Shooting Shamans

Abstract

“Shooting Shamans” is an extract from a long conversation between Michael Oppitz, the author of several anthropological books and director of the film Schamanen im Blinden Land, and Ahmed Alasti, who has filmed documentaries in Iran and is writing a thesis on Jean Rouch, drawn from a seminar on the theme “Words and Images in Anthropology” offered at the University of Texas in 1985–86. The text of the film, Shamans in a Blind Land, is analyzed in terms of a series of questions that have both theoretical and documentary importance: What is the nature of filmed images and when do the verbal text and the visual text become mutually exclusive? Or do they complement each other? When are verbal statements necessary in ethnographic film? How does it demarcate itself from fictional film? What is the best way for groups to work on filmed documentation? What qualities define a good camera technician? What is understood by the term objectivity or engagement in an ethnographic film? Do films made by anthropologists have a distinct quality which transcends present, conventional aesthetic forms? The conversation, in its entirety, will be published under the title, “The Beauty of Exactitude.”