THE PANARE: SCENES FROM THE FRONTIER

Technically exceptional ... While the hunting scenes in The Panare are interesting, the film's greatest strength lies in the area of culture contact ... Excellent addition to a film library geared towards classroom use. A. Stearman

55 minutes Colour 1982
Film-maker: Chris Curling
Anthropologist: Paul Henley

The Panare reflects what is possible when an anthropologist and film-maker trained in anthropology collaborate. This BBC Worlds Apart film brings to immediacy the heat, the dust, almost the tastes and smells of the habitat of this Venezuelan Indian group. The narration is to the benefit of the Panare, they are shown as intelligent, discerning people who make their own decisions and who, despite their lack of power in both the social and political spheres of Venezuela, appear assured of their own identity and direction. The film's presentation of a ritual of the Panare, with its haunting pipe music and the motion of the palm-leaf capes and the men, never stoops to sensationalism.

The film moves through an ever-widening circle, first focusing on the Panare themselves, on their migration from one hunting and fishing spot to another, following them as the men hunt monkeys and the women carry the camp from site to site. The portrait created is of an almost unbelievably egalitarian and gentle society, where the Panare have adopted only those parts of the outside cultures they feel will be of use to them, the metal tools, bicycles, camping equipment, some Christian prayer. It should be noted that this apparently ideal condition does not exist for many other groups of Panare and several groups are changing due to their contact with evangelical missionaries, miners, and other outsiders, a point which the film narrative does imply.

Next the film opens the boundaries of the Panare to show them as they relate to the local Creole ranchers. At first the Creoles are presented as fat, dirty, competitive, and unsympathetic compared to the vigorous Panare, but then the film creates a nice twist. As the Creole ranchers are moving closer to the Panare and the Panare are moving further into the valleys, conflicts are beginning to occur. Cattle disturb Panare camps and the Panare shoot the cattle. The Creoles become angry at the loss of their cattle. As the film notes, in other areas this often resulted in the shooting of the Indian group. But here, the anthropologist Paul Henley, a Creole rancher, and several Panare are shown negotiating. Each side gives their view, with the rancher giving consideration to the Panare because he considers them his friends, the Panare maintaining their principles. Then, just as a sympathetic view of the Creole rancher is established, the narration expands the viewer's vision to include a new kind of farmer and a larger economy that is taking home and livelihood from both the Panare and the Creoles. Both groups are presented in the final analysis as having little influence over the government or its policies. The film presents the dilemma of the anthropologist as political activist, for here Paul Henley is clearly acting as a representative of the Panare and perhaps of the Creole ranchers as well. The film leaves the viewer with a question of ethics and of the responsibility of the anthropologist towards the group with whom he or she has lived. Catalogue number (16mm): 5RA135 £18.

J.P. Dumont, 1976. Under the Rainbow: Nature and Supernature among the Panare Indians. University of Texas Press, Austin.

J.P. Dumont, 1978. The Headman and I: Ambiguity and Ambivalence in the Fieldworking Experience. University of Texas Press, Austin.

P. Henley, 1982. The Panare: Tradition and Change on the Amazonian Frontier. Yale University Press, New Haven.

P. Henley, 1983. `Televising Anthropology: Scenes from the Frontier'. SSRC Newsletter, No. 49, pp. 30-32. [The anthropologist's experience of the film-making.]

P. Henley and M. Muller, 1978. `Panare Basketry: Means of Commercial Exchange and Artistic Expression'. Antropológica (Caracas), Vol. 49, pp. 29-130.

P. Krisologo, 1966. `Antropología Cultural del Pueblo Panare'. Boletín Indigenista Venezolano, Vol. 9, pp. 161-86.