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Movies Forum Index » Silent Movies Forum » Globe and Mail: Researchers restore long-lost 1913...
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| Bruce Calvert... |
 Posted: Wed Jun 25, 2008 9:39 am |
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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080624.HUNTERS24/TPStory/TPEntertainment/Movies/
FILM: IN THE LAND OF THE HEAD HUNTERS
Researchers restore long-lost 1913 epic
Edward S. Curtis movie features Kwakwaka'wakw residents on B.C.'s
northern coast
MARSHA LEDERMAN
June 24, 2008
VANCOUVER -- Eight years before Nanook of the North, there was In the
Land of the Head Hunters.
Filmed mostly in and around Fort Rupert, B.C., in 1913 by Edward S.
Curtis, Head Hunters was a landmark feature in that it not only used
indigenous people to play indigenous characters, but it also told an
aboriginal story - as opposed to using native caricatures to play the
bad guys in a cowboys-and-Indians scenario.
But unlike Nanook, which was a box-office smash and launched so-called
"Eskimo Fever," Head Hunters faded quickly into obscurity. Following
premiere screenings in Seattle and New York in 1914, and limited
distribution over the next couple of years, the film virtually
disappeared.
Now it has been painstakingly restored and reunited with its original
score, thanks to some anthropological detective work. The film will be
discussed at a panel discussion at Vancouver's Museum of Anthropology
tonight.
Originally billed as an "Indian epic drama of the Northern Sea" and a
"drama of primitive life on the shores of the North Pacific," the
silent film starred non-actors from Kwakwaka'wakw communities in
British Columbia, although nowhere in the film or its marketing were
the Kwakwaka'wakw people or the film's Canadian setting identified.
"Curtis wasn't making a western. He was making a northern," says Aaron
Glass, 36, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of British
Columbia's Department of Anthropology.
"The story is totally internal to native society and that was an
interesting decision for him to make at that time," says Glass, one of
three executive producers on the film and a Curtis expert who has
delved into the nooks and crannies of the controversial ethnographer's
life and work.
Almost a century ago, Curtis was in the middle of a photographic
project documenting North American Indians - which he warned were
disappearing - when he took on the film project as a commercial
venture, a way to make money to fund his "serious" work. It was a
technological step up from the music-enhanced slide shows he called
picture operas, and was his first actual film.
Curtis spent a summer with the Kwakwaka'wakw in British Columbia,
filming them in a melodramatic story involving love triangles, battles
and, yes, head hunting.
Set in the pre-contact past, the film was mostly true to Kwakwaka'wakw
culture - depicting their customs, their dances and their practice of
placing the heads of vanquished enemies outside their villages to
intimidate their enemies.
"They were really following protocol," says William Wasden Jr., whose
great-grandfather Stanley Hunt starred as Motana. "There was a lot of
truth to the film."
But Wasden has trouble with the quick-to-violence depiction of his
people. "I don't believe that we that easily went to war on each
other," he says. "My teaching was that it was really well thought out.
People had to have long discussions and meetings about whether they
were going to go to war, and it wasn't just like we were barbarians."
As for why the Kwakwaka'wakw people would participate, one can only
speculate. Glass figures part of the attraction may have been the
chance to practise their cultural ceremonies in the open during the
dark period of Canada's potlatch prohibition. It's possible some
Kwakwaka'wakw may have seen films during trips to the city and were
excited by the idea of being involved in such a glamorous venture. Or
it may have been as simple as the fact it was a paying job during lean
times.
Released in December, 1914, the film received favourable reviews, but
it was a commercial flop. Made for $75,000, it brought in $3,000 in
ticket revenues in its first year, Glass says. In 1924, Curtis
reportedly sold a print and the copyright to the Museum of Natural
History in New York for $1,000. He never made another movie, and died
in 1952.
The film, in its original form, never made it to Fort Rupert. There
are no records, in fact, of any screenings in this country. The copy
Curtis sold to the museum in New York disappeared.
In 1947, a partial copy of Head Hunters was found in a dumpster
outside a movie theatre in Chicago and donated to the Field Museum
there.
It was turned into a "documentary" by Bill Holm and George Quimby, who
edited what was left of the film, created an overdubbed soundtrack in
the Kwakwaka'wakw language, added culturally appropriate music and
released it as In the Land of the War Canoes in 1974.
The film was widely viewed in anthropology museums and even in school
back in Alert Bay, B.C., Wasden recalls.
For Glass, though, whose studies on Curtis took him from his native
Los Angeles up the west coast, the film never quite made sense. The
melodramatic storyline didn't go with the documentary billing.
The pieces began to fall into place five years ago when he heard Brad
Evans, an American culture expert at Rutgers University, give a talk
at a conference about the original Curtis film - which Evans had seen
at the Field Museum.
Glass hadn't known the original footage had survived, and he asked
Evans if he could see a copy. Thus began a collaborative effort to
restore the film to its original, dramatic form (the third co-
executive producer of the project is Andrea Sanborn, executive
director of the U'Mista Cultural Centre in Alert Bay).
Glass came to realize that in past Curtis research, he had come across
what must have been the sheet music for the original film's score -
written by John Braham and played live at its few screenings. Glass
travelled back to the Getty Research Centre in Los Angeles and found
the score in box five of the Curtis file.
Glass and Evans decided to pair the score with what was left of the
original film and in 2006, approached the Film and Television Archives
in UCLA for help with the restoration. The archives said they could
only offer advice.
But Glass and Evans came away with much more than that. Their visit
triggered a memory: someone there had come across a couple of
canisters in the cold storage vault marked "Edward Curtis." The
canisters weren't catalogued or listed in the archival database.
They dug them out. And indeed, there was an old nitrate copy of the
original film - not complete, but with scenes that were not in the
Field Museum copy.
Now, two years later, the film - three-quarters Field Museum copy, one-
quarter UCLA copy, with holes filled in by Curtis's own photographic
stills obtained from the Library of Congress - is being screened at
special events involving musical and dance performances by descendants
of the film's original stars, including Wasden, who is the dance team
co-ordinator.
To contemporary eyes, the film's portrayal of the war-hungry, head-
hunting natives is undoubtedly offensive, Glass acknowledges. But the
project's goal, he says, is to restore the film as an artifact of its
time: "Our motivation is not to heroize Curtis or to defend him
against allegations of racism. Stuff's there and it has to be reckoned
with."
But audiences, aside from some laughter at the melodrama, seem to
accept the film - in its context. On Sunday night, a packed house at
Vancouver's Chan Centre gave the film - and in particular the live
performance afterward - a rousing ovation.
And after the screening, Bill Cranmer, chief of the 'Namgis First
Nation in Alert Bay, thanked Curtis for recording his people's
history. "We owe Mr. Curtis a great deal," he said.
A panel discussion about In the Land of the Head Hunters takes place
at the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver tonight at 7. Screenings of
the film are planned for Toronto and Ottawa in the spring of 2009.
Bruce Calvert
--
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