THE TRIBE THAT HIDES FROM MAN

RA57 col.  67 mins.
Director: Adrian Covell
Associated Television

The Kreen-Akrore are a forest Indian tribe living in the Amazon basin of Brazil who successfully managed to evade the cameras and crew accompanying the Villas Boas brothers during their attempt to make first contact with these hostile and entirely unknown people. The search for the Kreen‑Akrore lends itself to a documentary style which uses the conventions of narrative cinema, unfolding the events chronologically, while building up the tension and suspense of the search: for example subjective' shots are utilised to give the impression of what it is like to be watched, by unseen eyes in a hostile jungle. Some of the scenes are clearly staged, thus helping to reconstruct the events and tensions of the search.

However, this is not to lessen the importance of the film as ethnographic account, especially as it manages to be both entertaining and informative. This prize‑winning film is one of the most ambitious documentaries ever made for tele­vision, but since the Kreen‑Akrore are never directly present the film becomes a record of conceptions of ethnographic film‑making.

A. Cowell, 1973. The Tribe that Hides from Man. The Bodley Head, London.

T. Turner, 1974. Review of the film. American Anthropologist, Vol.76, pp.489‑490.