UNHOUSED

Paul Radin spoke of native autobiographies, but the term should be used with caution. Preliterate peoples don't write books or make films. We may train them to do so, but we must always ask: at this point, are they still members of their old culture or have they become, in this particular area at least, members of our culture?

I've recorded life histories extracted from informants. I've encouraged those who were literate to write their own. Since around 1960, I've put cameras in a variety of hands. The results generally tell more about the medium employed than about the cultural background of the author or cameraman.

In each case I had hoped the informant would present his own culture in a fresh way & perhaps even use the medium itself in a new way. I was wrong. What I saw was literacy & film. These media swallow culture. The old culture was there all right, but no more than residue at the bottom of a barrel. I think it requires enormous sophistication - media sophistication - before anyone can use print or film to preserve & present one's cultural heritage, even one's cultural present. The extraordinary sensitive autobiographies & films now coming out of Africa, come from men of the utmost media sophistication, men unhoused in any single culture or medium.

In New Guinea, we obtained about 70 films made by indigenes. Cameramen ranged in background from isolated Biami to Port Moresby students. Among isolated villagers, we ourselves became the subjects most frequently photographed, perhaps out of courtesy, more probably because we were the most visible objects in their environment. When we left cameras behind for them to use, they were generally ignored.

In Port Moresby, however, our cameras were in much demand. The subjects most favored were friends & cars. Cameramen might zoom & pan on scenery, but with friends & cars, they held the camera steady, preferably on a tripod: the cars they filmed were parked, the friends immobile. In other words, movie cameras were used like still cameras.

Four indigenes who worked with us (two in Port Moresby, one in the Sepik & one in the Highlands) became enthusiastic & competent filmmakers. They observed us closely, learned quickly & made films similar to the ones we were producing. None attempted to make the sort of dramatic films they saw in theaters, but I think if we had been shooting drama, they would have imitated this as well. In Angoram, we were asked to film dramatic skits staged by students & I noted that several skits might have been inspired by films.

I carefully screened films made by indigenous DIES cameramen. In only one did I see anything even remotely suggesting a nonWestern approach: a film on a lakatoi, a sailing ship, was exceptionally tactile, favoring close-ups of surfaces & bindings.

Western audiences delight in stories about natives who use modern media in curious ways, their errors being both humorous & profound, suddenly illuminating the very nature of the media themselves.

Even when these stories are true, I think their importance is exaggerated. Surely the significant point is that media permit little experimentation & only a person of enormous power & sophistication is capable of escaping their binding power. A very naive person may stumble across some interesting technique, though I think such stories are told more frequently than documented. The trend is otherwise.

New Guineans who may someday produce unique film statements, drawing upon their heritage & their contemporary lives, are almost certain to be men who were first dislodged from their native culture & then, by choice, returned to it, having acquired in the interval a knowledge of several media.