The Cinema of Robert Gardner

The most artistic of ethnographic filmmakers, and the most ethnographic of artistic filmmakers, Robert Gardner is one of the most original, as well as controversial, filmmakers of the last half century. This is the first volume of essays dedicated to his work - a corpus of aesthetically arresting films which includes the classic Dead Birds (1963), a lyric depiction of ritual warfare among the Dugum Dani, in the Highlands of New Guinea; Rivers of Sand (1974), a provocative portrayal of relations between the sexes among the Hamar, in southwestern Ethiopia; and Forest of Bliss (1986), a sublime city symphony about death and life in Benares, India. Eminent anthropologists, philosophers, film theorists, and fellow artists assess the innovations of Gardner's films as well as the controversies they have spawned. Contributors: Ilisa BarbashMarcus BanksStanley CavellRoderick CooverElizabeth EdwardsAnna GrimshawKarl G. HeiderPaul HenleySusan HoweDavid MacDougallDusan Makavejev kos st rWilliam RothmanSean ScullyLucien TaylorCharles Warren

Ilisa Barbash is Associate Curator of Visual Anthropology at the Peabody Museum, Harvard University. In 1998, she founded the Graduate Program in Transcultural and Ethnographic Filmmaking, at the University of Colorado, Boulder, which she directed until moving to Harvard in 2002. Her film works (all co-directed with Lucien Taylor) include Made in U.S.A. (1990), a film about sweatshops and child labor in the Los Angeles garment industry, and In and Out of Africa (1992), a video about authenticity, taste, and racial politics in the transnational African art market. In and Out of Africa has been the subject of symposia at the Smithsonian Institution and the British Museum, London, and received awards from the Chicago International Film Festival, the American Film Festival, the National Educational Film Festival, the Big Muddy Film Festival, the Gottingen International Film Festival, as well as from the American Anthropological Association, the Royal Anthropological Institute, and the Global Africa Award.

Lucien Taylor is Director of the Media Anthropology Laboratory, Associate Director of the Film Study Center, and Assistant Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies, and of Anthropology, at Harvard University. Taylor’s films include Made in U.S.A. (1990) and In and Out of Africa (1992), both co-directed with Barbash.