TO LIVE WITH HERDS

RA56 B/W  90 mins.
Director: David MacDougall

The Jie are a semi‑nomadic pastoral people living in Northeastern Uganda, who are striving to maintain their way of life in the face of unsympathetic government policy, and, at the time of filming, a dry‑season famine. This film won a top award at a major festival of ethnographic films held in Venice. It is remarkable for its sense of intimacy and for the way in which it allows the jie to emerge as live individuals with their own views of the reasons for the famine and what was to be done about it. This is achieved by the skilled use of synchronous sound, translated in sub-titles, and by the device of restricting a great deal of the action to the day-to-day happenings in a single homestead.

Dealing as it does with the relation between government and Jie pastoralists, this remarkable film manages to make a political statement of undoubted ethnographic importance. Several linked themes are taken up in the film, caption cards signalling the points of emphasis in each of the sequences. The sequences run as follows: 'A Dry Season Among Jiel, 'Changes' , 'The Nation' and 'News from Home'. These provide a structure for the film and cohere into a lucid account of the historical and social conditions which bear upon the Jie. The point that Jie life depends on maintaining a balance between herds and people, requiring seasonal movement between cattle‑camp and homestead, is contrasted with the government's desire to turn the jie into a stable unit for the purposes of administration and taxation. As a consequence of tax demands, Jie now have to sell their cattle for cash, involving themselves in transactions with dealers before whom they are in a weak bargaining position.

A great deal of information about changes which have taken place in Jie society is given in powerful and lucid statements by Jie themselves.

David and Judith MacDougall lived with the iie while making this film, using a technique which has been termed I participatory camera I . It requires that the film-makers be known and trusted observers of the filmed people. The MacDougalls' films* have set a standard of professional quality and integrity which may well mark out guidelines for this type of ethnographic film‑making for many years to come. They have an importance far beyond their status as ethnographic documents. To Live with Herds has been found particularly useful in giving students an impression of the experience of fieldwork.

 * See also entries for Lorang's Way, Nawi and Wedding Camels.

P.H. Gulliver, 1973. Review of the film. American Anthropologist, Vol. 75, pp. 597-598.

For additional references see list under entry for Nawi.