there a single Euro–American one. The audience at theChicago World’s Fair and the academic readers of Boas, forinstance, represent only two of many such viewpoints.Some of this nuance is flattened by the limitations of themedium and by an implicitly ironic stance taken by Glass.Thus, we are presented with the completely unsurprisingfact that a trendy gallery in Manhattan sells NorthwestCoast art, including some masks associated with the ha-matsa. Or that one can buy such objects (presumably lessfine) at the Vancouver airport.

A more interesting line of inquiry is the way thehamatsa has been portrayed in museums, especially theAmerican Natural History Museum in New York. Glassdiscusses Boas’s work on the dioramas, and how thisprovided a template for ethnographic museum displayacross the country. The shots of the old Grand Gallery,taken not long before it closed, will provide a valuable (ifsomewhat underexposed, due to the gallery’s dimness)record of Boas’s ethnographic presentation. In the cur-rent configuration, the human figures have beenremoved and artifacts are presented primarily as objetsd’art.

The most valuable parts of the film, however, arethose set in the village of Alert Bay. As Glass knows,such visual records of native communities are rare, andfilm can uniquely capture ways in which such commu-nities experience change and continuity. From myperspective, the last scene in the village was particularlyinteresting. It shows a contemporary ‘‘sports day’’ pa-rade. This is a common late spring celebration in coastalcommunities (with links to the return of salmon and tothe once obligatory celebration of Victoria Day). How-ever, I have never seen the hamatsa featured in such aparade, and was especially taken by the image of thehamatsa dancer doing his performance out the windowof an RCMP vehicle! Clearly, the hamatsa takes on newmeanings all the time. I suppose this is the significanceof the otherwise baffling subtitle, ‘‘A Tale of Headhunt-ing.’’ While Glass certainly refers to a search for theintracranial meaning of this complex symbol, he doesa very good job of showing how that meaning is alsosocial in nature.

As a film, In Search of the Hamatsa betrays its ori-gins as a student project. For instance, bridging shotsinvolve such cliches as a jetliner flying overhead, a shotof highway exit signs, and even a sunset. Equally hoaryimages of anthropological fieldwork invoking the an-thropologist as innocent outsider are presented. (In oneshot reminiscent of Red Green and a long lineage of co-medians before him, Glass is dressed in full commercialfishing gear and holding a fingerling). However, theserough edges aside, the film presents a complex issuesuccinctly, yet richly. It would make an excellent class-

room film, especially as many issues are raised, but noneare resolved, thus encouraging active classroom discus-sion. It is also useful in demonstrating a methodologythat anthropologists, especially in North America, areincreasingly pursuing. I call this method ‘‘archivalfieldwork,’’ where the ethnographer brings materialsfrom the archives to the field, using them as a means togather new information and to spur discussion. (As such,it is also the basis for a new cycle of archive formation.)

This is a film that should be of interest to a widerange of scholars in anthropology, art history, nativestudies, dance, and related fields. Its pedagogical valueis great, and it would be suitable for high schooland above. Perhaps most gratifying is the fact that itdemonstrates the relevance of anthropology to contem-porary native communities, and to understanding theirposition in the larger society.

The Future of Visual Anthropology

Directed by Martin Gruber, 2006, 15 minutes, color.Distributed by Intervention Press, Castenschioldsvej 7,DK-8270, H�jbjerg, Denmark, http://www.intervention.dk

Chris WrightGoldsmiths College

Martin Gruber’s useful short film on the future of visualanthropology is constructed around a series of inter-views with Jean Rouch, Ian Dunlop, Paul Henley, KarlHeider, Howard Morphy, Peter Crawford, Harald Prins,and Jay Ruby conducted during the 2001 Gottingen IWFconference. Taking the opposite tack to the conferenceitselfFthe title of which was ‘‘Origins of VisualAnthropology: Putting the Past Together’’FGruber’sapproach is to ask this lineup of major figures in con-temporary visual anthropology what they each envisagefor the future of the subfield. The interviews were carriedout by Jochen Becker, Viola Scheuerer, and Gruberhimself, and are themed into three main sections: Tech-nology, Theory and Practice, and Discipline(s) andInstitutions.

In terms of content the film covers a range of issuescentral to visual anthropology. The arguments aroundtechnology are long-standing, and serve as a point ofwidely varying perspectives for the group of interview-ees. Alongside comments about the desirability of digitalvideo cameras becoming increasingly ‘‘less intrusive,’’ itis refreshing to hear Rouch’s assertion that ‘‘these are notcameras’’ in any real sense and that digital video issomething that instead of embracing with open arms, weshould ‘‘fight against.’’ Although his point makes little

102 VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW Volume 25 Number 1 Spring 2009

economic sense for departments or students, it is a usefulcorrective to the technological fetishization of digitalvideo and the idea that it will necessarily initiate a more‘‘intimate’’ kind of filmmaking. As someone who regu-larly screens films made by anthropologists to students,it is clear that new technology has not necessarily re-sulted in better films being made. The short statementsthe interviewees make are useful as an introduction toperennial arguments about the ways in which visualtraining in anthropology is pursued, and the oftenfraught relationship between anthropology and aesthet-ics of filmmaking. Henley makes a good point when heargues that he is more interested in the ‘‘now’’ of visualanthropology rather than any disputed past or any fu-ture promised by a developing technology.

In a positive light, several of those interviewed,Prins in particular, suggest that new digital technologydoes allow for a more participatory form of visual an-thropology, and this is where a sense of common groundbetween the interviewees gradually emerges. Althoughthe actual forms of this participation would undoubtedlybe contentious, the discussion clearly points to a way inwhich digital technology has potentially enabled chan-ges in both the kinds of relationships that are involvedwith practicing visual anthropology today and their rel-ative status in terms of power and authority. As severalof the interviewees point out, digital technology makesfilmmaking more accessible in several ways: it enablescash-poor students and academics to produce work (al-though given this accessibility it is perhaps the lack of ahigh volume of output that needs explaining), but it alsoenables those normally on the other side of the lens toparticipate in new ways andFperhaps more impor-tantlyFproduce their own visual work. The film and allthose interviewed see this as a very positive move in vi-sual anthropology’s future. But surely this has been apossibility for some timeF20 years at least. CertainlyRouch had been advocating a kind of participatory pro-cess for a lot longer. This is, however, where the filmreveals its usefulnessFa teaching tool for initiatingproductive collaborations.

The section of the film on the disciplining of thesubfield also reveals some long-standing disputes. Rubyreiterates his well-known stance on the necessity ofretaining a clear disciplinary boundary between anthro-pology and other areas of visual endeavor that deal withsimilar issues and face similar problems. The argu-mentFsomewhat superceded by current practicesacross a range of disciplinesFthat anthropologists arenot, and should not aspire to be, ‘‘good’’ filmmakersis either symptomatic of anthropology’s general icono-phobia (Lucien Taylor, ‘‘Iconophobia,’’ Transition,1996:64–88) or a useful policing of disciplinary bound-

aries, depending on which side of Ruby you stand. In thisrespect the film had a slightly tongue-in-cheek qualityto it; by focusing on a range of leading figures in thesubfield it inevitably made it feel a bit as if they were thefuture of visual anthropology. In one sense the film’s ti-tle should be followed by a question mark, and this iscertainly the kind of question the film prompts. Is thisthe future of visual anthropology?

The film answers this in a generally positive lightand, as someone involved in teaching visual anthropol-ogy to undergraduate, postgraduate, and Ph.D. students,it is useful in several respects. First, in gathering togethermany of the leading figures of the subfield it brings to-gether a range of sometimes-conflicting views andpresents these in short, easily accessible ‘‘bites.’’ Al-though visually the film consists of a series of ‘‘talkingheads,’’ it manages to maintain a strong sense of narra-tive through the thematic grouping of responses toquestions, a style that is well suited to its short film for-mat. Secondly, toward the end of the film, Crawfordmakes an important point about the visibility and co-herence of visual anthropology as a subdiscipline whenhe suggests that it is difficult to create a strong sense ofthe field when people go to conferences for a few daysbut then return home and ‘‘draw the curtains again.’’ Thefilm suggests that the future of visual anthropology isboth full of productive potentials and is something thatneeds to be thought about beyond the special context ofethnographic film festivals.

This film is both engaging and pedagogically useful.It refers to a range of key debates in visual anthropologyand although it does not explore them in depth, serves asa useful introduction. Importantly, it opens up questionsof the subfield’s future and its life beyond some of itsfounding figures. Since Gruber et al. are obviously verycapable filmmakers, I think they should consider makinga longer film, or series of films, that explore some ofthese difficult issues introduced in this film in greaterdepth. One way to perhaps accomplish this would bethrough a series of ‘‘master-classes’’ in which particularvisual anthropologists review their own film footage.

Four WivesFOne Man

Directed by Nahid Persson, 2007, 76 minutes, color.Produced by Women Make Movies, 462 Broadway, 5thFloor, New York, NY 10013, http://www.wmm.com

Najwa AdraAmerican Institute for Yemeni Studies

Four WivesFOne Man is ostensibly about a polygynousfamily in rural Iran. It opens with two written statements:

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