which we can hope to obtain from the study of Man” (Malinowski 1932, 25).

In applying this definition of the ethnographic to the films submitted to the RAI festival, the selection committees have generally worked to the principle that it is not necessary to be an academic anthropologist to make a film that is ethnographic – though as with crazy people in some offices, it can certainly help. Nor is it necessary for a film to conform to the definition in every particular for it to be considered ethnographic: even if it deviates in some regards, its “ethnographicness” can still be sufficient for it to merit a place at the festival. It is also not necessary for films to conform to any particular style or genre: they can be observational, interview-based, commentary-led, archival or even fictional, and still manifest sufficient “ethnographicness” to be included. All subject matters are similarly possible.

The upside of this broad definition of the ethnographic is that RAI has generally had a very rich field of films from which to choose. The downside is that it is often very difficult to choose between them. How does one assess self-consciously cinematic works in the mould of Robert Gardner, with the more soberly observational films of the kind made by David MacDougall? How does one compare a sophisticated documentary feature of the kind produced by Kim Longinotto with a much shorter film about, say, basket-weaving, that is based on extended firsthand field research but with a fraction of the budget, not to mention a relative absence of the technical film skills that Longinotto can call upon? This last comparison is complexified by the fact that the RAI film festival is supposed to cater to the needs not only of anthropologists but also archaeologists, many of whom have a particular interest in films about technology and “material culture”. Similarly, how does one balance the claims of archival films against those of ethnofictions, or the films made by students (which constitute a large proportion of the entries) against those made by more experienced filmmakers? And what should be the place of indigenous media producers? Should we also strive to find a place for art installations, websites and interactive documentaries, all of which pose logistical problems of exhibition?

Over the course of its thirty-year history, the RAI festival has sought to come to terms with the diversity of the submissions that it receives in two related ways. Firstly, by the proliferation of prizes, so that there is now a prize for a broad range of different categories of film, thereby going some way towards avoiding invidious or absurd comparisons. Secondly, by the proliferation of strands, so that there are now usually at least three strands of film-screenings or more discussion-based events taking place simultaneously. But although these may sound like effective solutions, they merely replace one set of problems with another: not only do three strands disperse the audience, which historically has often been small enough anyway at the RAI festival, but at the same time, it increases the costs of running the festival. For each prize has to be judged and the judges’ expenses paid, and each strand has to be accommodated in its own screening facility, thereby usually increasing room and equipment hire costs.

In my personal view, the only way to square this particular circle is to increase the attendance substantially so that there is sufficient audience to fill every session adequately. But one of the longstanding obstacles to doing this has been the fact that historically the RAI festival has been a moveable feast, never remaining in the same location for more than two consecutive editions, thereby making it difficult both to build up a local audience and to develop a familiar brand that will attract people from afar. This mobility also increases the cost of running the festival over the longer term, since in every new location, a new infrastructure has to be devised and created.

The origins of the RAI Festival

As it is presently constituted, the RAI festival represents the amalgamation of two previously existing events – a “one-off” film festival and a film prize competition - that have been subsequently overlain by all sorts of later accretions. The “one-off” film festival took place in September 1985 at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), which is part of London University. It was a “one-off” in the sense that it was originally conceived as an isolated event, rather than as the first of what would become a series of festivals. The intention was that it would be international in nature but that it would also reflect the range of ethnographic filmmaking initiatives taking place at that time in the UK. Over the course of three days, there were screenings of a number of relatively recent, mostly acclaimed ethnographic films, which had been selected by the organisers and arranged around three themes: life crises, change and development, and cultural self-expression. The first day was chaired by Colin Young, then head of the National Film and Television School (NFTS) in the UK and a leading supporter of ethnographic filmmaking, while the second and third days were chaired by the eminent filmmakers David MacDougall and Jean Rouch respectively. A generous grant from UNESCO enabled the organisers to keep the registration fee low and to invite a number of participants from what was then still known as the “Third World”.

The programme of screenings was enhanced by a number of ancillary events, including a one-day pre-Festival conference focused on the use of film in multicultural educational contexts to combat racism. There were also a number of supporting events, well-attended by the general public, at the National Film Theatre, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, the French Institute and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) in Piccadilly. The latter served as the location for a memorable double bill consisting of Jean Rouch’s bizarre paen to pre-industrial life, Dionysos (1984), and Robert Gardner’s about-to-be-released masterwork, Forest of Bliss (1986). Both filmmakers were present for the discussion afterwards but as the films, each in its own way, had mostly stunned or perplexed the audience, this proved to be rather fragmentary.

This was still within the highwater period of the patronage of ethnographic filmmaking by British television and the Festival was opened by Sir Denis Forman, CEO of Granada Television and godfather of the Disappearing World strand (Forman, 1985). With each film based on the field research of a consultant anthropologist, this strand had been running since 1969 and had completed nine series by this point, representing 34 films (it would go on to produce a further 22 films in 7 series, finally ending in 1993). After a number of more thematic series broadcast in the late 1960s and 1970s, the BBC had recently set up a new unit at Bristol to produce the Worlds Apart strand, modelled on the Disappearing World formula. This strand had begun broadcasting in 1982 and was already into its second series. Meanwhile, Channel 4 had come on-stream and had signalled its intention to support ethnographic filmmaking, not only by broadcasting Nanook of the North (1922) on the centenary of the director Robert Flaherty’s birth in 1984, but also by commissioning films by the anthropologist-filmmakers Hugh Brody and Toni de Bromhead (for the latter, see de Bromhead 2014).