FILM REVIEWS 767

This film’s uneven treatment of a culture of West African forest farmers limits its class- room usefulness. For a high-school or under- graduate college audience, an extended intro- duction and much explanation should be added by the instructor. This pedagogic short- coming may be because ofthe time restrictions of filming: it was shot in one month (April) in the late 1980s. The approach of the Disap- pearing World series is commendable in that it incorporates in the film crew, as consultant, a n anthropologist who has done previous fieldwork in the area filmed. The Disappear- ing World method is less useful when it ig- nores the old advice to graduate students to “stay at least one year in the field so as to at- tend the full cycle of seasons.” The film crew works only for a relatively short time-which is, presumably, a financial necessity. But the consultant cannot make happen in April events and ceremonies that take place during the other 11 months.

To me, the main research relevance of The Mende to ethnographic filmmaking is its exten- sive use of interviews. In this film, interviews strengthen our identification with the invisible anthropologist: her voice asks questions for us. This is positive because it involves us in the film, but negative because it puts us, and our Western assumptions, in a position of superi- ority. An etic orientation permeates the inter- rogations. The questions are direct; they even appear to be rude (though a long acquain- tance with villagers may have made it permis- sible, or the brief English subtitles may be mis- leading, or the usual Mende way of commu- nicating may just seem rough). Even if the questions are not offensive to Mende, an inter- view situation is hierarchical. Many of the questions reveal Western concerns or perplex- ities: How can co-wives not be jealous of each other? How can a man select a wife because she cooks we112 How is it that initiates d o not seem to be clear on their status?

In spite of these reservations, the interviews are refreshing: we hear the villagers give their own answers. Yet we would like to see images of the activities and behaviors people are talk- ing about. It is ironic that the camera, a pow- erful visual instrument, is mainly used to re- cord words about the visible (objects a n d events) rather than to record the visible itself.

The style of the film is documentary, with emphasis on what is represented and little concern for striking compositions. Color, sharpness, and editing are good but not excep- tional.

The Shrine. 1990. A film by Bob Pasis and Christiane Badgley. 46 minutes, color. Purchase $295 (video); rental $50 from University of California Extension Media Center, 21 76 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94704 (510/ 642-0460).

SYLVIA RODRIGUEZ University of New Mexico

This is a promotional film disguised as a documentary. Its subject is the Santuario de Chimayo shrine near Espafiola, New Mexico. The film repeats a single idea over and over, using a battery of visual, narrative, textual, and musical redundancies. These elements create an audiovisual text that reveals little about the social history or cultural character of religious pilgrimage in New Mexico, but much about how the Chimayo shrine is seen in the (or one particular) touristic imagina- tion. The film makes explicit that pilgrims to the shrine believe it to be a miraculous place, while simultaneously purveying a subliminal message, that the Santuario is a miraculous- and therefore universally attractive-place. Beneath a thin documentary pretext, this film’s unstated yet apparently unwitting pur- pose is to promote, sensationalize, and lure fel- low yearner-consumers to the shrine. Its an- thropological interest is as an artifact of tour- ism, produced for tourists, by tourists.

The narrative consists of text read by the two (male and female) filmmakers, inter- spersed with the voices of “witnesses”-ap- proximately a dozen individuals filmed and interviewed at the shrine during a Good Fri- day pilgrimage. I t conveys exactly what one might find in a tourist brochure: every year, particularly during Holy Week, thousands of people visit this crude adobe shrine in hope of a cure or some other blessing, conferred by holy dirt that anyone can scoop out of a hole in the floor ofone of the Santuario rooms. The narrator notes that the Santuario is roughly 170 years old, and relates a couple of the leg- ends linking its origin to curative manifesta- tions of Nuestro Sefior de Esquipula and the Santo Nifio de Atocha. The prehistoric use of the site by Tewa Indians is alluded to, as well as its reputed connection to a shrine for Our Lord of Esquipula in Guatemala, where little stamped cakes ofholy dirt are eaten. A thumb- nail sketch is given of how the Spanish colo- nized New Mexico, bringing with them the European tradition of Christian pilgrimage, and giving rise to the famous, primitive santcro religious art of the region. Tantalizing refer- ence is made to the Penitente brotherhood.

768 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [94, 19921

Apart from these morsels, the film provides virtually no information about the history, ownership, architecture, geography, social context, or local economic significance of the shrine, including its evolution since it was sal- vaged by the Spanish Colonial Arts Society in the 1920s and deeded to the Catholic church. Although the “modern worlds” of nearby Es- patiola, Santa Fe, and Los Alamos are men- tioned, nothing is said ofthe contemporary so- cioeconomic conditions of Chimayo or the re- gion in general. Only a small portion of the narrative is taken up with “objective” infor- mation, while the other 35 minutes or so are spent extolling the mysterious, miraculous, compelling, ultimately inexplicable character of the shrine. The language features such plat- itudes as “a land ofjagged peaks and mystical devotions,” “frontier outpost far from towns,” “largely poor, simple people,” “a scrapbook of faith,” ‘‘a bridge between the everyday and transcendent,” “a down-to-earth, folk place,” and so on. One particularly grating effect is the male narrator’s unmitigated gringo pro- nunciation of Spanish terms, including the word “santuario.”

The mostly Hispanic pilgrims shown in the film “testify” about why they have come there and repeat tidbits of experience and local lore about the place. The mission priest is also in- terviewed. Key phrases or ideas they utter are repeated in the narrative and yet again in cap- tions. The subliminal character of the film’s central message is most evident in these cap- tions, shown as white text against a black field, and flashed periodically between frames of regular footage. They read, for example: “something that attracts”; “heritage”; “a bridge”; “holy dirt”; “Penitentes”-excerpt- ing words from the interviews. The message is: the shrine creates a special feeling; miracles happen there, due to faith; and the phenome- non cannot be explained or expressed in words.

The visual imagery, likewise, consists of a few, constantly recycled elements: footage of pilgrims trudging along or being interviewed; shots of a mass in the chapel; details of the in- terior, including offerings; traditional wooden santos and plaster saints; and local landscape. Several scenes from the shrine’s legendary his- tory a r e i l lustrated by br ight ly colored pseudo-folk paintings done by the filmmakers themselves.

The musical sound track, evidently also an original composition, seems bizarrely inap- propriate to the subject matter. There are, for example, long minutes in which a single note drones on a bagpipe. Matched with slow-mo- tion footage, this creates a spooky, science-fic-

tion-like effect. It highlights the weird, other- worldly ambience the film strives to convey. No local music is heard.

In short, but for its earnestness, this film borders on self-parody. Its classroom interest would be as a naive illustration of the tourist gaze in the Land ofEnchantment, replete with the trope of tourist as pilgrim.

Vessels of the Spirit. 1990. A video by Nic David. 50 minutes, color. For information con- tact the University of Calgary, Department of Communications Media, 2500 University Drive, NW, Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N

The Potters of Buur Heybe, Somalia. 1990. A video by Tara Belklin. 25 minutes, color. Purchase $295; rental $55 from Filmakers Li- brary, Inc., 124 East 40th Street, New York, NY 100 16 (2 12/808-4980; Fax 2 1 2/808-4983).

Maria: Indian Pottery of San Ildefonso. 1984. A film by the National Park Service, 25 minutes, color. For information contact Edu- cat ional Video Network, Inc. , 1401 19th Street, Huntsville, T X 77340 (409/295-5767). The Working Process of the Korean Folk Potter. 1977. 28 minutes, color. The Work- ing Process of the Potters of India: Bijda- pur-A Colony of 700 Potters. 1982. 30 minutes, color. The Working Process of the Potters of India: Massive Terra-cotta Horse Construction. 1982. 19 minutes , color. Three films by Ron du Bois. All available in 16mm or video for rental or sale from Au- diovisual Center, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, O K 74078 (405/744-7212).

RICHARD A. KRAUSE University of Alabama

1 N4 (403/220-5285).

I have a n aversion to anthropological knowledge as bits and pieces of behavior. I have an even stronger aversion to the idea that f ragments of behavior a r e meaningful if merely displayed in t h e contex t of t h e “drama” of social life. I am not implying that segments of behavior are unimportant; they achieve import by their very nature. Their greatest value, however, lies in our under- standing of them. Thus, for me, representing human behavior in a n anthropologically meaningful way requires an organized display of knowledge. These biases guide my review of six videotapes that depict episodes of potting.

Pottery vessels were prehistoric humans’ earliest e f i i en t means for confining, storing, measuring, mixing, transporting, heating, and