Page 201 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

troduced to an understanding of their signi¤cance through appropriate ritual
practices. As a result, many of the ¤lms documenting restricted aspects of cere-
monial life held in the Film Archive of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal
and Torres Straits Islander Studies were eventually removed from the available
archive except with the permission, or at the request, of members of the appro-
priate Aboriginal communities. As Ian Bryson (2002) comments in his history
of that archive:

Scienti¤c recording was thus brought face to face with the realities of the practice
of Aboriginal religion. . . . Aboriginal people in urban areas sought to protect the
rights of those living in remote areas and therefore create a pan-Aboriginal politi-
cal space in which to operate. Regardless of who was doing the politicking, the
issue of concern in the 1980s was how could religious systems heavily reliant on the
controlled transmission of knowledge go on allowing the recording of stories, paintings,
dances and songs on a communication medium that had mass distribution of infor-
mation as a central tenet. (148, emphasis added)

While I was well aware of the restrictions and complex histories of these
¤lms, somehow, far away in New York, those restrictions did not seem to apply
to me in quite the same way that they would have in Australia. In 1988, when I
was asked to start a program in ethnographic ¤lm at NYU (which eventually
3
became the Program in Culture and Media which I currently direct), it was my
lot to sort out the past from the future epistemologically and pedagogically, and,
as it turned out, materially. One of my ¤rst tasks was to get the desultory and
neglected ethnographic ¤lm collection into proper order since, until my arrival,
it had been stored in an old refrigerator (along with wine, beer, and lunch bags),
turning a number of color classics a soft shade of red. Among the works in the
archive were several ¤lms on Aboriginal ceremony that I had never seen, ¤lms
that NYU had acquired prior to the embargos placed on their circulation—Emu
Ritual at Ruguri (1966–67), Pintupi Revisit Yaru Yaru (1971), Pintupi Revisit
Yumari (1971), and A Walbiri Fire Ceremony: Ngatjakula (1977)—all directed
by Roger Sandall, the key ¤lmmaker for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal
Studies during the 1960s. Determined to do the right thing, I pulled out the ¤lm
cans holding the now prohibited ¤lms but then hesitated before pulling them
from circulation. Since I was starting to work with some of the communities
where the ¤lms had been made, especially with Warlpiri people from Central
Australia, it seemed reasonable that I might view at least one of the ¤lms before
removing them.
I had heard about the quality of the work, the ¤rst ethnographic ¤lms shot
in remote Australia to use 16-mm color stock with sync sound of Aboriginal
participants talking and singing. They were of another era—signi¤ed for schol-
ars of documentary ¤lm by the aptly (and in this case ironically) named “Voice
of God” narration track, in which the authoritative expert explains in a voice
external to the visible action the meaning of the activities to which the pre-
sumed non-Aboriginal audience is a virtual witness. While there is “wild sound”
of general talk, there is no synchronous dialogue with participants used to

190 Faye Ginsburg