SECOND PART

0:05:08 Turkana films took several years to edit; problems in the filming due to remoteness of the place; for any communications had to go to Eldoret or Nairobi; after exposing about 5000 feet of film, sent it to the lab and when the rushes came back found half of it was out of focus; due to an element in the lens having been put in backwards when checked by technician before we left; problems with camera motor burning out which we tried to get repaired in Nairobi; have kept a dossier of all these difficulties with letters going back and forth; Land Rover also once stolen; had originally intended to go back to Jie but in the interim Idi Amin took power in Uganda and we realized it would be difficult and dangerous; shifted the project over the border to Northern Kenya; Turkana speak essentially same language as the Jie so the closest group culturally that we could work with; in Nairobi a procedure to go through to get permission to film which involved getting a research permit from the President's office and permission from the Ministry of Information; frustrating as each wanted the other's permission first; luckily Richard Leakey stepped in as we'd made an association with the National Museums of Kenya and got the permissions for us; went up to the Turkana region and started working, language learning and meeting people; at first Lorang was the one senior person in the area who wanted nothing to do with us; told his wives to keep away from us; eventually did meet him and discovered he was extraordinarily interesting, the intellectual among his peers; had the advantage of having been away from Turkana so had a wider perspective than most men; after a short time got on well together and he enjoyed talking about the problems of change; permitted us to film in his compound; indicates that the most keen for contact are not necessarily the best to work with; after waiting for nine months, the rains came and Lorang's daughter married, and we were able to follow the bride-wealth negotiations

8:39:23 Due back to teach at Rice but the ceremony took longer than expected and James Blue very kindly stood in for me; while in Turkana we received a letter enclosing an advertisement from the Aboriginal Institute in Australia for two ethnographic film makers to re-establish a film unit at the institute; previously Roger Sandall had made films for them and they had contracted others to Curtis Levy; telegram sent inviting me to come to Australia for an interview; we were in middle of the bride-wealth negotiation, filming every day, so no possibility of leaving; camera motor burnt out at this point and sent telegram to Roger Sandall in Sydney asking him to meet and take the motor for repair while I went to Canberra for the interview; jet lagged and late for the interview; disagreed with the plans they had for the unit but was offered the job with Judith as part of the team; picked up the repaired motor and returned to continue the filming; fulfilled the rest of my commitment at Rice to teach for the rest of the year and then took up the post at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies

14:28:09 Thought we would stay in Australia for a few years but have stayed there since 1975; prior work of the Institute had been primarily salvage anthropology, trying to film ceremonies mostly in the Central Desert which were thought to be disappearing; Roger Sandall had done a long series of films with Nicolas Peterson and others, documenting these events; Curtis Levy had made film about Tiwi mortuary ceremonies and I was told by Peter Ucko on my arrival that I would be expected to film a further mortuary ceremony that was happening in a few weeks; got in touch with Maria Brandl who was  doing  anthropological work among the Tiwi on Melville Island; went there and made film guided by her; brought a Tiwi man to Canberra to help with editing and he provided a commentary on the events in the film; this was a practice we continued to use in Aboriginal communities; found it very different from filming African pastoralists where a premium is placed on being able to speak well in public which seemed totally different from the cultural style of Aboriginal people whose discourse is highly referential and symbolic; struggled with the problem and never quite solved it; then realized that times were changing and it was important for indigenous people now to make the sorts of films we had been making before; training programme for Aboriginal film makers; after about 12 years eased ourselves out and proposed that the film unit should be dissolved; began to work independently for a while on grants; Kim McKenzie had been appointed as third member of the Film Unit and he went on to make 'Waiting for Harry' and he solved the problem in a very different way

22:01:20 Peter Ucko marvellous to work with as he was loyal to staff and allowed one to work as one wished without interference; Institute very lively but gradually became more bureaucratized and lost its spark when he left; Ian Dunlop not part of this group but worked for the Australian Commonwealth Film Unit which then became Film Australia so based in Sydney; first met him in 1968 and when I came to Australia we became friends; conferred about many things such as what policy we should adopt if people wanted to use footage from our films; how to deal with distress that Aborigines might feel if films were shown of people who had died

24:55:00 From 1986 filming free lance; had a brief fellowship at Humanities Research Centre, ANU, and also did some teaching there; Ian Donaldson was the director of the HRC at the time and Anthony Forge the head of the anthropology department; Judith and I applied for a documentary film fellowship established by the Australian Film Commission in conjunction with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation; proposed making a film about still photography; theme of ten undocumented photographs and detective work on identifying them; given the fellowship but didn't make this particular film; at that point invited to an ethnographic film conference being held in India in the palace of the Maharajah of Jodhpur organised by his cousin; had never been to India before but encouraged by people at the conference to make the film in India as it had a long history of photography; interesting proposition so began to travel around; notion of finding a village with one photographer and focusing on his clientele and the events recorded; never found such a place; had been reading the novels of Narayan and his focus on small figures in Malgudi and we hoped to find a photographer like that; next step was to make contact with Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) and met Director Martand Singh who suggested we go to Mussoorie; hill station full of photographers of all sorts; resulted in the film 'Photo Wallahs'

36:12:22 Indirectly led to the film on the Doon School; next project was without Judith, made a film in Sardinia at the request of the Ethnographic Institute there on mountain shepherds - 'Tempus de Baristas' - made as co-production with the BBC, one of the few times there has been television money; commissioning editor was Andre Singer who was commissioning a series called 'Fine Cut' at that time; extra money allowed me to take more time and to hire Dai Vaughan as editor who had worked with us on 'Photo Wallahs'; probably the finest documentary editor in British television and learnt a lot from him; project finished in 1994 when film was shown; BBC version was 90 minutes though the actual film was 100 minutes; lost four sequences which I prize the most but not essential to the framework; next project was the Doon School; contacted by an Indian anthropologist Sanjay Srivastava who was completing his PhD on three schools of Northern India at Sydney University; suggested it might make a good subject for a documentary film; had thought of collaborating but he got a lectureship and went off to teach and I made the films

42:15:00 On first visit met the headmaster who was remarkably open and welcoming thinking it would give the school a different perspective on itself and be very valuable; students' education word-based and not very critical of visual images and very good for them to have a film maker around; able to do this work on a fairly small budget as could use digital video; started with a Sony model 200 which one held on the shoulder; Doon School is probably the most famous boys' boarding school in India; the use of digital video permitted me to make the films alone which seemed appropriate in the context of the school; had made a verbal agreement with ABC Television and BBC to make a film on Doon but BBC pulled out so made it on University research budget; felt free to make films as I chose; 'Doon School Chronicles' is over two hours long, divided into ten chapters, looks at the ideology of the school as well at the responses of the boys; part of the quid pro quo was that I should train some student film makers which I did with a group of about eight; they made a fortnightly film magazine which was shown to the school on film nights until they dropped the school camera in the river; used texts found in school archives and round the school which I used as epigraphs for chapters; began experimenting inserting still images; went on to make four more films which become progressively more narrowly focussed, the last on a single student

52:32:13 'Doon School Chronicles' was the product of a change in direction in my own thinking; had thought of school as a meeting place for boys with great varieties of experience - home, religion - but found school homogeneous with strong traditions and rituals; modelled on British public school to train leaders who would take over after Independence; stressed leadership, independence, self-confidence, but regimented in a way; after a few weeks felt I was in the middle of a stage play; wondered if you could look at a school as a creative work in some sense; led me to look at the social aesthetic of the school, trying to look at rituals, patterns of gesture, speech behaviour, which creates the specific cultural and physical environment; later films less explicitly about that but still in the background; over period of 3-4 years was in the school for about fourteen months, for periods of up to four months at a time; never had any problems with climate of fear surrounding filming children which effects such ventures in Britain and Australia; still do not find this anxiety in India but don't believe such films could be made in Britain and Australia; nothing really surprised me, found parallels with other schools, and my own boarding school had prepared me for much that went on; classic problems of teasing and bullying that went on under the surface; found school tried to account for every minute of the students' time and they ended up being quite stressed, especially towards the end of term; school's complex punishment system, preoccupation with clothing

1:02:22:09 After finishing the Doon project (the last film was edited 2003) I began filming at a school in South India called the Rishi Valley School, a coeducational boarding school, based on the ideas of Krishnamurti; progressive educational philosophy which is similar to the one at Putney School where I went; just substitute John Dewey for Krishnamurti; began filming and have made two long and several shorter films which are in collaboration with students; as a third project began  living and filming in a shelter for homeless children in New Delhi; comparing three institutional sites for children in India; just finishing a fairly complete edit of the third project film; to edit use Final Cut Pro on a Mac; have an editing room at the University next to my office; Judith and I have been back to Rishi Valley School as I had not been able to film the girls; during a month's stay she filmed a group of girls while I did a group of boys; that film has yet to be edited

1:06:38:23 Advice to a young anthropologist - don't be afraid about making a film if you  don't know the subject fully; camera can be a way of exploring the subject; feel that films should be part of the process of research not post facto publication of some previous research; may end up not making a film at all but the camera gives you access to situations through which you learn; I don't enjoy technology for its own sake; learn to hold the camera steady, find a frame of interest, let us look at what you find interesting

1:10:10:22 Think films can reflect complex thought but not good at making propositional statements about the world, partly due to dealing with specific cases and not having the ability to summarize many examples; films can be highly analytical in the way they explore their subject and the kinds of juxtapositions they create; words are incredibly important in film as in writing; attraction of Lorang as a Turkana intellectual; also find children have intellectual skills we tend to underestimate; words are important but don't like them to dominate films; camera can be a personal writing instrument in allowing other people to experience what you have; I move from one mode to another depending on the circumstances