The Cinema of Robert Gardner

by Lucien Taylor (Editor), Ilisa Barbash (Editor)

Overview

The most artistic of ethnographic filmmakers, and the most ethnographic of artistic filmmakers, Robert Gardner is one of the most original, as well as controversial, filmmakers of the last half century. This is the first volume of essays dedicated to his work - a corpus of aesthetically arresting films which includes the classic Dead Birds (1963), a lyric depiction of ritual warfare among the Dugum Dani, in the Highlands of New Guinea; Rivers of Sand (1974), a provocative portrayal of relations between the sexes among the Hamar, in southwestern Ethiopia; and Forest of Bliss (1986), a sublime city symphony about death and life in Benares, India. Eminent anthropologists, philosophers, film theorists, and fellow artists assess the innovations of Gardner's films as well as the controversies they have spawned. Contributors:Ilisa BarbashMarcus BanksStanley CavellRoderick CooverElizabeth EdwardsAnna GrimshawKarl G. HeiderPaul HenleySusan HoweDavid MacDougallDusan Makavejevákos ÖstörWilliam RothmanSean ScullyLucien TaylorCharles Warren

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781845207748
Publisher:	Berg Publishers
Publication date:	12/01/2007
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.77(w) x 9.63(h) x 0.48(d)

About the Author

Ilisa Barbash is Associate Curator of Visual Anthropology at the Peabody Museum, Harvard University. In 1998, she founded the Graduate Program in Transcultural and Ethnographic Filmmaking, at the University of Colorado, Boulder, which she directed until moving to Harvard in 2002. Her film works (all co-directed with Lucien Taylor) include Made in U.S.A. (1990), a film about sweatshops and child labor in the Los Angeles garment industry, and In and Out of Africa (1992), a video about authenticity, taste, and racial politics in the transnational African art market. In and Out of Africa has been the subject of symposia at the Smithsonian Institution and the British Museum, London, and received awards from the Chicago International Film Festival, the American Film Festival, the National Educational Film Festival, the Big Muddy Film Festival, the Gottingen International Film Festival, as well as from the American Anthropological Association, the Royal Anthropological Institute, and the Global Africa Award.

Lucien Taylor is Director of the Media Anthropology Laboratory, Associate Director of the Film Study Center, and Assistant Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies, and of Anthropology, at Harvard University. Taylor's films include Made in U.S.A. (1990) and In and Out of Africa (1992), both co-directed with Barbash.

Table of Contents

PART I: ANTHROPOLOGICAL, CINEMATOGRAPHIC, & PHILOSOPHICAL OVERVIEWS * 1. The Music of Robert Gardner, Charles Warren * 2. Beyond the Burden of the Real: Anthropological Reflections on the Technique of a Master Cutter, Paul Henley * 3. The Burden of Symbols: Film and Representation in India, Marcus Banks * 4. Gardner's First Shots: Vectored Landscapes, Karl G. Heider * PART II: THE FILMS * 5. Interactive Media and the Construction(s) of Memory in Nonfiction Film: The Case of Dead Birds, Roderick Coover * 6. Gardens of War: Materiality and the Photographic Narrative, Elizabeth Edwards * 7. The Ethnographer's (Visual) Knowledge: Fieldwork with Camera and Notebook in Vishnupur, 1982 and 1983, Ákos Östör * 8. Gardner's Bliss, David MacDougall * 9. Robert Gardner and the Development of a Modernist Sensibility in Ethnography, Ian Mullin * 10. The Camera in the Studio: Robert Gardner's Passenger, Anna Grimshaw * 11. Dancing with Gardner, William Rothman * PART III: DIALOGUES & REMINISCENCES * 12. Anecdote of a Season, Stanley Cavell * 13. Out of Words: The Aesthesodic Cine-Eye of Robert Gardner, Ilisa Barbash & Robert Gardner * 14. Revisiting Forest of Bliss, Stan Brakhage & Robert Gardner * 15. 58 Highland Street, Susan Howe