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Drums on the Red River : The Making of a Vietnamese Ethnographic Film

2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 26; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/08949468.2013.775919

1545-5920

Lauren Meeker, Jayasiñhji Jhālā,

Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies

Abstract This article addresses three issues. First, it examines the history of ethnographic film in Vietnam and notes the many innovations in method, practice, content and philosophy that the making of this kind of film engenders. Secondly, it examines how the adoption of a new investigative philosophy during the collaborative filming of the Chu Dong Tu Festival in northern Vietnam gave birth to an investigative strategy resulting in an innovative methodology. The third issue this article demonstrates is how the new investigative approach enables the gathering of anthropological insight and showcases historical evidence that is situated in contemporary ritual and celebration. Notes We are grateful for the assistance given by Hoang Son, Sophie Quinn Judge, Lan Phuong, Hien Nguyen, Lauren Semmel, Bui Hoai Son, Sam Pack and Bui Quang Thang in the writing of this article. For a discussion of observational film, see Young's seminal essay [(1975) 2003], and Grimshaw and Ravetz [2009]. The lack of historicism in some of the ethnographic films of the first type is interesting in light of, and often in contrast to, the rigorous debates about Vietnamese history and culture that have taken place in the postcolonial period. See Pelley [2002], Kim Ngoc Bao Ninh [2005] and Tran and Reid [Citation2006]. These films were among those donated to VICAS by the Center for Vietnamese Philosophy, Culture, and Society at Temple University as part of the Visual Anthropology Initiative (VAI), a collaborative training program undertaken by VICAS and the Center. Also influential in the recent development of Vietnamese ethnographic film are the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology, Nguyen Truong Giang, an ethnographic filmmaker, and the documentary filmmaker Nguyen Trinh Thi, both of whom have worked in collaboration with VAI on projects other than the Chu Dong Tu film. The reforms, known as Doi Moi, were initiated at the Sixth Party Congress in 1986. They instituted limited political reform and a series of economic reforms to move the country gradually away from a command economy towards a limited market system. For an early history of Vietnam, including the legend of the coupling of the fairy and the dragon, said to be the original mother and father of all the Viet people and the foundation of the Hung lineage, see Keith Taylor [Citation1983]. For an interesting discussion of how Vietnamese postcolonial historiography tended to turn history into myth and myth into history, see Pelley [2002]. Small crews were used in the making of such ethnographic films as Asch's The Ax Fight [Citation1975], David and Judith MacDougall's Lorang's Way [Citation1979], Sandall and Jhala's The Bharvard Predicament [1987], Melissa Llewellyn-Davies' The Women's Olamal: The Organization of a Maasai Fertility Ceremony [Citation1985]. Jean Rouch, the French ethnographic filmmaker, often preferred to use his local friends to comprise the film crew, as in Lion Hunters [Citation1964] and Jaguar [1967]. This was a ten-day event involving the 50th birthday celebrations of the Maharaja of Jodhpur, a cousin of Jayasinhji Jhala's, that included a wide range of religious and secular activities [Balzani Citation2003]. To film this event Jhala took a team of five visual anthropology graduate students, viz: Lindsey Powell, Elizabeth Noznesky, Robert Lazarski, Bruce Broce and Carey Million. He learned the importance of having a woman crew member, Elizabeth Noznesky, as she was better able to film women's events with local bilingual assistants. For the Jodhpur event the crew had months to prepare and was informed in detail about various events. Jhala also had the direct advantage of speaking with his crew and others in the same language; and the fact that the crew were a cohort and trained in a similar way facilitated communication tremendously. Lauren Semmel had made a film entitled The Last Rites of the Honorable Mr. Rai with Jhala in India [Jhala Citation2007]. Recent Vietnamese films that do incorporate this approach include a community-based video produced by the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology entitled Hanoi Life under the Subsidy Economy [2006], Nguyen Truong Giang's Pottery Vendors (Ngu'ò'i hàng sứ) [Citation2004], and Nguyen Trinh Thi's Love Man, Love Woman [Citation2007]. The three village gods (thanh hoang) who attended the Chu Dong Tu festival were Thanh Ri (ri means "carp") from Da Hoa Village, La Thi Dung, the goddess from Bang Nha Village, and Nguyen Van Lang from Thiet Tru Village. For instance, in the past yellow was reserved for the king. Today many women in ritual groups can be seen wearing yellow. Shaun Malarney [Citation2002] and Patricia Endres [Citation2002] also discuss the changing role of women in the revival of ritual practices in Vietnam. For a discussion of status and drums in cheo, Vietnamese popular theater, see Le Thanh Hien [Citation1996]. The 1956 Law on Marriage and Family banned arranged marriages and established that the preferred form was marriage based upon love. In the past, community members told us, eight villages participated in the Chu Dong Tu Festival. Today only three villages participate. This is in large part because of recent administrative redistricting, which has made coordination between the original eight villages difficult. The irony of the emergence of a "people's voice" in the wake of the economic reforms and the lessened emphasis on ideological transformation of society is not however lost upon us. Indeed, discussions about how to represent faithfully the people in music and art has been discussed vigorously in Vietnam since the August 1945 revolution [Meeker Citation2007]. Additional informationNotes on contributorsLauren Meeker LAUREN MEEKER teaches Anthropology at the State University of New York, New Paltz. Her research is on the cultural politics, representation, and performance of folk music and theater in Vietnam. Recently she co-directed, with a Vietnamese colleague, the Visual Anthropology Initiative, a two-year project to train Vietnamese ethnographers in visual anthropology (co-sponsored by the Vietnam Institute of Culture and Art Studies, Hanoi, and the Center for the Study of Vietnamese Philosophy, Culture and Society at Temple University). Jayasinhji Jhala JAYASINHJI JHALA teaches Anthropology at Temple University, and is its Director of the Graduate and Undergraduate Programs in Visual Anthropology. Trained at MIT and Harvard, where he teaches occasionally, Jhala is concerned with the emergent constituencies of Indigenous media and new media, and the continuing centrality of ethnographic film; the way that it informs the practice of an anthropology of visual communication, incorporating the study of the senses and embracing an anthropology of experience.