7:32, b&w, silent
Source : Penn Museum. This film can be viewed on-line here.
This appears to be lightly edited footage that was shot while Vincenzo Petrullo was carrying out fieldwork among the Yaruro (today often referred to in academic literature as Pumé) living along the Capanaparo river in Apure state. Who shot the material is not entirely clear as Petrullo himself appears in shot at one point. However, whoever it was, it is clear that they had little camera expertise.
After some initial shots of llanero cowboys, most of the film consists of sequences of the Pumé engaged in craft activities, or fishing from canoes. As Dr. Russell Greaves points out on the Penn Museum website, the pristine nature of the loincloths that many younger people are wearing, as well as the sun tan lines on the upper bodies of the women suggest that Petrullo had asked his subjects to take off the clothing that they would normally have been wearing and dress in traditional loincloths only.
Similarly, the teenagers shooting fish with bow and arrow while standing up in their narrow canoes appear to be performing for the camera in that they look up to get a cue, and then having dispatched their arrow take no interest in whether they might have shot a fish. It is still possible, however, to admire the feat of doing so.
Towards the end of the footage there are some engaging portraits of individual Pumé. One of these is particularly interesting as it is of a woman with series of bone pins beneath her lower lip. She also appears to have some face painting (though this may be no more than scratches on the film!) (see above). According to Greaves, Petrullo claims that this woman is Otomaco, a once numerous ethnic group in the middle Orinoco region and one that featured frequently in the Jesuit chronicles of the eighteenth century, but long extinct as a viable social group.
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