Through Navajo Eyes
Encyclopedia
Navajo Film Themselves is a series of seven short documentary film
s which show short scenes of life in the Navajo Nation
. A National Science Foundation funded project, organized and devised by Sol Worth
and John Adair
, the project aimed to investigate visual language and how it intercepts with culture by providing film cameras to amateur participants. Bell and Howell Filmo
cameras were provided to Navajo youth in Pine Springs, Arizona, and basic technical training in loading and focus, and later editing.
The films are:
The following descriptions are derived from the accompanying text.
•A Navajo Weaver by Susie Benally. 20:00
Susie chose to depict her mother (Alta Kahn) as she wove a rug. The film starts with a series of short shots showing a Navajo woman weaving at her loom. It then turns to the job of raising the sheep,
shearing the wool, digging yucca roots for soap with which to wash the wool, carding and spinning, walking, digging and searching for roots with which to make dye, dying the wool, and putting the warp on the loom. Interspersed with these activities are large sections showing the mother walking and searching for the various materials necessary to make and to complete all these
stages in the process of weaving. When towards the end of the film, after 15 minutes have gone by, the mother actually begins to weave the rug, we see interspersed shots of Susie’s little brother
mounting his horse and taking care of the sheep, the sheep grazing, and various other activities around the hogan. The film only shows about three inches of a six-foot rug being actually woven,
and only about 4 minutes of actual weaving. It jumps from the last shot which shows the mother handling the wool on the loom to the final shots which have the mother standing inside the
hogan holding up a series of finished rugs. These are always shown in close-ups and long shots with the rugs held both horizontally and vertically. The same sequence is repeated with a different set of rugs with the mother standing outside the hogan. Of particular note in this film is the fact that there is only one close-up of a face-the “I am thinking about the design” shot.
•The Navajo Silversmith by Johnny Nelson. 20:00
This film is structured in almost the same fashion as the weaving film. The film starts with a series of shots showing the Navajo silversmith completing the filing on some little Yeibechai figures which have already been cast and are on his work bench. We then cut away from this (as in A Navajo Weaver) to what is apparently the beginning of the story. We see the silversmith walking and
wandering across the Navajo landscape and finally arriving at what appears to be a silver mine. The silversmith spends a great deal of time finding nuggets of silver embedded in the rock. He then spends another period of walking and wandering to look for the particular kind of sandstone from which he will make his mold. We see him working at sawing and grinding his mold, finally drawing his design in the sand, and then transferring it to the mold. At this point we have again the only face close-up (thinking of the design) in the film. After the mold is made we see him melting the nuggets of silver and pouring the silver into the mold. He goes through the process of filing and polishing and the last shot in the film is the shot with which we began. At one point in the film, during the silversmith’s wanderings to find silver, the film is interrupted to show us what appears to be an abandoned log cabin. In this sequence, the circular camera movements, moving clockwise like the sun, are most clearly apparent.
•The Spirit of the Navajo by Maxine and Mary Jane Tsosie. 20:00
Here the daughters of the chapter chairman of the community decided to make a film showing “the old ways.” They chose their grandfather as subject. He was one of the best known “singers”(medicine men) in the area. The film opens with the old medicine man walking and wandering across the Navajo landscape, again digging and searching for roots and herbs which he is to use as part of a ceremony. We see him at one of the “camps” before a ceremony, eating and drinking. The sequence of the grandfather eating is the only one in which a face close-up is shown. We then see the making of a sand painting from beginning to end. We see the grandfather preparing the sand in his hogan, searching for the rocks with which to make the dried powder which is then dripped on the sand as paint, and we see part of the curing ceremony in which a “patient” appears. It was impossible for the Navajo to consider using a Navajo as a patient, so they chose our assistant, Richard Chalfen, who agreed to reenact the part of a patient. The film ends with the grandfather walking from the hogan after his ceremony to his own camp.
•The Shallow Well by Johnny Nelson 20:00.
(Johnny) was asked to supervise the construction of a shallow well. Johnny previously had experience as a foreman helping to construct these wells in the community. He told the relative who
suggested that he undertake the supervision of this construction that he couldn’t do it because he was learning to make movies. But then he realized that perhaps he could make a film about it
and thus regain some of his status. This film is in many ways different from any of the other
films made by the Navajo and is discussed in the analysis section. It opens, however, in much the same way, showing the old first-a series of shots of the old open ponds from which the Navajo used to draw water. We then see a series of close-ups of flies and insects on the water. After moving with the camera around the stagnant pool we cut quickly to a series of Navajo workmen beginning to build their shallow well. We follow, in almost educational film style, all the processes, in close-up, by which the various portions of the well are built. Inter-cut at moments are shots of the Navajo reading blueprints, measuring with yardsticks, and receiving instructions from the foreman who actually was in charge of this project. Johnny again shows the typical Navajo use of the circular pan in many of the shots of the cement work as the camera explores the various parts of the installation, always moving in a sun-wise direction. When the job is finished we see a Navajo (Johnny used Sol Worth to play the part of a Navajo) walking up to the well and drawing water and we see water coming from the various parts of the shallow well. The film ends not with shots of anybody walking, but with a series of shots of trucks driving away from the well. Of interest here is that although there are no face close-ups, there are also no shots of Navajos walking to get anything. All the tools and all the equipment they need are right there. Instead
of walking away from the job they ride away. This is the only time in any of the films in which Navajos are shown using their pickup trucks.
•Old Antelope Lake by Mike Anderson 15:00
In this film Mike decided to make a movie about a lake. First he shows what turns out to be the source of the lake, or the mouth by which it is fed. He then proceeds to move sun-wise. (again) around the lake showing a variety of details of both animal and plant life. He also has a sequence of his younger brother washing clothes at the lake. The sequencing of shots in the film follows an almost exact natural order. That is, not only must the sequence be in a sun-wise direction around the lake, but also certain shots must be followed by the appropriate animal and direction of action. The time element isn’t very important in this film. Scenes that were shot in the morning appear later in the film than scenes that were shot in the afternoon. What was important to Mike was that we first saw the source and then moved all around the lake showing the unity between the natural things and the
human beings in the environment.
•Intrepid Shadows by Al Clah 15:00
The film opens with a long series of shots showing the varieties of landscape around our schoolhouse. We see rocks, earth, trees, sky, in a variety of shapes but mostly in still or static shots. The shadows are very small or short. When we have familiarized ourselves with the things that comprise the “world” we see a young Navajo come walking into the landscape. He picks up a stick, kneels down, and begins to poke at a huge spider web. At this point the tone of the film changes. Suddenly a hand appears rolling an old metal hoop. The hoop is cut in intermittently throughout the rest of the film, rolling as if propelled by unseen hands through the variations in the landscape. A Yeibechai mask appears in the film at this point, wandering and walking through the landscape seemingly looking for something. The Yeibechai wanders behind trees, seen always through bushes, looking at the sky, looking in all directions, and is inter-cut in an extremely complex manner with continuing scenes of the landscape and of the legs and body of a person dressed in white. As the Yeibechai mask wanders, the camera work depicting the landscape begins to change from static to complex circular, spiral, and almost indescribable movements. As the hoop, and then a rolling ball, and then the pages of a notebook turn and move faster and faster, so do the movements of the camera as they seemingly search along trees and rocks and bushes for whatever the Yeibechai is searching for. Now the shadows in the film are long and some of the scenes are deliberately dark. Suddenly we see what is very clearly the shadow of the camera man walking through the landscape trying to lengthen itself, and merging with the various parts of the landscape, the rocks, the bushes, and the trees, until at the very end the shadow of the man is almost a hundred feet long. There follows the last shot in the film, a long shot showing the shadow of the hoop whirling and twirling for almost fifteen seconds; suddenly in the corner of the frame the hoop itself appears, and as the spinning, which can now be seen as the hoop and its shadow, grows slower, both come into the frame so that at the very end we see the hoop spinning and the shadow that it makes. The film is ended abruptly.
•Second Weaver (formerly untitled) by Alta Kahn. 10:00
Susie Benally undertook to teach her mother to make a movie. Susie taught her to load and use the camera and exposure meter in one day. The completed film was made in one week. The film
in many ways is very similar to Susie’s film about her mother weaving a rug. Alta Kahn starts by showing Susie picking herbs for the dyes. She then has her daughter dying the wool and spinning it. She spends a great deal of time on the spinning of the wool, whereas Susie, for example, spent a great deal of time on the finding of the herbs and several of the other processes. After Susie spins the wool she sets up her belt loom and weaves a belt. Some of the close-ups of hands and wool are extraordinary for one who has never used or seen a movie before. The film ends in somewhat the way that Susie’s film ends: that is, Susie walks outside holding the belt up for the camera to look at, and the camera pans up and down very much as Susie did with her mother’s rug.
According to an article in "American Anthropologist: New Series, Vol. 76, No. 2, p. 482", "Second Weaver" was filmed by Alta Kahn and not Susie Benally. Alta Kahn was Susie Benally's mother.
The films as a series are known as "Navajos Film Themselves". The book by Sol Worth and John Adair is called "Through Navajo Eyes". ISBN 0826317715. An electronic version of much of its content is available here: http://isc.temple.edu/TNE/introduction.htm (as of 9/29/2010).
Worth and Adair were joined in the project by Richard Chalfen, then a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania.
•
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
s which show short scenes of life in the Navajo Nation
Navajo Nation
The Navajo Nation is a semi-autonomous Native American-governed territory covering , occupying all of northeastern Arizona, the southeastern portion of Utah, and northwestern New Mexico...
. A National Science Foundation funded project, organized and devised by Sol Worth
Sol Worth
Sol Worth was a painter, photographer, film maker, researcher, and pioneer in the use of film in anthropological field research as well as a founding father in the field of visual communication....
and John Adair
John Adair (anthropologist)
John Adair , was an American anthropologist best known for work in visual anthropology but also very much involved and interested in applied anthropology....
, the project aimed to investigate visual language and how it intercepts with culture by providing film cameras to amateur participants. Bell and Howell Filmo
Filmo
Filmo is a series of 16-mm movie equipment made by the Bell & Howell Company. The line included cameras, projectors and accessories.-History:...
cameras were provided to Navajo youth in Pine Springs, Arizona, and basic technical training in loading and focus, and later editing.
The films are:
- Intrepid Shadows directed by Al Clah
- The Navajo Silversmith directed by Johnny Nelson
- A Navajo Weaver directed by Susie Benally
- Old Antelope Lake directed by Mike Anderson
- Second Weaver directed by Alta Kahn
- The Shallow Well Project directed by Johnny Nelson
- The Spirit of the Navajos directed by Maxine Tsosie and Mary J. Tsosie.
The following descriptions are derived from the accompanying text.
•A Navajo Weaver by Susie Benally. 20:00
Susie chose to depict her mother (Alta Kahn) as she wove a rug. The film starts with a series of short shots showing a Navajo woman weaving at her loom. It then turns to the job of raising the sheep,
shearing the wool, digging yucca roots for soap with which to wash the wool, carding and spinning, walking, digging and searching for roots with which to make dye, dying the wool, and putting the warp on the loom. Interspersed with these activities are large sections showing the mother walking and searching for the various materials necessary to make and to complete all these
stages in the process of weaving. When towards the end of the film, after 15 minutes have gone by, the mother actually begins to weave the rug, we see interspersed shots of Susie’s little brother
mounting his horse and taking care of the sheep, the sheep grazing, and various other activities around the hogan. The film only shows about three inches of a six-foot rug being actually woven,
and only about 4 minutes of actual weaving. It jumps from the last shot which shows the mother handling the wool on the loom to the final shots which have the mother standing inside the
hogan holding up a series of finished rugs. These are always shown in close-ups and long shots with the rugs held both horizontally and vertically. The same sequence is repeated with a different set of rugs with the mother standing outside the hogan. Of particular note in this film is the fact that there is only one close-up of a face-the “I am thinking about the design” shot.
•The Navajo Silversmith by Johnny Nelson. 20:00
This film is structured in almost the same fashion as the weaving film. The film starts with a series of shots showing the Navajo silversmith completing the filing on some little Yeibechai figures which have already been cast and are on his work bench. We then cut away from this (as in A Navajo Weaver) to what is apparently the beginning of the story. We see the silversmith walking and
wandering across the Navajo landscape and finally arriving at what appears to be a silver mine. The silversmith spends a great deal of time finding nuggets of silver embedded in the rock. He then spends another period of walking and wandering to look for the particular kind of sandstone from which he will make his mold. We see him working at sawing and grinding his mold, finally drawing his design in the sand, and then transferring it to the mold. At this point we have again the only face close-up (thinking of the design) in the film. After the mold is made we see him melting the nuggets of silver and pouring the silver into the mold. He goes through the process of filing and polishing and the last shot in the film is the shot with which we began. At one point in the film, during the silversmith’s wanderings to find silver, the film is interrupted to show us what appears to be an abandoned log cabin. In this sequence, the circular camera movements, moving clockwise like the sun, are most clearly apparent.
•The Spirit of the Navajo by Maxine and Mary Jane Tsosie. 20:00
Here the daughters of the chapter chairman of the community decided to make a film showing “the old ways.” They chose their grandfather as subject. He was one of the best known “singers”(medicine men) in the area. The film opens with the old medicine man walking and wandering across the Navajo landscape, again digging and searching for roots and herbs which he is to use as part of a ceremony. We see him at one of the “camps” before a ceremony, eating and drinking. The sequence of the grandfather eating is the only one in which a face close-up is shown. We then see the making of a sand painting from beginning to end. We see the grandfather preparing the sand in his hogan, searching for the rocks with which to make the dried powder which is then dripped on the sand as paint, and we see part of the curing ceremony in which a “patient” appears. It was impossible for the Navajo to consider using a Navajo as a patient, so they chose our assistant, Richard Chalfen, who agreed to reenact the part of a patient. The film ends with the grandfather walking from the hogan after his ceremony to his own camp.
•The Shallow Well by Johnny Nelson 20:00.
(Johnny) was asked to supervise the construction of a shallow well. Johnny previously had experience as a foreman helping to construct these wells in the community. He told the relative who
suggested that he undertake the supervision of this construction that he couldn’t do it because he was learning to make movies. But then he realized that perhaps he could make a film about it
and thus regain some of his status. This film is in many ways different from any of the other
films made by the Navajo and is discussed in the analysis section. It opens, however, in much the same way, showing the old first-a series of shots of the old open ponds from which the Navajo used to draw water. We then see a series of close-ups of flies and insects on the water. After moving with the camera around the stagnant pool we cut quickly to a series of Navajo workmen beginning to build their shallow well. We follow, in almost educational film style, all the processes, in close-up, by which the various portions of the well are built. Inter-cut at moments are shots of the Navajo reading blueprints, measuring with yardsticks, and receiving instructions from the foreman who actually was in charge of this project. Johnny again shows the typical Navajo use of the circular pan in many of the shots of the cement work as the camera explores the various parts of the installation, always moving in a sun-wise direction. When the job is finished we see a Navajo (Johnny used Sol Worth to play the part of a Navajo) walking up to the well and drawing water and we see water coming from the various parts of the shallow well. The film ends not with shots of anybody walking, but with a series of shots of trucks driving away from the well. Of interest here is that although there are no face close-ups, there are also no shots of Navajos walking to get anything. All the tools and all the equipment they need are right there. Instead
of walking away from the job they ride away. This is the only time in any of the films in which Navajos are shown using their pickup trucks.
•Old Antelope Lake by Mike Anderson 15:00
In this film Mike decided to make a movie about a lake. First he shows what turns out to be the source of the lake, or the mouth by which it is fed. He then proceeds to move sun-wise. (again) around the lake showing a variety of details of both animal and plant life. He also has a sequence of his younger brother washing clothes at the lake. The sequencing of shots in the film follows an almost exact natural order. That is, not only must the sequence be in a sun-wise direction around the lake, but also certain shots must be followed by the appropriate animal and direction of action. The time element isn’t very important in this film. Scenes that were shot in the morning appear later in the film than scenes that were shot in the afternoon. What was important to Mike was that we first saw the source and then moved all around the lake showing the unity between the natural things and the
human beings in the environment.
•Intrepid Shadows by Al Clah 15:00
The film opens with a long series of shots showing the varieties of landscape around our schoolhouse. We see rocks, earth, trees, sky, in a variety of shapes but mostly in still or static shots. The shadows are very small or short. When we have familiarized ourselves with the things that comprise the “world” we see a young Navajo come walking into the landscape. He picks up a stick, kneels down, and begins to poke at a huge spider web. At this point the tone of the film changes. Suddenly a hand appears rolling an old metal hoop. The hoop is cut in intermittently throughout the rest of the film, rolling as if propelled by unseen hands through the variations in the landscape. A Yeibechai mask appears in the film at this point, wandering and walking through the landscape seemingly looking for something. The Yeibechai wanders behind trees, seen always through bushes, looking at the sky, looking in all directions, and is inter-cut in an extremely complex manner with continuing scenes of the landscape and of the legs and body of a person dressed in white. As the Yeibechai mask wanders, the camera work depicting the landscape begins to change from static to complex circular, spiral, and almost indescribable movements. As the hoop, and then a rolling ball, and then the pages of a notebook turn and move faster and faster, so do the movements of the camera as they seemingly search along trees and rocks and bushes for whatever the Yeibechai is searching for. Now the shadows in the film are long and some of the scenes are deliberately dark. Suddenly we see what is very clearly the shadow of the camera man walking through the landscape trying to lengthen itself, and merging with the various parts of the landscape, the rocks, the bushes, and the trees, until at the very end the shadow of the man is almost a hundred feet long. There follows the last shot in the film, a long shot showing the shadow of the hoop whirling and twirling for almost fifteen seconds; suddenly in the corner of the frame the hoop itself appears, and as the spinning, which can now be seen as the hoop and its shadow, grows slower, both come into the frame so that at the very end we see the hoop spinning and the shadow that it makes. The film is ended abruptly.
•Second Weaver (formerly untitled) by Alta Kahn. 10:00
Susie Benally undertook to teach her mother to make a movie. Susie taught her to load and use the camera and exposure meter in one day. The completed film was made in one week. The film
in many ways is very similar to Susie’s film about her mother weaving a rug. Alta Kahn starts by showing Susie picking herbs for the dyes. She then has her daughter dying the wool and spinning it. She spends a great deal of time on the spinning of the wool, whereas Susie, for example, spent a great deal of time on the finding of the herbs and several of the other processes. After Susie spins the wool she sets up her belt loom and weaves a belt. Some of the close-ups of hands and wool are extraordinary for one who has never used or seen a movie before. The film ends in somewhat the way that Susie’s film ends: that is, Susie walks outside holding the belt up for the camera to look at, and the camera pans up and down very much as Susie did with her mother’s rug.
According to an article in "American Anthropologist: New Series, Vol. 76, No. 2, p. 482", "Second Weaver" was filmed by Alta Kahn and not Susie Benally. Alta Kahn was Susie Benally's mother.
The films as a series are known as "Navajos Film Themselves". The book by Sol Worth and John Adair is called "Through Navajo Eyes". ISBN 0826317715. An electronic version of much of its content is available here: http://isc.temple.edu/TNE/introduction.htm (as of 9/29/2010).
Worth and Adair were joined in the project by Richard Chalfen, then a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania.
•