The Nuer

1968

Filmmakers: Hillary Harris, George Breidenbaugh and Robert Gardner

This film, shot in Ethiopia is surely one of the most beautiful ethnographic films. Hillary Harris, who shot most of it, was already famous for his New York dance films, and his sensitivity to Nuer movement shows clearly. Robert Gardner visited Harris in the field for a couple of weeks with a synchronous sound camera and shot the interview sequences. (Heider 1997: 181).

Setup Questions

1. Think about the problem of filming kinship. Although one cannot see kinship, what evidences of kinship are possible to film? What evidences do you see in this film?

2. How does the film use emic, or native, statements to augment the etic narration?

3. What various uses do the Nuer make of cattle and cattle products?

4. How are the cattle poetic metaphors for the Nuer?

5. Did you catch the attempt to make visual generalizations, to show a range of behavior beyond the specific examples of a single photograph?

6. What role do age sets play in Nuer life?

7. What is going on in the ghost wedding ceremony?

8. What do you learn of Nuer women from this film?

9. What do you learn of Nuer agriculture?

10. Why, in the midst of an epidemic of highly contagious smallpox, do the Nuer congregate at the riverside?

11. What symbolism do you see in the gar ritual initiation ceremony?

12. How effective is the film in explaining Nuer life? (or do you think that some shots will turn people off?)

13. The anthropologist Douglas Oliver once said that the greatest challenge in ethnographic film was to show social structure. How does this film The Nuer do on this score?

14. Think about how the Maring move and compare them with how the Nuer move.