An Ethnographic Film: "Trobriand Cricket"

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that, in the film "Trobriand Cricket: An Ingenious Response to Colonialism", made in 1973 by anthropologist Jerry W. Leach and filmmaker Gary Kildea, the film narrative is devoted primarily to the historical context of the cricket game in the Trobriands, providing an illustration of some of the processes of cultural diffusion. The author points out that movement analysis, which focuses on some of the visible aspects of ethnographic films that are often left unrecognized in the film narrative, results in a more profound ethnological appreciation of its contents and is especially valuable for films that focus intentionally on cultural performance. The paper concludes that (1) "Trobriand Cricket" has severe constraints concerning the anthropological "statement" made by the film and (2) movement analysis may yield valuable insight in the initial stages of understanding performance.

From the Paper:

"The cultural interpretation of any performance--no matter how transparently the performance is represented to the observer (as it is so effectively in ethnographic film)-relies on the kind of close observation that organizes several details of performance into a system. It is not simply growing and shrinking that are at issue in the Trobriand design, not simply linear formations that are at stake in the British style. The relationship of those features to other features, the relationship of growing and shrinking to force and speed and clusters of bodies, the relationship of lines to individual bodies and to a stabilizing energy field bring out distinctive patterns. The value of movement analysis lies in its ability to construct an articulate representation of particular and even peculiar performances in terms of the very general features that all movement processes share so that various patterns of association can be traced throughout the action of a given culture and between performances of various cultures. A system like LMA can abstract principles of conduct and can represent them accurately in their full complexity and peculiarity."

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