Return to the land of the head hunters Edward S. Curtis, the Kwaka'wakw, and the making of modern cinema

Title Cover Image: Return to the land of the head hunters

Photographer Edward Curtis’s 1914 orchestrally scored melodrama In the Land of the Head Hunters was one of the first US films to feature an Indigenous cast. This landmark of early silent cinema was an intercultural product of Curtis’s collaboration with the Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw of British Columbia—meant, like Curtis’s photographs, to document a supposedly vanishing race. But as this collection shows, the epic film is not simply an artifact of colonialist nostalgia. In recognition of the film’s centennial, and the release of a restored version, Return to the Land of the Head Hunters brings together leading anthropologists, Native American authorities, artists, musicians, literary scholars, and film historians to reassess the film and its legacy. The volume offers unique Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw perspectives on the film, accounts of its production and subsequent circulation, and evaluations of its depictions of cultural practice. Resituated within film history and informed by a legacy of Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw participation and response, the movie offers dynamic evidence of ongoing cultural survival and transformation under shared conditions of modernity.
Author(s): Brad Evans , Aaron Glass
Document: Book · Paperback · CIRC [ 0 ]
Edition: 1st Edition
Published: 2014
Physical Description: xxvii, 420 pages ; 26 cm.
Genre: Ethnographic films
Contents:

Introduction. Edward Curtis meets the Kwakwakawakw: Cultural Encounter and indigenous Agency in the Land of the Head Hunters / aron Glass and Brad Evans Mediating Indians/Complicating Curtis. Edward Curtis and In the Land of the Head Hunters: Four Contexts / Mick Gidley Images of Time: Portraiture in The North American Indian / Shamoon Zamir Indian Landscapes: Pauline Johnson and Edward Curtis / Kate Flint A Chamber of Echoing Songs: Edward Curtis as a Musical Ethnographer / Ira Jacknis Photo Essay 1: "At the Kitchen Table with Edward Curtis" / Jeff Thomas Head Hunters across Two Centuries. Consuming the Head Hunters: A Century of Film Reception / Aaron Glass and Brad Evans Unmasking the Documentary: Notes on the Anxiety of Edward Curtis / Colin Browne Indian Movies and the Vernacular of Modernism / Brad Evans Musical Intertextuality in Indigenous Film: Making and Remaking In the Land of the Head Hunters / Klisala Harrison Reflections on Working with Edward Curtis / Barbara Cranmer Photo Essay 2: "Old Images/New Views: Indigenous Perspectives on Edward Curtis" / Dr. E. Richard Atleo, Pam Brown, Marie Clements, Karrmen Crey, Mique'l Icesis Dangeli, Andy Everson, Linc Kesler, David Neel, Evelyn Vanderhoop, and William Wasden Jr Reimagining Curtis Today. In the Land of the Head Hunters: Reconstruction, not Restoration / Jere Guldin In the Land of the Head Hunters and the History of Silent Film Music / David Gilbert Performing Braham, Interpreting Curtis: A Conversation on Conducting / Neal Stulberg, Owen Underhill, Timothy Long, and Laura Ortman "What the Creator Gave to Us": An Interview with William Wasden Jr

Cultural interpretation / Dave Hunsaker The Kwakwakawakw Business of Showing: Tradition Meets Modernity on the Silver Screen and the World's Stage / Aaron Glass
Subjects:

Autochtones au cinéma, Cinematography, Cinéma, Cinéma en ethnologie, Curtis, Edward S. 1868-1952, Curtis, Edward S., 1868-1952, Ethnographic films, Ethnologische Fotografie, Ethnologischer Film, Etniska grupper på film, Etnografisk film, Films autochtones, Films ethnographiques, Indianer på film, Indigenous films, Indigenous peoples in motion

 

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Last updated: 2025-02-09