Stone Age People in New Guinea, A, footage (1936-37) – Beatrice Blackwood

26 mins, b&w (sepia), silent

Production : Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford

Source :  this material may be viewed here.

Beatrice Blackwood was one of the few women to shoot ethnographic film footage before the Second World War. At the time that she shot this material in 1936-37, she was a member of staff of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford.

The principal purpose of her trip to the highland interior of Morobe Province in New Guinea was to make a collection of the artefacts produced by the Anga people (then often referred to as the ‘Kukukuku’), in particular their stone tools. She shot the film footage, not to make a free-standing film as such, but simply to document how Anga artefacts were made with a view to using this footage for research purposes or to support the display of the material that she brought back.

In addition to the making of stone tools and other artefacts, Blackwood also shoot footage on a number of other topics, including fire-making, women working in their yam gardens and looking after their children, as well everyday views of village life. A particularly  intriguing sequence shows some boys swinging bull roarers in the forest prior to an initiation ceremony though, sadly, she was not then permitted to film the ceremony itself.

The final part of Blackwood’s material concerns various groups living around Salamaua, on the coast of Morobe Province, and across the sea on the southwestern shore of New Britain. Topics of particular interest covered in this part of the footage include the manufacture of barkcloth and the binding of a baby’s head in order to elongate it. Her footage concludes  with the dramatic arrival by canoe of some splendidly decorated men who have come to celebrate the coronation of King George VI at a ceremony organised by the local colonial district officer.

The camera that Blackwood was using, the 16mm Simplex Pockette was designed for the amateur market, and was advertised as being the first commercial camera that took pre-loaded cassettes of film. However, being an amateur model, the lens was not of superior quality, which would account for the somewhat soft images of Blackwood’s material. It is also unlikely that she had had any training in the use of the camera.

But regardless of its technical deficencies, Blackwood’s footage is neverthless of both ethnographic and historical interest.

For further background see the film Captured by Women, directed by Alison Kahn, also available on the Pitt Rivers Museum website here.