Mbuti Film Study: nkumbi initiation ceremony, footage (1971-72) – dir. Joseph A. Towles *

85 mins., col., silent.

Source : NAFC, catalogue no. AF-91.13.5.

[Notes based on NAFC catalogue entry]

Footage shot in and around the Ndaka (Bantu) village of Epulu,
 in the Ituri Forest in the northeast region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire and the Belgian Congo). This material appears to have been shot primarily under the direction of Joseph Allen Towles, but Colin Turnbull may also have been involved, and in the copy held by the NAFC, Turnbull provides a commentary on the material.

It is generally well shot but it is not clear by whom: certainly it was not by Towles as he appears in shot. Towles and Turnbull were partners in life as well as anthropological work and when Towles died in 1988 of complications arising from AIDS, Turnbull donated not only their joint work, but also all his own work to the Avery Research Center, where it forms the “Joseph A. Towles Collection

This footage shows how both subsistence and ritual practices
 bring the villagers and the local Mbuti ‘pygmies’ into contact. Sequences
 cover a range of topics, including house types, the harvesting of rice, the local market, and digging and kneading clay for use in 
house construction. They also cover the first nkumbi male initiation ceremony to take place in the Ituri forest since the Simba Revolt of 1964. They show the nkumbi camp, the training of initiates, masked dancers and an initiate’s head being shaved. Also included is a flag-raising ceremony at a nearby government post in commemoration of independence from Belgium in 1960.

Boy having his head shaved during nkumbi initiation ceremony, near Epulu, a Bantu village in the Ituri forest, northeast Democratic Republic of Congo (1970-71)

In his commentary, Turnbull analyses the various stages of the nkumbi ceremony but surmises that some of the material must be lost because only the latter part of the ceremony is shown. He also comments that the painting of the bodies of the initiates with a blue colour was an innovation that had been adopted around the time of the Simba Revolt. It was associated at that time with blue plastic, but also with violence and death.

See also Turnbull’s earlier edited film on the nkumbi ceremony, made in collaboration with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation cameraman, his cousin Francis S. Chapman in 1954.

Texts : Turnbull (1962), Turnbull (1965), Grinker (2000)

 

© 2018 Paul Henley