Tag Archives: Ethnography

It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

CAPSULE: CELESTIAL WIVES OF THE MEADOW MARI (2012)

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Небесные жены луговых мари

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DIRECTED BY: Aleksey Fedorchenko

FEATURING: Nadezhda Smirnova, Yana Esipovich, Roman Mishin

PLOT: A series of vignettes depicting aspects of Mari culture,  each revolving around a different female figure whose name starts with “O.”

Still from Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari (2012)

COMMENTS:  Aleksey Fedorchenko is perhaps one of the most creative and widely known auteurs in contemporary Russian arthouse cinema. His works Silent Souls (2010), Celestial Wives (2012), and Angels of Revolution (2014) form an atypical trilogy about Russian ethnic minorities, focusing on the Merja, the Mari, and the Khanty, respectively. The ethnographic and folkloristic approach is apparent even from the title.

Celestial Wives is a collection of short tales and micro-fiction written by Russian writer Denis Osokin, a close collaborator of Fedorchenko’s. A short prologue welcomes us to a pagan society where magical thinking governs people’s lives. The following series of vignettes deal with sexuality, our relationship to our bodies, and rituals. Fedorchenko puts women at the forefront, hinting at a matriarchal society; each tale focuses on a different female, her name always starting with “O”—a playful twist on the literary and musical form of the theme and variations. Each chapter takes its title from its homonymous heroine.

“Odocha” and “Onalcha” explore ideas of the sacred and acts of blasphemy. Through ritualistic acts, “Osylay” and “Ormarche” offer glimpses into Mari society’s relationship with Thanatos and Eros.  Other segments focus on a destigmatized view of sexuality and the human—especially female—body. And then there are a few chapters that turn away from the purely anthropological, towards magical realist territory.

Here things become somewhat bizarre. Magical realism, often thought of as the mildest form of surrealism, is the most expressive way to translate an animistic worldview into visual language. “Oropti” and “Oshalyak” are the most notable examples of this stylistic shift. Demonic entities and evil curses appear on screen, not only as part of people’s beliefs, but as real phenomena.

All in all, this is ethnographic cinema with elements of magical realism. The short form episodes add an anecdotal style reminiscent of oral narrative traditions, while carefully composed shots enhance the pervasive lyricism. If you love poetic international cinema as a window on different cultures, you will enjoy this experience. But it won’t satiate the hunger for strangeness that hardcore fans of the weird seek.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Bizarre doesn’t begin to cover Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari’s collection of wild and weird vignettes.”–Chris Buckle, The Skinny (Edinburgh) (festival screening)

[(This movie was nominated for review by “Tomasz”: “Celestial Wives Of Meadow Mari” (2012) is something !” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

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Capsules

CAPSULE: INGAGI (1930)

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DIRECTED BY: William Campbell

FEATURING: Sir Hubert Winstead, Arthur Clayton; narrated by Louis Nizor

PLOT: Some early 20th-century explorers dick around Africa until they discover a tribe that makes an annual donation of women to the local gorillas.

Still from Ingagi (1930)

COMMENTS: I have a deadly drinking game for you: gather your friends around and take a shot every time the narrator says “primitive” and “our boys” in reference to the African locals encountered by and doing the hard work for the pipe-smoking white guys out on safari. Considering the subject matter (ethnographic documentary) and time period (colonialism’s last big hurrah), Ingagi deserves a lot of criticism for its casual racism and mustache-twirling indifference to wildlife (another drinking prompt: animals captured or killed for “our collection”). But even just viewed cinematically, Ingagi comes across as an affront to its genre.

The film opens with an extended bit of print concerning the expedition and its ostensible ultimate findings: a lost tribe of Africa that donates a woman or two from its ranks every year to the local gorilla population to act as sex slaves. The filmmakers make an extended acknowledgement of the bravery of the cameramen, remarking on “[t]heir cold grit in the face of danger; their unflinching nerve in the tightest of places, supported solely by their faith in our ability to shoot straight, enabled them to carry on with but one thought in mind–The Picture.” As a student of documentary, I can appreciate this atypical shout-out.

But as that same student, I take issue with most of everything else. The creators kick off by telling the story instead of showing it, a problem worsened by the images being given zero reliable context. That’s sinful enough. However, even my uninformed observation could tell that Ingagi was comprised of two sets of footage. Most footage had a grainy, warped feel—this was genuine, if given a flagrant bias through narration. But about a quarter of the footage was nice and clean—and very staged. This was apparently made exclusively for Ingagi somewhere in California.

Ingagi claims to be a documentary, so here are some raw facts. Of its eighty-two minutes, three-quarters were lifted from an earlier film called Heart of Africa. The false premise of human brides for gorillas, concocted for sensationalist purposes, prompted the MPPDA (fore-runner to the current “MPA”) to disavow it after release. And Ingagi would have you believe that the white man was only swanning into remote African communities to rid the locals of unwanted jungle predators. If you want a more even-handed version of the “African Safari” phenomenon present in early documentaries, I recommend instead you enjoy Captain Geoffrey T. Spaulding’s anecdote in Animal Crackers (incidentally, also a 1930 release). His ripping yarn about whitey putzing around the Savannah waiting to shoot things hits the nail more squarely on the head.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The exploitation cinema had its share of scandalous films, but none is so mired in controversy as the bizarre pseudo-documentary Ingagi.”–Gary Tooze, DVD Beaver (Blu-ray)