Program Notes for Class Films

The film is a kind of "nature special" on the daily life of Neanderthals. The Neanderthals are played by actors, which is unpromising, but they are played brilliantly, which is more comforting. There is little or no plot line and no named characters.

The background is the European Ice Age and the continuing hardship that it imposes upon humans, who must endure constant pain and hunger. The "action" is the Neanderthal adaptation, with all its rats and disease, its limited cognitive capacity, its hunts and abductions, and ultimately its confrontation with a newly arrived Homo sapiens, represented here as a man who arrives wearing sea-shell jewelry and with his face painted blue. (I have no idea what the blue paint is about. Product differentiation, I assume.)

Because of its length, only half of the film will be shown in class. The streaming-video version is divided into two parts with the break roughly in the middle. Neanderthal 1 is 51 minutes long, and Neanderthal 2 is 45 minutes long..

Nanook and his family belong to the linguistic subgrouping referred to as Itivimiuts. They live on the east side of Hudson Bay and the west side of the Ungaya Peninsula (the one dividing Hudson Bay from Hudson Strait), near the town of Inukjuak on page 7 of your atlas. This is part of the Province of Quebec.

"Nanook of the North" is a "classic film," released in 1922, in the age of the silent screen. It stands as arguably the first example of "ethnographic film" as a cinema genre, and has been regarded as classic for its warmhearted sympathy to its subject, its raw accuracy, its stunning sense of setting, and its narrative flow.

Robert Flaherty the film maker, was hired in 1910 to survey the potential of the east side of Hudson Bay for mineral resources and potential railway routes by which they might be accessed. Flaherty made four expeditions over several years and became closely familiar with the Eskimo population of the area, growing to respect their ability to survive, even happily, in conditions that seemed daunting to anyone raised in a more benign environment.

However he also realized that the traditional way of life of these people was rapidly changing, and on one of his trips he brought along a movie camera —very new at the time— to try to record the waning days of indigenous Eskimo adaptation. There was really no such genre as the "educational ethnographic film" at that time, and Flaherty intended his film for commercial distribution, even though he also intended it as a permanent record of the region's traditional way of life.

He worked in cooperation with his indigenous "actors," developing each day's film and projecting it to get their reactions and suggestions.

The film was not made in the context of daily life quite. Many or most of the scenes were staged in order to be photographed, or at least were performed with a great awareness of the presence of the photographer. That was unavoidable, since, for one thing, following people around with an early movie camera would have been obtrusive no matter to whom or how it was done.

But in addition, the goal, both Flaherty's and that of his Eskimo actors, was to represent traditional life, and their life as they were actually living it at the time, was no longer quite traditional. In daily life, they occasionally used motors instead of oars on their kayaks, for example, and were already using rifles rather than spears. But they knew that it was the oars and the spears that were traditional, and these were tools and skills of which they were proud and which they wanted the world to see. Needless to say, that way of life is now gone forever.

Flaherty has been criticized by self-appointed purists for these traditionalizing distortions. Indeed, a whole anti-Flaherty school of criticism has arisen over the last few years which argues that he should have photographed life exactly as it was being lived when he saw it, that he should have used Nanook's longer name Allakariallak because "Nanook" is a nickname, that he should not have let the actors play a family if they were not actually a family, or that he should have stayed home and not tried to perserve a record of anything.

But for MMW the traditionalizing distortions are perfect. Our interest is the world of foragers as they lived on their own, which is, of course, exactly what both Flaherty and his Eskimo collaborators wanted to show us. (In later films, Flaherty, riding on the success of "Nanook," was destined to introduce much more controversial distortions into films he made, increasing the films' drama, but limiting their utility as ethnographic records, and providing better justification for the hostility of his critics.)

"Nanook of the North" was an immense success when it was launched in 1922, and the skilled and smiling Nanook became the quintessential representative of all Eskimos in the North American imagination. Sadly, the man himself died of starvation, Flaherty tells us, during a particularly bad hunting season about two years or so after filming was completed in 1921, about two or three years after the film opened. (Some critics say that Nanook probably died of tuberculosis and Flaherty merely wanted his death to sound more dramatic.)

For information about an award-winning modern film, "Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner," made by an Eskimo director, click here.

One of the most famous members of the Hidatsa tribe of North Dakota was named Waheenee (Hidatsa: Wä Hēē′ nēē wē′ a), or "Buffalo-Bird Woman." She was born in 1839, just after smallpox had devastated her tribe and nearly wiped out their allies, the Mandan, altogether. Beginning in 1908, when she was nearly 70, she became one of the prime Hidatsa-speaking informants for an ethngrapher named Gilbert L. Wilson (1868-1930), who ghost-wrote for her a widely read autobiography called Waheenee: An Indian Girl's Story Told by Herself, published in 1921, and containing some additional ethnographic observations as end-notes. Intended for a very broad audience, especially a young audience, it nevertheless became an important ethnographic source for our understanding of the northern Great Plains traditional life. (Modern critics of the book complain that it is impossible to know the extent of Gilbert's role in structuring the material, so that it cannot be unambiguously classified as "Native American literature.")

In this 14-minute film, produced by the Harpers Ferry Center of the National Park Service, a Hidatsa actress reads extracts from Waheenee, visually illustrated by early paintings, drawings, and occasionally photographs. The experience is like that of Gilbert, listening to the gentle tales of a very old woman thinking back across the decades to her youth and the vanished world in which she was raised.

(Buffalo-Bird Woman lived into her 90s, dying only in 1932. Maxidiwiac or "Good Way" appears to have been her original name, replaced by Buffalo-Bird Woman by her father because she was a sickly child and needed a stronger name. The old name may have been selected as the title of the film because "Good Way" could also suggest her nostalgia for the past.)

Like the Hopi, whom we read about in this class, the Hidatsa raised corn, lived in matrilocal households, and were organized in matrilineages. But unlike the Hopi they also hunted buffalo (bison), and in the harsh North Dakota winters needed to move from their farming homes to more sheltered temporary lodges tucked down out of the wind in river valleys, lodges that were then abandoned and washed away in spring floods. Even as buffalo hunting was important, so was warfare, represented by Buffalo-Bird Woman as largely defensive against raids by the non-agricultural Sioux.

Note: This film begins with a minute or so of silent introductory text. The sound comes on only with the first photographs.

This 1999 BBC film provides a whirlwind of images to complement your reading on the Aztecs. Some aspects of Aztec life (e.g., chinampas and their maintenance) are made much clearer by the film. Other aspects (notably human sacrifice) are treated, but without doing much to help us understand them. It is difficult to provide anything very useful by way of aide-mémoire, but here are (lurid) program notes provided on the wrapper, in case that helps you remember what you have seen.

Brutal. Sophisticated. Misunderstood. Beneath the sprawl of modern-day Mexico City lie the once glorious remains of the Aztec Capital of Tenochtitlan. From this teeming 15th-century hub, the Aztecs ruled a realm of fabulous architecture, advanced science, and intricate artwork.

But they are best known for their reliance on human sacrifice and violent conquest to control their world. Why, then, did a civilization capable of such beauty and accomplishment harbor such violence at its very heart?

Join leading researchers on a journey from the magnificent past of North America's greatest empire to its poignant remnants today. Visit the ghostly ruins of Teotihuacan, where the Aztec myth was born and, through virtual reality, see the long vanished Tenochtitlan rise again in all its ceremonial splendor.

Then witness the arrival of the Spanish and the grisly excesses on both sides that ultimately led to the Aztecs' downfall.

Here is a list of the Nahuatl words in the film that are difficult to transcribe (just as Mark Hammill had difficulty pronouncing them). They are listed in the same order as in which they occur in the film.

• Mexica (mah-SHEE-kah) = One of the Nahuatl-speaking groups in the Valley of Mexico, who claimed ancestry in northern Mexico and came to be known as the Aztecs.
• Teotihuacan (tay-oh-tee-WA-kan) = A large archaeological site outside of Mexico City that had once been a major center, but lay in ruins when the Aztecs moved into the area. The Aztecs considered it to be the place where humanity was created by the gods.
• Toltecs (TOLE-teks) = The people who ran a major trading system (empire?) from Tula. The widely worshipped god Quetzalcoatl came to be associated with them and was believed by some to have been a Toltec king. The Toltecs had fallen and Tula was forgotten by the time the Aztecs moved into the area.
• Tlaloc (TLAH-lok) = A god of moisture worshipped in the region from before the Aztecs arrived.
• Huitzilopochtli (wee-tzeel-lo-POCH-tli) = The patron god of the Aztecs, associated with the sun.
• Coyolxauhqui (ko-yol-SHAO-kee) = The moon goddess (and so named in the film). Huitzilopochtli's sister, whom he killed and hacked to bits. She is represented in the flat stone that was at the foot of his pyramid.
• Tlatelolco (tlah-tell-LOLE-ko) = A twin town to Tenochtitlan, which eventually effectively absorbed it. Tlatelolco was located on an island adjacent to Tenochtitlan and was the largest market in Mesoamerica.
• Xiuhteuctli (sheew-TEKW-tli) = The god of fire.
• Coatlicue (ko-at-LEE-kway) = The earth goddess (and mother of Huitzilopochtli and Coyolxauhqui)
• Mictlanteuctli (meek-tlan-TEKW-tli) = The god who presides over Mictlan, the land of the dead. He is represented as a skeleton with his liver falling out.
• maguey (MAH-gay) = The century plant, a source of coarse fiber used for ropes and, in Aztec times, for clothing. The pointed spines on the ends of the leaves were used to draw blood in sacrifices.
• Xipe Totec (SHE-pay TO-tek) = God of poetry, flowers, joy, and regeneration, represented however as a figure wearing the flayed skin of a captive as a costume.
• Tetzcotzingo (tets-ko-TSIN-ko) = Name of a hill overlooking Tenochtitlan with an extensive temple to Tlaloc and associated aquaducts
• Moteuczoma (mo-tekw-SO-mah) = Name of two Aztec emperors, one (ruling 1440-1469) who was a major creator of the Aztec polity, the other (ruling 1502-1520) who was emperor at the time of the Spanish Conquest. The name is popularly misspelled Moctezuma in Mexico and Montezuma in the United States. Specialists tend to prefer the misspelling Motecuhzoma. (The "cuh" in there, like the "cu" and "uc" of standard spellings, stands for a single consonant pronounced KW. There is no vowel U in spoken Nahuatl.)

This film was created to accompany an exhibition, "From Holy Land to Holy Land" dealing with the archaeology of the Copper Age or Chalcolithic. The exhibition was held at the San Diego Museum of Man in 2007, and focused on the archaeological research of Dr. Thomas Levy of UCSD.

The two "holy lands" in question are the ancient Near East (and especially southern Jordan) and southern India. The film centers upon the similarity of the "lost wax" method of casting copper objects, and follows artisans in modern India as they use this ancient method to reproduce an object excavated in southern Jordan.

This film is available to the public in streaming video at http://www.ucsd.tv/search-details.asp?showID=13190.

This 1989 film features Dr. Bruce Bradley, one of the most skillful of modern makers of stone tools.

In the course of the 45 minute film, he transforms a piece of obsidian into a succession of stone tools, constantly explaining exactly how the process works, and making predictions about exactly how the stone will break. No other film we have seen is quite as clear as this one about exactly why stone breaks as it does.

One important point he makes is the difference between percussion flaking (whacking off flakes by striking a stone) and pressure flaking (prying off flakes by pressing against the stone). Pressure flaking removes much smaller flakes, and is associated with far more precise tool production, although most of this film shows percussion flaking.

Bradley makes tool production look easy, and for experienced Paleolithic hunters it no doubt was. But don't try it as a beginner without goggles and gloves!

The best types of stone used for tools are flint and obsidian. Bradley uses obsidian. Click here for More About Flint and More About Obsidian.