Picturing the Primitive: Visual Culture, Ethnography, and Early German Cinema

by Assenka Oksiloff

This work explores the relationship between early German cinema and anthropology's fascination with primitive cultures. At the core of this study is a mythic first contact between the camera and the non-Western body. The term that binds the two is the Primitive, referring both to cultures ostensibly existing outside of modern time and also to a way of seeing the world via the lens. Asseka Oksiloff examines how the movie camera, with its capacity to record reality in a supposedly direct fashion, is legitimated by the primitive body in the first decades of the 20th century. From the earliest research footage to popularized adventure footage, the film theory, the primitive holds out the promise of a critical space that affirms modern, technological vision.

227 pages, Hardcover

First published December 7, 2001

Reviews

[WndyJW · Rating 5 out of 5]

Assenka Oksiloff, Ph.D. is my very best friend for the past 38 years! This book is about the way indigenous people were presented in German cinema in the early days of cinema. A rare topic that will be of interest to anyone with an intrest in anthropology, cinema, issues of race, and colonialism.