33 mins., b&w, silent, with intertitles in English
Source : a single unified version of this footage, with ethnographic annotations, is available on the University of Cambridge SMS site here, where it is downloadable. The same version, without annotations, is also available on YouTube here.
This material can also be found in a third form on the Pitt Rivers Museum (PRM) Film Collection site, but split over two different entries: the last ten minutes of Part 1 of “Culture and Crafts in Manipur, northeast India (1939)” and the whole of Part 2. Both parts can be accessed here.
The Cambridge version is the best supported technically and ethnographically but, unfortunately, it appears to have been transferred to a digital format at the wrong speed. Ursula Graham Bower would have shot the material at 16-18fps, which was the standard speed for 16mm cameras in the 1930s. But it seems that the material on the Cambridge site has been transferred at the more modern standard rate of 24- 25fps, with the result that the movements of the subjects are unnaturally rapid.
By contrast, although the PRM version is in other ways somewhat less well presented, it does appear to have been transferred at the correct speed.
Content : Ursula Graham Bower’s diary entries indicate that this material was shot between November 1938 and March 1939 as she was travelling through the Naga Hills of Manipur state, Northeast India. The original footage has clearly been edited, and there are even well-made inter titles, but there is no principal title or end credits.
The material, which is well shot, consists of a straightforward sequence of craft processes, as practised by various Naga subgroups: weaving using backstrap looms, pottery, and brass casting using the ‘cire-perdu’ method.
You must be logged in to post a comment.