Looking with Robert Gardner

Description

During his lifetime, Robert Gardner (1925–2014) was often pigeonholed as an ethnographic filmmaker, then criticized for failing to conform to the genre's conventions—conventions he radically challenged. With the release of his groundbreaking film Dead Birds in 1963, Gardner established himself as one of the world's most extraordinary independent filmmakers, working in a unique border area between ethnography, the essay film, and poetic/experimental cinema. Richly illustrated, Looking with Robert Gardner assesses the range and magnitude of Gardner's achievements not only as a filmmaker but also as a still photographer, writer, educator, and champion of independent cinema. The contributors give critical attention to Gardner's most ambitious films, such as Dead Birds (1963, New Guinea), Rivers of Sand (1975, Ethiopia), and Forest of Bliss (1986, India), as well as lesser-known films that equally exemplify his mode of seeking anthropological understanding through artistic means. They also attend to his films about artists, including his self-depiction in Still Journey OnM (2011); to his roots in experimental film and his employment of experimental procedures; and to his support of independent filmmakers through the Harvard Film Study Center and the television series Screening Room, which provided an opportunity for numerous important film and video artists to present and discuss their work.
Introduction Robert Gardner
Rebecca Meyers, William Rothman, and Charles Warren

Part I. Overviews and General Topics

1. Some Notes on Robert Gardner
Eliot Weinberger

2. In Flight with Robert Gardner
Tom Conley

3. Colors
Fanny Howe

4. Aesthetic Form and Ethnographic Discourse
Daniel Morgan

5. Robert Gardner and Jean Rouch: Regards Croisés
Maxime Scheinfeigel

6. Robert Gardner’s Reality
Charles Warren

7. To Give, To Take, and To Return
Gayatri Chatterjee

8. Ethno-Cine-Poet: Robert Gardner and Experimental Film
Kathryn Ramey

9. A Revolution in Favor of Television: WCVB-TV and Robert Gardner’s Screening Room
Brian L. Frye

10. On Shamanism and Other Encounters: A Conversation with Robert Gardner in Mexico
Carlos Y. Flores and Antonio Zirión

11. Returning with Robert Gardner to the Baliem Valley, 1988–89
Susan Meiselas

Part II. Looking at Individual Films

12. First Encounters: An Essay on Dead Birds and Robert Gardner
Charles Musser

13. Allegory and Gender Representation in Rivers of Sand
Mauro Bucci

14. Word against Flesh in Rivers of Sand
Irina Leimbacher

15. Look At Me! Deep Hearts and the Vertiginous Self
Murray Pomerance

16. Nomadic Metrosexuals: Framing Beauty, Editing Ritual, and Exhibiting Masculinity in Deep Hearts
Ricardo E. Zulueta

17. Film, Matter, and Spirit: Forest of Bliss
Richard Allen

18. The Same Thing from Different Angles: Resituating Forest of Bliss
Julia Yezbick

19. Hand Eye Coordination: Robert Gardner’s Artist Films
Richard Deming

20. Learning from Catalonia
Bruce Jenkins

21. Dead Birds Re-Encountered: A Journey of Return
William Rothman

Acknowledgments
Credits
Appendices

Robert Gardner Biographical Sketch
Robert Gardner Filmography
Publications by Robert Gardner
Books about Robert Gardner’s Work

Contributors
Index

Sujets

• Película fotográfica
• Visual culture
• Anthropology
• Electronic
• Film
• Cinéma
• Cinema

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 20 septembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438460529
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 5 Mo

Extrait

Looking with Robert Gardner
Also in the series
William Rothman, editor, Cavell on Film
J. David Slocum, editor, Rebel Without a Cause
Joe McElhaney, The Death of Classical Cinema
Kirsten Moana Thompson, Apocalyptic Dread
Frances Gateward, editor, Seoul Searching
Michael Atkinson, editor, Exile Cinema
Paul S. Moore, Now Playing
Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann, Ecology and Popular Film
William Rothman, editor, Three Documentary Filmmakers
Sean Griffin, editor, Hetero
Jean-Michel Frodon, editor, Cinema and the Shoah
Carolyn Jess-Cooke and Constantine Verevis, editors, Second Takes
Matthew Solomon, editor, Fantastic Voyages of the Cinematic Imagination
R. Barton Palmer and David Boyd, editors, Hitchcock at the Source
William Rothman, Hitchcock, Second Edition
Joanna Hearne, Native Recognition
Marc Raymond, Hollywood’s New Yorker
Steven Rybin and Will Scheibel, editors, Lonely Places, Dangerous Ground
Claire Perkins and Constantine Verevis, editors, B Is for Bad Cinema
Dominic Lennard, Bad Seeds and Holy Terrors
Rosie Thomas, Bombay before Bollywood
Scott M. MacDonald, Binghamton Babylon
Sudhir Mahadevan, A Very Old Machine
David Greven, Ghost Faces
James S. Williams, Encounters with Godard
William H. Epstein and R. Barton Palmer, editors, Invented Lives, Imagined Communities
Lee Carruthers, Doing Time
Opposite page: Robert Gardner and Dani Tribe, Baliem Valley. Gardner returns after twenty-eight years and shows the Dani his photographs taken during the filming of Dead Birds in 1961. Irian Jaya, Indonesia, 1989. Photograph by Susan Meiselas.
Looking with Robert Gardner

Edited by Rebecca Meyers, William Rothman, and Charles Warren
State University of New York Press
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2016 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Laurie D. Searl
Marketing, Fran Keneston
Text and cover design, Peter Blaiwas Graphic Design
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Looking with Robert Gardner / edited by Rebecca Meyers, William Rothman, and Charles Warren.
pages cm. — (SUNY series, horizons of cinema)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-6051-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4384-6050-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4384-6052-9 (e-book) 1. Motion pictures in ethnology. 2. Gardner, Robert, 1925–2014 — Criticism and interpretation. 3. Ethnographic films. 4. Indigenous peoples in motion pictures. I. Meyers, Rebecca, [date] editor. II. Rothman, William, editor. III. Warren, Charles, [date]
GN347.L66 2016
305.8—dc23
2015019494
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Introduction Robert Gardner
Rebecca Meyers, William Rothman, and Charles Warren
Part I Overviews and General Topics
Chapter 1 Some Notes on Robert Gardner
Eliot Weinberger
Chapter 2 In Flight with Robert Gardner
Tom Conley
Chapter 3 Colors
Fanny Howe
Chapter 4 Aesthetic Form and Ethnographic Discourse
Daniel Morgan
Chapter 5 Robert Gardner and Jean Rouch: Regards Croisés
Maxime Scheinfeigel
Chapter 6 Robert Gardner’s Reality
Charles Warren
Chapter 7 To Give, To Take, and To Return
Gayatri Chatterjee
Chapter 8 Ethno-Cine-Poet: Robert Gardner and Experimental Film
Kathryn Ramey
Chapter 9 A Revolution in Favor of Television: WCVB-TV and Robert Gardner’s Screening Room
Brian L. Frye
Chapter 10 On Shamanism and Other Encounters: A Conversation with Robert Gardner in Mexico
Carlos Y. Flores and Antonio Zirión
Chapter 11 Returning with Robert Gardner to the Baliem Valley, 1988–89
Susan Meiselas
Part II Looking at Individual Films
Chapter 12 First Encounters: An Essay on Dead Birds and Robert Gardner
Charles Musser
Chapter 13 Allegory and Gender Representation in Rivers of Sand
Mauro Bucci
Chapter 14 Word against Flesh in Rivers of Sand
Irina Leimbacher
Chapter 15 Look At Me! Deep Hearts and the Vertiginous Self
Murray Pomerance
Chapter 16 Nomadic Metrosexuals: Framing Beauty, Editing Ritual, and Exhibiting Masculinity in Deep Hearts
Ricardo E. Zulueta
Chapter 17 Film, Matter, and Spirit: Forest of Bliss
Richard Allen
Chapter 18 The Same Thing from Different Angles: Resituating Forest of Bliss
Julia Yezbick
Chapter 19 Hand Eye Coordination: Robert Gardner’s Artist Films
Richard Deming
Chapter 20 Learning from Catalonia
Bruce Jenkins
Chapter 21 Dead Birds Re-Encountered : A Journey of Return
William Rothman
Acknowledgments
Credits
Appendices
Robert Gardner Biographical Sketch
Robert Gardner Filmography
Publications by Robert Gardner
Books about Robert Gardner’s Work
Contributors
Index
Introduction
Robert Gardner
Rebecca Meyers, William Rothman, and Charles Warren
Caleb Gardner concludes his introduction to Just Representations (2010), a diverse collection of Robert Gardner’s journals, essays, and other writings, by citing one of his father’s earliest journal entries, which “describes how servants in Johannesburg bow and cup their hands around whatever money they have been given, while also trying to see just how much it is.” 1 While noting that some version of this behavior will be found wherever there are people, he imagines it as having special relevance to his father’s life—“a life spent looking at oneself by watching other people,” as he puts it. “I can almost see the writer as a younger man, in possession, like all of us, of something still not completely known to him, eager, but also a little afraid to open his hand and find out exactly what it is.” 2
When Gayatri Chatterjee invokes this little parable near the end of her chapter in this volume, she sagely observes, “Perhaps this is a ‘possession’ one does not ultimately possess.” For what Caleb Gardner imagines cupped in his father’s hand, as he was beginning the journey of discovery that was to bring us the remarkable body of work Looking with Robert Gardner looks at and celebrates, can only be the gift (it can feel like a curse) of humanity. This is what he had in common with the “others” he was to watch in the course of his long career, and with us.
Because human beings are subjects as well as objects of self-knowledge, we can never know ourselves objectively. And because we are free to change, to become other than we have been, we cannot know ourselves completely. Robert Gardner’s films, as Fanny Howe eloquently observes in her chapter here, “reflect on the strangeness of being ourselves.” She adds, “Emmanuel Levinas, Paul Ricoeur, Richard Kearney and Julia Kristeva are just a few of those who have tackled the question of the stranger, sometimes called Other, who is finally ourselves.” A philosopher closer to home who tackled this question is Stanley Cavell, Gardner’s longtime Harvard colleague and friend, who in The World Viewed writes, “Apart from the wish for selfhood (and the always simultaneous granting of otherness as well), I do not understand the value of art.” 3 Another kindred spirit was Ralph Waldo Emerson, Gardner’s great New England progenitor, who begins his essay “Experience” by saying that when we awaken to our human condition, we find ourselves in no place we know. We are strangers to ourselves.
Robert Gardner overcame his fear of what he might discover about himself by watching other people, and strove tirelessly to express what he did discover. He opened his hand to create —he opened his hand by creating—the films, photographs, and writings he gave the world. (To this list should be added the Film Study Center he founded at Harvard and Screening Room , the weekly television show he created and hosted to promote the work and ideas of independent film and video artists.) In opening his hand, Gardner found in the human condition the painful difference between what we must be and what we might want to be, to paraphrase his narration in Rivers of Sand (1974). But in creating the works he gave to the world, he also found the freedom to “walk in the direction of the unattained but attainable self,” as Emerson put it, despite being shackled by society’s conventions, as all human beings are.
Tom Conley compares and contrasts what he calls the “aerial view” in Gardner’s journals and films with the intimate view of his camera when it “touches down” and would become “the appendage of a human attending to everyday life in the milieu he or she inhabits.” We have divided the book into two parts that more or less correspond to this division between Gardner’s reflections on seeing the world from the air—he piloted his own private plane—and his accounts