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Reclaiming the Ethnographic Film by Jennifer Crystal Chien
A film screening at Re-Take Oakland, with guest speaker Robin Lung (2nd from left), in June, 2019. photo: Robyn Bykofsky
IN LAK'ECH ALA K'IN IS A TRADITIONAL
Mayan greeting, which means, “I am you, and you are me.” Recognizing that “you” and “I” are fundamentally the same is an antithesis to the Western anthropological approach of creating a distinction between the civilized “I” and the savage “you,” also commonly known as “the Other.”
Coincidentally, the invention of photography in the 1840s and its subsequent popularization coincided with the rise of this othering. From the 1870s to the 1930s, ethnological exhibitions featuring displays of live black and indigenous human beings were held from the British Museum to the Bronx Zoo and elsewhere across the West.
Photography and, later, film played critical roles in the transmission of these dehumanizing concepts of the lives of the “you” versus “I” from the white perspective.
The legacy of this othering in documenting and observing the lives of the Other continues to reverberate in the modern documentary industry. In the last two years, at industry gatherings such as the Getting Real Conference, hosted by International Documentary Association, a critical inquiry under scrutiny was: Who is making documentary media is as important as the content of the film itself.
Given this, we are asked to question what it means to not only transform representations of people in documentary media but also its means of production, in order to undo historic patterns of dehumanization.
A Human Zoo Photo: businessman Maurice Maitre with a group of Selk’nam people from Chile, the Universal Exhibition in Paris, 1889. photo: Rare Historical Photos
In June 2018, a grassroots, community-based organization in Oakland, which I co-founded, Re-Present Media, took a small step towards addressing this issue. We created a mentoring program designed to impact two factors within the documentary industry, to increase the numbers of established filmmakers of color and to value the perspectives of stories focused on personal storytelling.
We decided to focus on personal storytelling because we wanted to expand the range of portrayals, perspectives and lived experiences shown in documentary films outside of the often-proscribed tropes of “social issue” films, which are often defined from the perspective of the othering legacy.
What would happen if we began to define our own stories, in our own neighborhoods, of people like ourselves, from the perspective of “In Lak’ech Ala K’in”?
The mentoring program, Re-Take Oakland, is currently supporting twelve filmmakers of color who have all made one or more films but have not gained national prominence. Over the span of two years, they will make and distribute short films focused on Oakland personal stories.
Thus far, the filmmakers—A.K. Sandhu, Corinne Manabat Cueva, Jay Gash, Jennifer Huang, Jenn Lee Smith, Jeremy Redford, Jessica Jones, Kirthi Nath, Lucy Saephan, Nat Ruiz Tofano, Pallavi Somusetty and teo octavia—are engaged in pre-production on a wide range of stories, from the spiritual work of a transgender Buddhist spiritual leader to the adventures of a women’s motorcycle club.
Jennifer Crystal Chien, founder and director of Re-Take Oakland. photo: J. C. Chien
We have the support of six filmmaker mentors and three advisors, including Rita Baghdadi, Nausheen Dadabhoy, Kenneth Eng, Selina Lewis-Davidson, Dawn Valadez, Chihiro Wimbush, Donald Young, Soumyaa Kapil Behrens and Anamik Saha, some of whom are Sundance- and Emmy-award-winning producers, directors and distributors.
While it is early in the production cycle, I anticipate that given their encouragement and support and the spirit of the Mayan greeting, “In Lak’ech Ala K’in,” these films will help us to see ourselves in others in ways that are both new to documentary media yet deeply familiar to ourselves as human beings.
Jennifer Crystal Chien is an independent documentary filmmaker, producer and co-founder of Re-Present Media, who can be reached