REVIEW OF THREE
ETHNOGRAPHIC FILMS

by Andrew Tracey, produced by Gei Zanzinger
Museum.
Directed

(40 minutes)
and produced by Gel Zanzlnger

•

(88 minutes)

Fellow of both the University

is filmmaker-in-residence
Philadelphia
and Rhodes
He has been making ethnographic
and the six films that he and Andrew Tracey made on the ~,

at Temple University,
of Pennsylvania
films In Southern Africa for the

are important documents that trace

oral and musical narrative modes and the socfal,

between

structure

Brenson.

Directed

bv Venancio

~nd religious

of the community.

and produced by Gei Zanzlnger.

Dance.
Directed
of Pennsylvania
Mbande.

the technical
of the musical
will derive

Dance deals with the Chopi xylophone
quality
to the clarity
strategies

John van Zyl
The Chopi ~imbi~a
for the Unlvers1ty
~ral ~arrative
20 mlnutes)
Audrey
Gei Zanzinge~
an~ an ~ssoclate
UnlverSlty.
past 15 ye~rs
the hand plano of the Shona of Zimbabwe,
the interrelationship
political
The Chopi Timbila
In fact,
work contributing
nation
and animation,
music
enjoyment
The shorter
complexity
self on the xylophone.
ancio's
Parts of the narrative
parts
thought-processes
from the main theme of the film.
detract
in reproducing
try to solve the problems
completely.
succeed
Bronson
Audrey
life and activities
piece of urban ethnography,
informative.
shows
the making
The film is set in the Black ghetto of West Philadelphia
a middle-aged
Frostrated

and the sound quality
mastery

film is an experimental
of a narrative

of this film.
Black woman,

a great deal of information

and many tilll5 humiliated

born in America's

in a complicated

The narrative

the integrity

are enacted.

of Venancio

Mbande's

sister

in much the same way.
is much higher, with Cliff Bestall's ca.era-
Andrew Tracey's expla-
of the exposition.
is clarified by excellent graphics
employed
is excellent.
Any student of African
out of the film, as well as
of the instrument.

attempt to recreate the multi-layered
that Venancio Mbande sings, while accOlPlnying

hl.-
death of Ven-
web of intrigue, suspicion and family feuds.

involves the accidental

are recounted

by a commentator,

Although
of the singer, they tend to remain obstinately
This is an interesting
a complex narrative,

parts are sung and
the enacted parts do suggest the IemOries and
literal and
attempt to
but does not

is a fascinating,

of a Black woman preacher

campell ing and authoritative

record of the
As a
It is both MOving and
It is a social docUllll!fltas well as a personal history and it
that went into

of the five years of research and fn.fng

it is totally successful.

in West Philadelphia.

and the subject is
rights ti.,s.
since the

South in pre-civil
by social values entrenched
49

times of slavery, she moved North with her family to find a situation
that
The tensions arising from a social situation
was hardly any better.
in which
is practised in a covert form result in both psychic and phy-
discrimination
In order to combat this injury she, Audrey Bronson,
sical injury to Blacks.
set up a church in which she runs Bible classes on Wednesdays
and full-scale
church services on Sundays, thereby hoping to deflect some of the injury away
from individuals and into the religious rites.
The film juxtaposes
chology at Cheney College in Philadelphia)
her strategies, with sequences of her preaching
of altered consciousness
in her congregation.
comes part of her strategies as the techniques
ing, praying) seem to invade her as well.
al planning as extrinsic scheme and intrinsic succumbing
gives the film an extraordinary
alienated from the greater society.
The film also contains the testimonies
of a number of her parishioners
range from the outrageous
comments of a mother and her three daughters who manage to articulate
what they experience at the Sanctuary.
The film is a quite brilliant
from in the United States and of one attempt to heal the trauma.

interviews with Professor Bronson (for she teaches psy-
explains
states
in church, producing
she herself be-
Ironically,
sing-
(chanting,
she employs
This ambiguity of professed
ration-
to the scheme herself

insight into the behaviour of a community

record of the trauma the Black community

which
to the insightful
clearly

remarks of a fellow psychologist

in which she rationally

suffers

TO BE REVIEWED

IN A FORTHCOMING

ISSUE

GODARD:

IMAGES, SOUNDS, POLITICS

in association

1980

film maker alive.

and American

avant-gardes;

with the British Film Institute,

Coppola and the
Third World
images are at

Since 1968, in a break which crystallised

the European
there is work on the image, Godard's

By Colin MacCabe with Mick Eaton and Laura Mulvey
Published by MacMillan
R".60
Price:
Approx.
Jean-Luc Godard:
the most influential
Hollywood superbrats;
film makers - Wherever
work.
And yet, for most filmgoers, many of Godard's most important images are in-
visible.
political struggles, Godard has been engaged on experiments
sound beyond the institutions
rarely seen on the commercial
Godard:
experiments
technology
work, focussin9 on politics,
themes dominate Godard's investigation
a representation
understand more critically
participate,
Godard himself, in a series of interviews,
each chapter.

Imaqes. Sounds. Politics is an important step in making those
It reads the earlier films through the more recent
These insistent
in the image,
These terms enable us to
of money and images in which we

a circulation which Godard's work cuts accross.

around contemporary
in image and
The results are

of cinema and television.
cinema circuit.

and sensuality.
of our representation

always inflected by the sound.

the circulation

visible.

comments on the analysis of

50