N!ai: The Story
of a !Kung Woman
Shot 1951-78
Released 1980
Filmmaker: John Marshall
Edited by: John Marshall & Adrienne Miesmer
59 minutes (Color)
This film is about one woman called N!ai, and how she has survived change. It is a powerful statement about both gender and sexuality. She is a member of the !Kung San tribe. This is different from Bitter Melons in that it focuses on the timeless ethnographic present (no change) and N!ai embraces change.
The filmmaker is John Marshall, and he uses footage that he shot of N!ai and her people beginning in 1951 and continuing for twenty-seven years. As N!ai tells her story, the film moves back and forth in time, from the early 1950s, when “out hearts were free” to the late 1970s, when the South African government was recruiting San to fight against the SWAPO guerrilla forces in Namibia.
The film evokes Margery Shostak’s book about another !Kung San woman, Nisa (1981). Both film and book address the question “What is it like to be a woman in San culture?” And both N!ai in the film and Nisa in the book tells us quite frankly about their own sexuality.
There is a fascinating sequence in N!ai
in which John Marshall films a commercial film crew shooting a feature film
near N!ai’s settlement. That film turned out to be The Gods Must Be Crazy, which became a great international hit and
was the top-grossing foreign film in the
Setup Questions
1. What is N!ai’s view of the past (her ethnographic present)? Do you think that she is exaggerating or romanticizing?
2. What does N!ai tell us about her marriage?
3. What is the role of sexuality in N!ai’s life story?
4. What can you say about San sexuality on the basis of the film?
5. How has the !Kung economic system changed? What has happened to gifts and sharing?
6. Why is there a tuberculosis epidemic?
7. How did N!ai become reconciled to her husband?
8. The South African officials say that the !Kung are lazy and won’t work. How do you interpret that?
9. What is the effect of introducing horses to the San?
10. How does the fiction film crew construct their representation of the San?
11. How do the others try to change N!ai’s behavior?
12. What specific accusations do they make against her? Why?
Description taken from John Marshall’s
Filmography 1951-1991
This film provides a broad overview of !Kung life, both past and present, and an intimate portrait of N!ai, a !Kung woman in her mid thirties in 1978. N!ai tells her own story, and in so doing, the story of change in !Kung life over a thirty-year period. Footage shot throughout the 1950s and footage from 1978 is used to complement her narrative.
“Before white people came we did what our hearts wanted,” recalls N!ai as she describes the life she remembers as a child: following her mother to pick berries, roots and nuts as the seasons changed; the division of giraffe meat; kinds of rain; her resistance to her marriage to /Gunda at age eight, and her changing feelings about her husband when he became a healer.
The films moves to the contemporary scene as it was in the mid-70s Tshumkwe, the South African government reservation, where land is restricted, game and plant foods are scarce, money and secrecy have become problems, tuberculosis is prevalent, and the South African army is recruiting !Kung to fight the guerilla forces of SWAPO. N!ai picks up a stringed instrument and composes a song describing the tensions of reservation life, singing, “death is dancing me ragged.”
The uniqueness of N!ai, originally aired as part of the “Odyssey” series, may lie in its tight integration of ethnography and history. While it portrays the changes in !kung society over thirty years, it never loses sight of the individual, N!ai.
AWARDS: Grand Prize, Cinema de Reel (Paris)); Blue Ribbon, American Film festival, CINE Golden Eagle Award; gold Medal for best Television Documentary, International Film and Television Festival of New York; Grand Prize, International News Coverage Festival (Luchon, France); Film commendation from Royal Anthropological Institute (London).
Reviews: American Anthropologist 83(3):740-41; Jol. of American Folk Lore 97(383):106-8.