THE SOUTH EASTERN NUBA

I would recommend presenting this film to a graduate-level audience, or to an undergraduate course coupled with some of the Riefenstahl books. D. Mack

55 minutes Colour 1982

Film-maker: Chris Curling

Anthropologist: James Faris

The South Eastern Nuba is a film of images. Through the eye of the camera, it creates a sense of tranquility and motion, touching the viewer gently before it jars them with the effects of outsiders on the Nuba community.

The film centres on a group of 2,500 Nuba who live in the mountains of Sudan. Any film on the Nuba could be a celebration of beauty, of the land, the homes, the body decorations, and of the people themselves. This film strives for more. Through narration and sub-titled interview, it explains the relationships of power and of labour in the community. The elders, those men who are over thirty, are the advisors to the society and the custodians of public knowledge. This knowledge is their power and they use it to maintain their authority over the women and younger men.

The younger people assert themselves through body decoration and dance. The women paint themselves, dance before the men, and are scarred in patterns that reveal their physical and reproductive maturity. The young men paint themselves with colours and designs that reflect their social maturity. In one excellent sequence, the viewer is treated to the sub-titled conversation of young men who are sitting in the sun painting themselves for the cameras. In recent years, tourists have flocked to the Nuba, paying Nuba to paint and scar themselves while the tourists take pictures. Nuba have consequently changed designs from specific pictures to abstract patterns that can be elaborated indefinitely for the tourist who pays by the hour.

These Nuba are on the fringe of Islamic influence, but partly because of the attention they have received from tourists and the effect of two `coffee-table' books by Leni Riefenstahl, the Sudanese government is now trying to bring them into the Islamic fold. As a way of encouraging this policy, the government wanted to give local chiefs authority to flog, fine, or imprison any people involved in `ugly behaviour'. At the time of filming, this policy had not been enacted. Such behaviour includes remaining uncircumcised and refusing to wear clothes. A school has also been introduced that teaches only the Koran, and at the time of filming, the government was planning an economic policy that would encourage wage labour on agricultural schemes.

The film also focuses on Leni Riefenstahl, a controversial German film-maker and photographer. In 1935 she produced, for the Nazis, A Triumph of Will (Triumph des Willens), a documentary on the 1934 Nazi party rally at Nurenberg. Some have called this film a work of genius, others a bone chilling horror. Ironically the film was used as propaganda by both the Nazis and the Allies, one for and one against Hitler, but both as an example of Hitler's power. In 1974 and again in 1976, Riefenstahl produced coffee-table books on the Nuba. The narration of The South Eastern Nuba follows an earlier article by James Faris (1980) in arguing that Riefenstahl's vision in her 1970s' work among the Nuba is similar to that expressed in her work in Germany in the 1930s. Faris's suggestion is that the similar themes are: `the triumph of the strong over the weak, the victory and beauty of the unspoiled, and the ever present dangers of pollution and miscegenation' (1980, p.38). The Nuba are, he believes, caricatured and distorted by her to fit this doctrinal vision. Two reviewers of The South Eastern Nuba both disagree (Ryle 1982, Loizos 1982). Loizos's view is that Leni Reifenstahl `comes across as scatty, gushy and embarrassing in much of her writing. It is breathlessly personal, a love-affair with the Nuba, even though she makes a try at reporting relevant cultural facts. But I could see little more mischievous than a celebration of youthful beauty and of creativity-her face painting pictures are extraordinary-which do not seem consistent with Nazi beliefs in Aryan superiority. She is full of naiveties about spontaneous, natural, unspoilt `noble savages', but so are a lot of people who would not have had much else in common with Nazis.'.

In different ways, both The South Eastern Nuba and Leni Riefenstahl's coffee-table books cover many of the same emotive and potent subjects-dramatic body decoration, dancing, bracelet fighting. Both are reflections of a people, one anthropological documentary, the other striving for a kind of photographic poetry. While Riefenstahl presumably chose these topics, Faris notes that the film-makers were, in many ways, forced to focus on them because the government delayed the film crew until the end of the agricultural season when all they could film was sport and dance.

A question that arises is how far does the photographer, film-maker or anthropologist concerned with such subjects affect the culture into which she or he intrudes. Riefenstahl's books of photographs disturbed Nuba culture by bringing in tourists and tourist money. The tourists also brought the attention of the Sudanese goverment. Interaction and intrusion between cultures will occur. An excitement of this film is to see these questions explored. This film would be excellent for stimulating discussion in courses in anthropology, social policy, development, dance, art and multi-cultural studies. The film was made for the BBC series, World's Apart. Catalogue number (16mm): 5RA131 £18.

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