Morning With Asch

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 14:50:00 GMT

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.

Visit Powell, Lindsay W. to see additional products in this category.

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

Visit Powell, Lindsay W. to see additional products in this category.

Documentary Educational Resources - Filmmaker / Powell, Lindsay W. / All Films

Morning With Asch

Whose Paintings?