The Longest Post On Filmwurld

[oscar jubis]

I continue to add films to my list of favorite films of all time posted first in this thread. This is my personal contribution to a canon of cinema that spans from the first films shown to a paying audience (Lumiere Brothers) to the present. The list now has 300 films that provide justification of sorts for my involvement with cinema. The last film added to the list is FOREST OF BLISS, a documentary about life and ritual in Benares, India shot in 1985 by American documentarian Robert Gardner. He was the director of the Film Study Center at Harvard University for 40 years. Robert Gardner remains largely unknown outside academia and that's a shame. He may be the greatest ethnographic filmmaker alive. Jean Rouch was a definite influence on Gardner (and all ethnographic documentarians) but Gardner is an original. His DEAD BIRDS (1963), shot in New Guinea, may be the ideal introduction to Gardner's work. It provides the voice-over narration that Gardner eschews in Forest, sacrificing explanation for the sake of poetry and mystery. If anyone is familiar with or curious about Robert Gardner's films or ethnographic filmmaking, please post.

[cinemabon]

Thanks for the reference, Oscar. It never fails to amaze me how much I continue to learn about film thanks to this site and to contributors like you, Chris, Tab, Johan, and others. I found this youtube video of Gardner and watched the opening of "Dead Birds" where he explains the title in the opening.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mvzxu3syq_A

[oscar jubis]

Glad you looked into Robert Gardner. In the video you link, he interviews Robert Flaherty's widow in the 1960s. It's also available in the Criterion DVD of Nanook of the North.

In this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzKoeFX5Nbg, he explains his decision not to provide any text or voice-over in Forest of Bliss choosing instead to free the viewer to make meaning by providing subjective interpretations based on what they see and hear, no matter how exotic and cryptic it is.

[cinemabon]

I remember in film school being taught about Flaherty's role in being the "father" of documentary film. We had to look at several film styles of documentarians but I don't recall if we ever discussed Gardner's role (that was in the early 1970's and the film school at OSU had only been open for two years with a skeleton teaching staff). My advisor, Ali Elgabri, was more interested in film studies geared toward Hollywood style productions (he had been an assistant director at 20th Century Fox... in fact, all of the prof's at the time were former studio employees).

In bringing your film experience and knowledge to this site, I have - in the past decade - broadened and expanded my scope of understanding to include French film (Chris and Johan), Asian film (you, Oscar) and documentary filmmakers. What I learned in film school all of those years ago has deepened with an ever increasing appreciation of filmmakers and their styles - thanks to your generous time in sharing your knowledge with those who love and appreciate the art of film.

[Johann]

Thanks for the posts Oscar and Cinemabon. We have a good resource here, with threads like this.

[oscar jubis]

I took a film course in '80 or '81 that proved quite formative. During the 70s there was a great increase in the number of US universities and college offering courses in filmmaking and film studies. The field has changed quite a bit since then. The history of silent cinema, for instance, has been re-written based on analysis of a significant number of films that have been found, restored, reissued, etc. in the past 20 years or so. No mention was made of Abel Gance back then, for instance. Now it's become clear that "soviet montage" is heavily indebted to French films like Gance's La Roue (a film that had a much greater impact and influence than the better-known Napoleon. I still remember that back then they used to teach that D.W. Griffith "invented the language of cinema"... Now we have tangible antecedents to everything once ascribed to Griffith.

[Chris Knipp]

No mention was made of Abel Gance back then, for instance. Now it's become clear that "soviet montage" is heavily indebted to French films like Gance's La Roue

That about no mention of Gance seems odd. I heard about it in the Sixties. It was certainly famous. Eisenstein wrote theory about montage, and it's probaby for that reason that the Russians are associated with it, but Eisenstein's use of it is very strong. I'm self-taught. I heard about the great silents from my father and his friend Kirk Bond who was friends with Herman G. Weinberg and attended all he screenings at the Museum of Art Film Library in its early days. I also had the benefit of the F.W. Murnau Film Society's showings on the Berkeley campus. The FWMFS was run by Tom Luddy, later to be founder of the Pacific Film Archives. Who is this guy who knows everything about films? I wondered. Now he runs the Telluride festival. One time Luddy had Godard on for a Q&A. He conducted it just like the one in BREATHLESS.

[oscar jubis]

Sorry for the late reply. Thanks for challenging my inaccurate and exaggerated statement that "no mention of Gance was made back then" (meaning the 70s and early 80s when film history courses were being offered for the first time in many colleges and universities in the US). At that time, we were being taught about the Lumieres, Melies, Porter, Griffith, Chaplin, Soviet Montage, etc. but Abel Gance (and also the British innovators of the Brighton School and women filmmakers in general) were overlooked, often completely ignored in these courses. Nowadays, Gance, Brits like George Albert Smith, and women such as Germaine Dulac, Marie Epstein, and Alice Guy are deservedly being incorporated into the film history curriculum.