Introduction

For the purpose of this book, World Film will be defined as Non-American, Non-Hollywood, and Non-European Film. Western Culture is generally accepted to mean cultures that derive their history from Greco-Roman Civilization and Judeo-Christian religions. This book will address films from Asia and Africa and films by and about indigenous peoples of the Americas, the Caribbean, Australia and New Zealand.

Film artifacts will be examined through the lens of Post-Colonialism and Cultural Humility. Filmmakers will be identified having either neo-colonialist perspectives or native perspectives based on their cultural origins and the intended audience for the films.

Post-Colonialism refers both to a specific historical period in the aftermath of imperialism and to intellectual and political projects that attempt to reclaim and rethink the history and agency of people subordinated under various forms of European imperialism. It signals a possible future of overcoming colonialism, including new forms of global empire. It should not be confused with any claim that the world is free of colonial oppression.^[1]

Cultural Humility Film offers the viewer the ability to see through another’s perspective. The goal of cultural humility, like the concept of Cultural Relativism in Anthropology, encourages viewers to seek to understand other cultures, beliefs, and behaviors, from the perspective of the members of that culture and to empathize without imposing cultural norms.^[2]

Nanook of the North is the foundational film of this course. It serves as the intersection for the dialogue in this book on post-colonial and native perspectives in film.

Robert Flaherty was an American Explorer in the Hudson Bay. He initially ventured north looking for business opportunities in mineral exploration and the exploitation of natural resources. Instead, he realized there was a commercial opportunity, using the new technology of motion picture cinematography, to present the Inuit people, their culture, and their quest for survival to American audiences. He was attempting to capture this culture that would be erased in the Twentieth Century.

Nanook of the North is the product of a colonialist in the Hudson Bay attempting to document a culture. It is also a collaboration between the filmmaker and his Inuit film production crew, and Inuit actors, especially Allakariallak, who portrays the fictional character, Nanook.

This film that typifies a colonialist perspective is also an artifact of Inuit culture created through collaboration. The Inuit crew and actors present their native perspective using this technology at the very birth of cinema.

This book begins with Nanook of the North because it presents the inherent contradictions at the heart of film storytelling.

Nanook of the North opened at the Ziegfeld Theatre in 1922. It was the first feature length documentary film and played for half a century as a non-fiction film. Recent scholarship has reconsidered this designation.

Flaherty’s original travelogue of the Hudson Bay burned while he was editing. He returned to the North and found Allakariallak. In the years between filming his first reels of the interactions between the Inuit people and European and American traders, and his return to begin a more collaborative project, the lives of the Inuit people had changed radically. Before the turn of the Twentieth Century, Inuit hunters used handmade tools made from the bones and sinews of the seals and walruses. By 1916, Inuit people were trading pelts for guns and metal tools.

When Robert Flaherty returned to tell the story of “Nanook, the hunter,” he needed to reenact and recreate the kinds of hunting scenes he had filmed only a few years before. The reenactment of traditional Inuit hunting and fishing techniques as Inuit people were replacing their handmade tools with steel knives and guns from Europe raised questions about the authenticity of Nanook of the North as a documentary film.

Interestingly, the term documentary was not in use when Flaherty was making his film. Nanook of the North was the first feature length documentary film to play in theatres.

Nanook’s story is told through a series of rising obstacles and conflicts. Scenes of hunting and fishing with traditional Inuit tools were reenacted and reconstructed to present a culture that was being erased by modernism.

To discuss Colonialist and Native perspectives in film, it’s important to first understand that all film stories are told through a perspective. Most film stories are presented through the perspective of the main character. There is a dominant angle from the main character’s point of view. A close-up on a secondary character might indicate the main character’s interest in that character or their suspicion about that character. The camera mimics the human eye and in fact presents human attention in ways that the eye can’t. In life, humans see in wide shots, they may focus on something in a scene, but they don’t have the ability to zoom in to a close-up. With film, the camera can frame a shot to present the interests of the main character.

Rashomon is a masterpiece of international cinema, not only because it is beautifully filmed and tells a complex story that still spurs debates about what occurred, but also because Rashomon presents the idea of perspective in film.

In Rashomon four characters tell four different stories. Viewers will often argue about who is lying and who is telling the truth. The great learning opportunity presented by this film is the possibility that there is no evidentiary truth, only the differing perspectives of witnesses, victims, and perpetrators.

Rashomon is a foundational film in this book because it illustrates this concept.

Pathar Panchali is a post-colonialist, neo-realist film that tells a story from the native perspective. It’s the product of an international dialog about film and film storytelling. And it’s the third foundation film in this book.

The Film as Text

The films in this course are the primary texts. World civilizations and cultures will be presented through films made by native and non-native filmmakers; some filmmakers from former colonialist empires with colonialist perspectives. When examining Colonialist and Native perspectives in film. It’s not the purpose of this study to make accusations. A filmmaker from a former colonialist country doesn’t necessarily falsify history. They present the world through the lens of a culture of oppression. Only through the evaluation of stories from native perspectives can viewers develop a sense of balance and cultural humility.