Documentary Educational Resources - Filmmaker / Jhala, Jayasinhji / All Films

Close Encounters of No Kind

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 08:16:00 GMT

Close Encounters of No Kind
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Close Encounters of No Kind follows the Rabari, camel and sheep herders of Saurastra, India. Their nomadic lifestyle requires them to move herds of sheep and camels across the Saurastrian landscape to seek grazing and water. This practice has been going on for hundreds of years and during that time the Rabari have developed close working relationships with many groups and deeply adverse relations with other groups.

Traveling with the Rabari through the region of Jhalavad for a period of two months as they drift eastwards on their out migration, the film consists of a series of conversations with different caste groups about the Rabari way of life and their relations with the Rabari. It is a culture of tension and distrust; all of the interdependent caste groups are wary of the Rabari and of each other. While there are no actual encounters between the groups in the film, they accuse each other of inappropriate conduct and irresponsible character in their conversations with the filmmaker. He is not spared either; they accuse him of profiteering from this filmic exploration.

This film is then a traverse of two landscapes: the physical arid region of Jhalavad and the internal and imagined world of Rabari intercaste relations with Hindu and Muslims castes who are their partners in life. The film addresses issues related to social relations, pastoralism, ecology and land resource management. It would be useful for ethnographic and documentary film classes where the approach for conversational engagement as a tool for understanding social dynamics is prioritized and where new presentation of subtitling to differentiate different voices in group conversations is presented.

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Drums on the Red River

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 07:05:00 GMT

Drums on the Red River
Buy Now: $320.00

Once a year in Yen Vinh, Hung Yen Province a grand three-day festival is held at a temple by the banks of the Red River to worship the god Chu Dong Tu and his two wives, Tien Dung and Tay Sa. During the festival, three area villages converge on the main temple complex to participate in the ritual offerings, folk games, ca tru singing, and other events. On the second day of the festival, a water procession takes place on the Red River that mimics the Princess Tien Dung's fated river journey in which she encountered the poor fisherman Chu Dong Tu hiding in the sand. During the procession, in an elaborate ritual conducted by the elders of the participating villages, water is poured into a porcelain jar. This sacred water will be used in temple rituals throughout the year. This film documents the Chu Dong Tu festival of 2007. The festival was revived in 1986, the year in which the economic and political reforms were passed in Vietnam. The festival is an important example of the widespread revival of traditional folk festivals that has followed reform.

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The Last Rites of the Honourable Mr. Rai

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 06:41:00 GMT

The Last Rites of the Honourable Mr. Rai
Buy Now: $320.00

The Last Rites of the Honourable Mr. Rai is a film about the cremation of a longtime resident of the holy city of Varanasi. This film, made at the request of the Rai family, is possibly the most detailed and respectful study of the Hindu rites of cremation on the sacred banks of the river Ganga at the historic Harish Chandra Ghat. With no invasive narration but with inter-titles and subtitles the film enables the viewer to see, hear and experience all that is said by the mourners, the funerary priest and cremation ground specialists, as they carry out this final rite of passage for a Hindu. To underscore that death is as much a part of everyday life, the film begins and ends with the experience of everyday life on the famous ghats of Varanasi and shows the interaction of people with their gods, animals and the sacred river itself.

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Morning With Asch

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 14:50:00 GMT

Morning With Asch
Buy Now: $320.00

In the Spring of 1994, Timothy Asch, internationally known and honored filmmaker, was dying of cancer. Educator, anthropologist, and driving force behind the Visual Anthropology Review, he is best known for his groundbraking films on the Yanomamö, made with Napoleon Chagnon, and the Indonesian films, made with Patsy Asch, James Fox, E. Douglas Lewis, and Linda Connor.

His colleague and fellow visual anthropologist, Jayasinhji Jhala, visited him at his home in Los Angeles to conduct a videotaped interview from which came this edited version. Jhala, a professor of anthropology at Temple University, makes us aware of the influence of the filmmaker on the filmed subject and vice versa. Tim took this opportunity to express his views about his life and work, revealing intimate details that give us perspective - not only about this complex individual, but also about the reality of confronting death.

Collaboration was a central theme for Tim Asch, beginning with anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon, and later continuing with the anthropologists mentioned above. He also worked with John Marshall in the late 1960s, editing Marshall's !Kung San Bushmen films shot in the 1950s. Excerpts from Asch's films, representing each of these periods, are woven into the dialogue.

For those who never knew Timothy Asch in life, this interview may offer some guidance on the way to explore the invaluable legacy of his films.

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ShakitMa no Veh

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 07:46:00 GMT

ShakitMa no Veh
Buy Now: $320.00

The Goddess Shaktima is the most popular goddess in the region of Saurashtra known as Jhalavad. This documentary presents the story of Shaktima as performed by the tradictional muslim Bhavai troupe led by Amrit Kalu Rudatala of Kankavati village. Baisabgarh village, sponsored this event on July 11th, 2004.

Shaktima is beloved of all castes and her story is sung, recited, painted and performed in the many towns and villages. Known as the maker of Jhalavad, as the powerful mother, and the protector of children, she rides the great lion, is the subduer of the demon Babrabhoot and weds the warrior hero Harpal, himself an incarnation of the God Shiv. Large and small temples to her stand all over the land and celebrate her glory.

The play presents Hindu notions of time: cosmic time, legendary time, historical time and contemporary time. The Goddess is presented in many apsects, as demoness, as queen, as maker of polity, as mother and protector of children, and finally as the earth mother herself. The hero Harpal demonstrates his ability to contest the will of the divine, subdue demonic foes and establish a royal lineage that gives order, security, and stablity to the multicaste and multi-religious society of this land.

Shot in accordance with local norms, the film presents the play in its entirety with the viewer positioned frontally as a Hindu worshipper before a puja shrine. It shows the use of song, prayer, poetry and speech to demonstrate the variety of speech acts and to illustrate that Gujarati, Sanskrit and Dingal langauages are locally understood. This underlines that even peasants are multilingual in this area.

This film will be useful to students of film, theater, music, religion and anthropology and to students of Indic poetry and aesthetics.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Association for Asian Studies Conference, Boston, MA, 2007

Association for Asian Studies Conference, Boston, MA, 2008

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Tragada Bhavai

Mon, 27 Aug 2018 08:57:00 GMT

Tragada Bhavai
Buy Now: $295.00

Bhavai is the traditional rural theater of Gujarat. Today, there are only a few troupes of Bhavai performers in India. This film follows one group as it travels throughout the countryside, performing in villages for audiences of the poor Koli caste. Audience and performers are entirely male, and actors impersonate female roles.

A typical Bhavai evening includes a miracle play, comic skits, dances and juggling and, finally, a romantic drama set in medieval times. The film shows "backstage" preparations, negotiations with sponsoring villagers, interviews with actors and the troupe leader, as well as the performance itself.

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Whose Paintings?

Fri, 24 Aug 2018 12:26:00 GMT

Whose Paintings?
Buy Now: $320.00

Whose Paintings? takes an ethnographic approach to recording an encounter between Alwin Belak, a Russian-Jewish-American collector of Rajput miniature paintings from India of the 16th-19th century, and Jayasinhji Jhala, a Rajput Visual Anthropologist from India teaching at Temple University in Philadelphia.

Part confrontation and part collaboration, the event of viewing these paintings in an affluent Philadelphia apartment demonstrates the different points of view used by the two protagonists to engage with these cultural treasures. The emphasis of the art collector and the native ethnographer compliment and speak past each other. This dynamic, while providing particular information and insight about the subjects of art collecting, Rajput aesthetics, history, social custom, and culture, suggest by the silent refrain generated by the discourse, inquiry into questions of cultural patrimony. What are the rights and obligations to individual, community, nation and to the world at large with regard to art traditions and to the possession and value of artifacts?

The video, while providing viewers a window into a specific encounter, allude by undercurrent to the larger and more general problems surrounding the questions of collecting, sharing, salvaging, restoring, promoting, marketing and possessing objects that have a particular purpose and place in the culture that creates them from the one in which they are now found. The engagement hopefully makes the viewer reflect more critically on his or her possessions that grace the walls and space of the private domain we call home.

"This tape is innovative in style and provocative in content... I am certain other anthropologists, art historians and professors teaching cultural studies will be most interested in this fine work." -- Jay Ruby, The Center for Visual Communication

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A Zenana

Fri, 24 Aug 2018 12:25:00 GMT

A Zenana
Buy Now: $320.00

In India, the most secluded section of the palace was the zenana, or women's quarters. Here, until recently, palace women lived behind protective walls and brass doors firmly shut at night.

This film is an account of women's life in the Dhrangadra, in northern India, the seat of power of the Jhala Rajputs from the 11th century A.D. until 1947. The film unfolds through songs, dances, and stories of several palace women, including the Maharani (wife of the Maharaja), who is the mother of one of the filmmakers. She and others reflect upon traditional women's roles, the strictness of their former seclusion, and the ideals of women's purity and inner strength.

“Of particular interest is the Maharani's account of how she left PURDAH (seclusion) in 1967 to help her husband, H.H. Sriraj Meghrajji III, contest state election, and how she too was persuaded to run for office in 1971. One notices how in a photograph of her on that occasion the tail of her SARI passes over the left shoulder in the popular fashion, rather than over the right shoulder in the parochial manner of the Zenana...”
— Paul Hockings, American Anthropologist

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The Bharvad Predicament

Thu, 26 Jul 2018 09:36:00 GMT

The Bharvad Predicament
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Bharvad cattle herdsmen have been nomadic pastoralists for centuries. This film presents the conflict that has arisen between the local, landholding Kanbi farmers and the Bharvad in Dhrangadhra, western India. They are in the midst of a particularly dry season and competition for the available land and water resources has escalated producing a state of tension between the farmers and the herdsmen. The farmers appear to be supported by the government while the Bharvad are tolerated as a quaint but relatively unimportant political entity. The history of the relationship between the farmers and the pastoralists is reviewed in depth and both points of view are represented. This film clearly demonstrates the influences that geography, natural resources and governmental policies have on the survival of particular ethnic groups and cultures.

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