Sol Worth & Jane Adair - Navajo Filmaker

7/28/2019 Sol Worth & Jane Adair - Navajo Filmaker

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Navajo F ilmmakersSOLWORTHAnnenberg School of CommunicationsUniversityof Pennsylvania

JOHN ADAIRSan Francisco State CollegeThis paper is a report of research in visual (fiim) communication investigating ques-tions in anthropology and communication. Six Navajos, aged 17-25, and one mono-lingual, aged 55, living on the reservation were taught only the technology of a 16mmmovie camera and splicer and were asked to make films about anything you want to.We review the theoretical questions underlying the research, describe our method ofteaching, and analyze the films they made and their verbalizations about them, relatingtheir cultural, verbal grammar, and narrative style to their methods and social organiza-tion of learning filmmaking, choice of subjects and actors f or their films, and theirmethods, both syntactic and semantic, of structuring the image events they photographed.[Navajo, Communicaiion, Language, Cognition, Visual Arts]

N THE SUM M ER of 1966 we began1 a study to determine whether i t is pos-sible to teach people with a technically sim-ple culture to make motion pictures depict-ing their culture and themselves as they seefit. We assumed that if we could teach suchpeople to use motion pictures they woulduse it in a patterned, rather than a randomfashion, and that the particular patternsused would reflect their culture and theircognition.We wish now to report on three areas ofthis research: first, to describe some of theproblems underlying our work; second, todescribe briefly some of the methods weused, both to teach the Navajo to makefilms and to collect our data on the filmmak-ing process; and third, to describe brieflysome of the films that were made and someof our early observations and analyses ofthem.

PROBLEMS IN ANTHROPOLOGYAND COMMUNICATIONMalinowski (1922:25) wrote many yearsago that: the final goal, of which an Eth-nographer should never lose sight . . . is,Accepted for publication 20 M ay 1969.

briefly, to grasp the natives point of view,his relation to life, to realize his vision of hisworld. This clearly formulated objectivehas created a methodological problem thathas been partially solved by collecting lifehistories with nondirective techniques. Thesematerials not only reveal things about thedynamics of personality but also help us un-derstand how the individual relates himselfto the outer world in terms provided for byhis particular language. M yths and linguistictexts have likewise given us extensive verbalrecords for analysis.

Collier (1967), Goldschmidt and Edger-ton (1961), and others (see Bouman 1954)have done some significant work, takingphotographs of their informants environ-ment and using them to elicit responses thathave produced data often missed by othermethods. Still others have used drawings ofthe environment made by native artists tostimulate a verbal flow from informantsabout their environment, values, etc. But toour knowledge no one to date has overcomethe difficulties inherent in eliciting a visualf low that can be analyzed in terms of thestructure of images and the principles usedin making those images.Anthropologists have, of course, used vi-sual means of communication, but they have9


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not used them to determine cognitive usagein the societies under study. They have usedthem for i llustration and visual recordkeep-ing in order to help their own analyses andin order to communicate things about thesociety.Birdwhistell (1952), Ekman (1965), Os-good (1966), Harrison (1964), Sorenson

(1966), and other psychologists, anthropol-ogists, sociologists, and communications re-searchers have also used film to study ges-tures, facial expressions, and the coding sys-tems of visual modes of communication.Making such films required the coopera-tion of the subjects being photographed. Butthe subjects eye was not at the eye piece,his hand was not manipulating the lens, norwas his mind doing the editing, and seldomdid he see the finished product. Anthropolo-gists have recently considered inviting theirinformants to view finished films or selectedfilm sequences made by the researcher, ask-ing them to comment upon the rightnessof the presentation or to make suggestionsfor the sound track. No one, so far as weknow, has taught the native to use thecamera and to do his own editing of thematerial he gathered.

We reasoned that if a person who waspreviously the subject of such fi lms could betrained to use the medium so that, with hishand at the lens and his eye at the camera,he chose what was of interest to him andsubsequently edited the film, then we wouldbe able to come closer to capturing his vi-sion of his world.With this in mind, we formulated someresearch questions. They were global ques-tions, but they still served to circumscribethe general area of interest that led to thework we are reporting. How do the thingsone makes-the paintings, the photographs,the films-work? What processes occur inhuman beings that allow them to communi-cate visually? How is it that one can look ata film and know what the maker meant?What happens to the strip of film itself? Arethe structures of pictures, such as paintingsor photographs, comparable to the struc-tures of verbal events, such as words, sen-

10 American Anthropologist [72, 1970tences, or stories? Can we learn somethingabout how we know the world we live in bystudying how we know things that otherscommunicatetous in the visual mode?We are referring to two things. One is theway the human mind deals wi th images. Theother is the images themselves, whose studyunder a variety of conditions and manipula-tions might help us to know how we dealwith them.We are not so much concerned at thispoint with exploring the aesthetic or norma-tive question of how good a film is, but,rather, with the substantive one of whatdoes it mean and how do we know it.To find out how the process worked,Worth started teaching young people tocommunicate through film. H e reasoned byanalogy with speech that if he could observethe process of learning to use a film lan-guage--of becoming, as it were, a speak-er-he might learn something about whattakes place when one is being a speaker.I t might be reasonable to assume for filmwhat some researchers have assumed for ver-bal language: that there is for each languagea specific theory, such as is represented bythe rules for the use of English, and thatthere is also a general theory representingthe rules that are basic to all verbal lan-guage. Further, Chomsky (1965: 16) andthe researchers who follow his lead hy-pothesize that the learner of a languagedoesnt learn the general theory of language(deep structure) when he learns to speakEnglish (surface structure), but that helearns to make transformations between thedeep structure, which is innate, and the sur-face structure, which is learned. In a similarfashion, we are exploring the possibility thatthere is a pattern for organizing visualevents and that filmmakers in different cul-tures learn to make transformations betweenthese common perceptual and cognitive pat-terns or rules and a conventionalized set ofregularities, patterns, or rules detemined bytheir specific cultural, social, and linguisticmilieu.We saw that we had a three-part processto study (Worth 1966:327-330), covering


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W O R T H & ADAIR] Navajo F ilmmakers 11first, the filmmaker; second, the film itself;and third, the viewer. Depending on themodel and the discipline one prefers, thesethree parts can be called sender, message,and receiver; or speaker, utterance, and lis-tener; or creator, work of art, and recreator.Research, we saw, had to be concerned withall parts of the process, and with the social,cultural, and institutional contexts surround-ing them. Some parts of the process have ofcourse been considered in the past (Worth1968:127-132). There is a fairly extensiveliterature on film and film analysis, andthere has been a fairly large body of researchon the effects of specific fi lms on audiences.But there has been very little attention paid tothe process of constructing (organizing, pat-terning, coding) visual communications.Contrary to his expectations, Worthfound that all his students could make mov-ies, that this mode of communicationseemed to bypass the need for the hand-eyecoordinating skills of the graphic artist andto allow ordinary people to express theirfeelings in visual forms.If, then, people can communicate throughfilm-if people with varying cultures canuse it widely as both makers and viewers-itbecomes necessary to find, or formulate, thepatterns, codes, rules, conventions, or evenlaws that make such communication possi-ble.Through most of the literature on the vi-sual arts, and particularly in film, we findone notion repeating itself in differentguises. Film language . . . s commonly as-sociated with my works . . . montage is asyntax for the correct construction of eachparticle of a film fragment said Eisenstein(1949:108-1 11) . Among other film theoriststhere is frequent mention of the syntax offilm, the grammar of film, the structureof pictures, and the language of art.We became intrigued by the sheer multi-tude of allusion to language, all unsupportedby reference to notions or theories of lan-guage. A lthough pictures and film as lan-guage had not been studied extensively orproductively, verbal language and the visualarts as aspects of culture had been. These

studies seemed to offer a fruitful paradigmfor examining an alien culture through thefilms people with that culture themselvesproduced.Once one begins to look at a film as if itwere a linguistic communication-and herewe would like to emphasize the as i f andnot prejudge whether film is or is not reallya form of language-a host of intriguingquestions arise. If film is a language, arethere different languages of film? Arethere native speakers of fi lm? And if so, dothey correspond to those who speak the dif-ferent languages of film? If languageshave lexicons that order words as synonymsand order utterances as paraphrases, can wefind evidence of such units in film communi-cation?Answers clearly depend upon researchdone with native speakers of different cul-tures. We would first need to know whospoke film, or who could speak film. Itwould be only after we learned who couldproduce film utterances that we could beginto compare them. I t would be only after wehad (in a film can) a variety of utterancesproduced under known circumstances thatwe could begin to deal with some of thesequestions. We could then analyze the corpusof utterances as a patterned output so asto abstract from it an input of rules orprinciples governing communicative actswithin the communicative mode. These rulesor principles accounting for the observedpattern would represent a part of the cogni-tive order within the culture under study.Such, then, were the considerations thatled us to the specific research we shall nowdiscuss.

First, we proposed to determine the feasi-bility of teaching the use of film to peoplewith another culture. Worth had alreadyshown that this could be done with eleven-to fourteen-year-old Negro dropouts in Phil-adelphia and with college students in aschool of communications. Since then manyothers have worked with a variety of cul-tural groups, such as Puerto Ricans, Mexi-cans, and Negroes, ranging in age down to 8


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12 American Anthropologist [72, 1970years. A lthough methods and aims varied,almost everyone could be taught to use mo-tion picture cameras,We have found that with limited instruc-tion Navajos can be taught to conceive,photograph, and edit 16mm silent films.

Secondly, we proposed to find out if itwas possible to systematize the process ofteaching; to observe it with reference to themaker, the film itself, and the viewer; and tocollect data about it so as to assist other on-going research exploring the inference ofmeaning from film as a communicative lan-guage. Recent years have produced a smallbut significant body of researchers who areexploring what Sebeok has called the semi-otics of film, what Worth has called Vi-distics (1968:132), and who are interestedin developing the rules, codes, and patternsof film communication.We wish to emphasize, then, that the pur-pose of our work was not only to find outabout Navajos. We chose Navajos preciselybecause much is known about them, and wecould check our inferences from their visualmode of communication with other data.A working hypothesis was that motionpicture film, conceived, photographed, andsequentially arranged by a people such asthe Navajo, would reveal something of theircognition and values that may be inhibited,not observable, or not analyzable wheninvestigation is totally dependent on verbalexchange-especially when it must be doncin the language of the investigator. We weresearching for pattern, code, or even rules forvisual communication within a cultural COD-text.Further, we felt that our research mightcreate new perspectives on the Whorfian hy-pothesis. Through cross-cultural compara-tive studies using film as a mode of visualcommunication, relationships between lin-guistic, cognitive, cultural, and visual phe-nomena might be clarified. We also reasonedthat the selection of subjects, themes, andorganizing methods used by the Navajo film-makers would reveal aspects of their valueorientation.O additional interest was the innovation

process, or what happens when that processis guided by the investigators themselves.While researchers had observed and ana-lyzed the process of technologic innovation,little was known about how a new mode ofcommuni cat i on would be patterned by theculture to which it was introduced. We con-sidered observation of this process to be animportant aspect of the feasibility study(A dair and Worth 1967).We would also like to emphasize that oneof our cardinal interests was to see whatother peoples had to say about themselvesthrough film. Our theoretical speculationsmay or may not be verified by further anal-ysis, but we now have shown that this newform of expression produced by people inother cultures is possible. These films, and adescription of the methods by which theywere achieved, are now available for studyand replication.

METHODIn analyzing the Navajo films it would beimpossible to determine what came from us,and what came from the Navajo, withoutknowing what we included in our instruc-tion.There are several important methodologi-cal issues involved in the study of a corpusof expression derived from actual users. Sev-eral of our colleagues have pointed out thedifficulty of deriving a unique pattern fromwhat is essentially a learning or possibly animitation phenomenon.I n many ways this is similar to the criti-cisms directed at the work of the develop-mental linguists (Brown and Bellugi 1964;McNeill 1966) when they first began study-

ing the development of speech in infantsand children. I t had been supposed that in-fants learned their language essentiallythrough imitation of adult speech in a com-plex, operant conditioning situation, andthat patterns of speech in infants, much lessprotogrammatical or grammatical rules,could not be found. Such patterns as werenoticed in early studies were dismissed asbad imitations or mistakes learned from


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WORTH & ADAIR] Navajo F ilmmakers 13adults. I t now seems clear that when chil-dren learn anew language they follow a pat-tern based on some set of rules, which ac-cording to M cNeill and others seems to bean innate neurological process.A lthough we are not sure that anythinglike linguistic rules influence the productionof film utterances, it seems reasonable toassume that the manipulation of imageevents necessary to the construction of afilm utterance, whether one second long ortwenty minutes long, is not random. We as-sumed that something already known by theNavajo would influence not only their se-mantic and thematic choices but also theway in which they structured their films.We started at an early stage in the genesisof communication. Our observations andanalysis were akin to studying both the pro-cess of development and the structure bywhich a learner goes about organizing acommunication.

In selecting a fieldwork area, we wanted aplace that had a sense of community, that is,a set of boundaries, so that we could see iffilmmakers would go outside their commu-nity to make films. For example, we foundthat black slum children did not like makingfilms on their own block. Would Navajoswant to film in their own community?We made a brief survey of the reserva-tion in March 1966preliminary to the selec-tion of the community where we wouldwork. We visited several highly acculturatedareas (Window Rock and Chinle, both ten-ters of federal and tribal government) andseveral more traditional communities (M anyFarms, Pinon, and Pine Springs). I t was ourfeeling that work in the former would bedifficult, because they were large and amor-phous. A lthough Many Farms and Pinonwere much more traditional, they presentedlogistic problems in transporting film in andout of the community. I t was important tohold the delay in feedback to a minimum.Pine Springs, Arizona, was chosen.2 I twas much less acculturated than either Win-dow Rock or Chinle, was sufficiently small(around si x hundred) to give us a feel for

community structure and organization, andhad the added advantage of being only anhour by car from the Gallup airport.Aside from these factors, the matter ofrapport had to be carefully considered. Wehad only two months at our disposal. A nimportant factor in our choice of PineSprings was that Adair had worked in thatcommunity twenty-eight years before andhad remained in contact with his oldfriends. A dair had also made a film therepreviously, and we felt it might be possibleto compare his film to the films the Navajosmight make.

During a preliminary trip to Pine SpringsA dair introduced Worth to Sam Y azzie,who was the oldest medicine man in thecommunity and an old friend of Adair.A fter A dair and Sam had caught up onevents that had occurred in the communitysince they had last seen each other, A dairintroduced the subject of teaching youngNavajos to make movies. Sam was very in-terested and Adair explained exactly whatwe intended to do. A fter some thought, Samturned to Worth and through the interpreterasked, Will making movies do the sheepany harm?

Worth was happy to explain that as far ashe knew no harm would befall the sheep ifmovies were made in the community. Samthought for a few seconds, and lookingstraight at Worth asked, Will it do themany good? Worth was forced to reply thatas far as he knew it wouldnt do the sheepany good. Sam looked at us both and said,T hen why make movies?We realized then that in our optimism wehad no idea whether Navajos would orcould make movies. A s a hedge against totalfailure, and also because we wanted to com-pare how an outsider made fi lms, we de-cided to include A1 Clah, a young Navajoartist who lived in a community about fiftymiles away from Pine Springs and who hadattended the Institute of A merican IndianA rt at Santa Fe, New M exico. We felt thatas a painter and sculptor he would beaccus-tomed to manipulating visual forms, and we


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also reasoned that there would be close rap-port between him and Worth, who had him-self been trained as an artist and who feltconfident he could teach A1 Clah the tech-nology of filmmaking.I n the analysis section of this report wewill compare the choice of subject matter,style of working, and structure of A1 Clahsfilm with that of the other Navajo films. A1was both artist and outsider, and althoughhis film is Navajo in several important re-spects, it is quite different from those of theothers.I t was decided that it would be best forthe subjects to be selected by the communityitself, or at least by someone within thecommunity who was well placed in thepower structure. Adair consulted an old ac-quaintance, J ohnny Nelson, who, althoughunder thirty and without elected position inthe community, had achieved a large mea-sure of political stature.We wanted to have at least one girl; onecraftsman who would be, as it were, a stepdown in the artistic (i n the western culturalsense) hierarchy; one person with politicalambitions who might see this new way ofcommunicating as a means to enhance hispower over the community; and one whohad no craft, artistic, political, or personalinterest or aptitude in filmmaking.We had planned on enough cameras, edit-ing equipment, and film for only four stu-dents. One reason for the limitation on thenumber of students was that we had no ideahow far away from the community theywould want to go for their filming, and sincewe wanted to observe them while filming,we were constrained by the number of ob-servers we could use. T here were only threeof us. Fortunately, J ohnny Nelson, whomAdair asked for help in finding students, de-cided that he himself would quit his job atthe trading post and become a student. Wenow had our politician and our artist. I nconsultation with us Nelson then chose ayoung woman, Susie Bennally. She was anexpert weaver and a neighbor of his, andher husband was away from the reservationin military service. He also chose a younger

14 American Anthropologist [72, 1970man, M ike Anderson, who was home forthe summer (he had worked in a potatochip factory in San Francisco) and was amember of J ohnnys fathers clan.Although Worth thought the selectionprocess was finished, he was unaware of oneof the principles basic to the Navajo valuesystem, that of balance or equality, and itcame to light when Johnny pointed out to usthe advantage of having an equal number ofmen and women in the classroom: I f I wasthe only man in the class, I wouldnt everfeel like speaking out. The same goes for thewoman who is the only one. Thats the wayit is for us Navajos.J ohnny then introduced us to Mary J aneand Maxine, sisters, about 17 and 19, anddaughters of the political leader of the com-munity. This was self-selection with a ven-geance: J ohnny had covered himself by in-cluding the daughters of the one man withmore political power than he.We then ended up with 3 men and 3women. All spoke Navajo and English withvarying degrees of fluency in both. All hadseen some films before-A1 about one hun-dred (by his estimate), someof them docu-mentaries, and Susie about ten (by her esti-mate), none of them documentaries.I n the initial planning we were not cer-tain that our subjects would have the moti-vation essential to learning enough about thecamera and editing to give us significant re-sults, even though we planned to pay them amodest wage. Unlike being a subject in theRorschach, Thematic Apperception, orDraw-a-Man tests, participation in thiswould necessitate sustaining motivation overseveral months. It had been noted that polar-oid photography had become attractive tothe Navajo, and this suggested to us thattheir motivation would be strengthened byquick feedback of the footage they wouldshoot. We therefore arranged to have thefi lm exposed on one day, developed, printed,and returned within the following two days.We had originally explained that Worthwas a teacher of film in an Eastern univer-sity and that he wanted to teach some Na-vajo people to make movies. For the first


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WORTH & ADAIR] Navajo Filmmakers 15week the students had us repeat this expla-nation quite often, and also asked why wewanted to do this. Worth explained that heonly taught college students and wanted tolearn more about how to teach all kinds ofstudents. He said that he would teach themand ask them questions, emphasizing eachtime that they could make a film about any-thing they liked, in any way they wanted.We had previously made arrangementswith the teacher in the Bureau of Indian Af-fairs school at Pine Springs (a boardingschool for grades 1 and 2) for us to use theboys dormitory wing as classroom, editingroom, and living space for our researchteam and for A1 Clah. This wing wasroughly fifty feet long and twenty feet wide,having a four-foot aisle down the center,with four compartments on each side hous-ing two double bunk beds in each compart-ment. There were eight cubbies in all. Weused four compartments for sleeping, twocompartments for editing, one as a class-room, one for storing equipment, and theaisle for projection. We did most of ourteaching either in the dormitory or sittingjust outside it under the piiion trees.We brought with us, in four portablecases easily carried by two people, all theequipment we needed: four Bell and Howell70 DH 3-lens turret, 16 mm cameras; fourZeiss Movieskop viewers; four sets of re-winds and related equipment; and about10,000feet of 16mm negative film. We alsohad four exposure meters and two tripods.The first day was spent moving bunk bedsand improvising editing tables, giving us alla chance to get to know one another, andgiving the Navajos a chance to see and totouch everything. Worth named every pieceof equipment and had the students suggestplaces for storage.The same day, before Worth said any-thing about movies, we interviewed each ofthe six Navajo in a small office we had setup in back of the trading post. We intro-duced the tape recorder to them, explainingthat we would operate it to begin with, butthat later we would teach them to use it andthey could, if they wished, work i t for our

interviews or for any purpose of their choos-ing. There was no objection to being inter-viewed, both the boys and the girls watchingavidly as Worth loaded tape and tested themachine.In the initial interviews (so arranged thatthe students could not talk with one anotherbefore Worth spoke with them) we askedeach of them individually what they ex-pected of the summers activity. W e con-stantly used such phrases as Youcan makeany kind of movie you want to; You canmake it about anything you want; and Iwont tell you what to do.We had decided that when Worth beganinstruction he would stick as closely as pos-sible to the technology, trying to avoid anyconceptualizing about what a film is or howone edits. On the second day he started talk-ing to the students about making pictures,touching on the fact that peoples across timeand cultures had all made pictures, and thatmovies were just another kind of picture.He mentioned Greeks, Egyptians, Euro-peans, Americans, Indian sand painting,drawing, sculpture, and weaving, generallytrying to make the point that people alwayshad special and diflerent reasons for makingpictures and that the students could decidewhat they wanted to show in this new way.A fter an hour Worth asked for questions.M ike was the only one who had a question.He wanted to know if there was any peoplewho didnt like to have their pictures taken.Neither artist nor craftsman nor politician,M ike was worried about the sanctions thatmight be applied against him if he took pic-tures of people who didnt want you to orwho might not like it afterwards. A l-though he made a film, he was the only onewho showed discomfort about the processall the way through. He was also the onlyone who later questioned whether we shouldshow the finished films to the community.When Mike asked his question about peoplewho didnt want their picture taken, Worthreplied that he knew of several such cases.He told of trying to take pictures in a syna-gogue and having the Rabbi ask him to stopbecause his religion didnt allow picture tak-


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16 American Anthropologist [72, 1970ing. Worth explained that in that situationhe immediately withdrew. A dair mentionedthat when we had come to Pine Springs twomonths before we had been invited to aSing, and Worth, who carried a still camerahanging from a strap around his neck, hadbeen asked not to take pictures. M ikeseemed satisfied that he would not have totake pictures when people didnt want himto.Not all our students, however, felt thisway. J ohnny created an incident that almostcaused the community to ask us to leave, bytaking movies during an Enemy Way(Squaw Dance) ceremony. The ceremonydidnt go well-some of the ritual behaviorwas not carried out correctly (the drumstick broke)-and the ceremony had to berepeated, at great cost to the community.This was a traumatic, expensive, and un-healthy situation for the community, andJohnnys movie-making was used as an ex-cuse for things having gone badly. Eventu-ally, a delegation arrived at the schoolhouseand asked J ohnny either to give up the filmfootage taken during the ceremony or pay$100 and six sheep. J ohnny decided to giveup the footage, but this did not make himfearful about continuing; as amatter of fact,he was so enthusiastic that he subsequentlymade two films.A t about eleven oclock of the secondday, Worth began to explain the actualworkings of a movie camera. He did this inmuch the same way that he had taught hisgraduate students at the University of Penn-sylvania-that is, by explaining the princi-ples of photography, touching upon howlenses worked, how silver salts on filmreacted to l ight in much the same way thatthe silver which the Navajo knew andworked with tarnished when exposed tolight, and how an image was fixed by hyposalts so itwouldnt continue reacting to light.Then, by using drawings and diagrams onan improvised blackboard as much as possi-ble, he explained how a movie cameraworked. H e described briefly the notion thata movie was a series of still photographsmade in rapid sequence and projected back

at the same rate of speed. This led to a dis-cussion of the mechanisms by which the filmwas transported from one roll to another,passing bzhind the lens, stopping for thecorrect exposure, and then moving on sothat the next still picture could be made. Hepointed out the camera gate, shutter, andclaw for advancing the film, and the neces-sity for film loops so as to allow smooth andeven passage of film across the lens. He ex-plained briefly about the ways in which ex-posure was controlled (F-stop and shutter)but told the students that the exposure meterwould be described the next day.This preliminary talk took about an hour.We noticed then that there seemed very lit-tle tension on the part of the Navajo in thisstrange learning situation. They were quiterelaxed, very attentive, and seemed to be ab-sorbing all that Worth was saying, althoughsome of the words must have been quitestrange to them. A lthough Worth tried notto use technical or jargon words, a check ofthe tapes of this session showed that a greatmany such words (gamma, diaphragm,variable, and so on) did creep in. It be-came evident in later sessions that learningthe use of and acquiring the ability to ma-nipulate the materials was not dependent onknowing the names of specific parts butrather on understanding their function. I ttook most of the students all summer tolearn the names of the parts of the cameras,projectors, and editing equipment, but theyconstantly referred to them by paraphrasesdescribing their function. The diaphragmring on a lens, for example, which set thecorrect exposure, was commonly called thething you turn for exposure or, shorter,the exposure turner, much as we fre-quently refer to a thing as the gizmothat. .. A fter lunch Worth demonstrated, ratherthan explained, the workings of a 16 mmBell and Howell triple-lens turret camera,pointing out how exposure settings andfocus settings were made on the lens, howthe viewing system worked, and how thecamera was loaded. It had been his experi-ence with graduate students that four or five


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WORTH & ADAIR] Navajo F ilmmakers 17hours of both explanation and practice wereneeded before the camera could be loadedand used properly.As soon as Worth finished his first load-ing run-through, he passed the cameraaround so that each of the students couldexamine it. He thought they would then re-quire individual instruction before theythemselves could load and be ready to useit. To his surprise, J ohnny asked if he couldload the camera. Worth gave him a scrappiece of film and said Sure. J ohnnyshowed no fear of the new experience andin two tries was able to load the camera per-fectly.Within the hour all students had shownthey could load the camera. This requires afair amount of finger dexterity in order toget into tiny spaces, an ability to manipulateseveral parts of small size in a definite se-quence, and the ability to understand thenotion of film loop size, claw engagement,and accurate windup procedures. A lthoughthe Navajo are known for their willingnessto participate in innovative situations, wewere still somewhat surprised at the rapidityand ease with which they mastered this andmost other mechanical and conceptual tasksrelated to filmmaking.A fter the students had practiced loadingfor about half an hour we went outside,where Worth showed them how to lookthrough the viewfinder and hold the camera.He explained that he wanted to shoot onehundred feet of film so that the roll could besent to the laboratory for developing thatday. Hetook about ten shotsof the studentsstanding around. He said nothing to explainwhat he was doing or why he was shootingwith any particular lens. What they certainlyobserved was taking an exposure reading,winding the camera spring, focusing, andchanging lenses.He then asked each student to take somepictures of anything you want. M ost spentsome time exploring the different imagesavailable through the various focal lengthviewfinders and practiced holding the cam-era up to their eyes. Some made shots ofchildren in the school playground, others of

the buildings, and some chose natural ob-jects (rocks, trees, and so on).We finished shooting at about fiveoclock, and Richard Chalfen (our graduateassistant) drove off to Gallup to put the filmon the plane to the processing lab. By this,time, the second day of the project but actu-ally the first day of instruction, we had beenable to teach our students enough to load anduse a motion picture camera and actually toshoot their first footage.A s a guide to how and what we wouldteach we had begun, among ourselves, touse a speculative analogy. Suppose we couldfind a group of humans who were verymuch like us in most ways, except that theydidnt have the little machine in their throatsthat enabled them to make the sounds thatwould eventually become verbal communi-cation in the form of language. Suppose webrought them a box that could make forthem all the varieties of sound that thehuman voice can. Suppose further that wemerely taught them how the box workedand observed (1) whether they used it, (2)whether they used all the sounds, and (3)whether they organized their selected unitsof sound in such a way that we could ob-serve a pattern.

Our rule of thumb was to teach our Na-vajo students the machine (film and cam-era) and its mechanical works only, and toobserve what set of images they producedand what system they imposed upon them,when and if they organized the images thenproduced. By the end of the first week, theyhad been taught to use the exposure meter,the camera, the viewer, rewinds, splicer, andBell and Howell projector. I t was the intro-duction of editing that posed the greatestproblem for us. We decided that we wouldintroduce a splicer and show them how itworked, hoping that they would discover ordevelop principles of film organization bythemselves. Worth explained that a splicerwas a machine for pasting pieces of film to-gether. It could be used to repair film thattore or to put together lengths of film forany other purpose. We were aware that thevery notion of putting lengths of film to-


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gether was a basic step in the developmentof any structure.The literature in developmental linguisticsusually refers to the break between the one-word utterance and the childs use of astructured utterance consisting of a modi-fier plus noun (M cNeil l 1966:20). What wewere primarily interested in were the succes-sive steps in the differentiation of units andthe development of rules for privileges ofoccurrence, or display rules for visual com-municative events. We felt that giving thestudents the notion that pieces of fi lm canbe put together would not hinder us in ourattempts to determine rules of sequence orrules and patterns of use.During this first week we suggested thateach student make a movie using one roll(100 feet) of film. We had explained that amovie could be of any length and of anysubject. We also explained that they didnthave to use the whole roll but that theywere limited to one in this first try. Our rea-son for this limitation was that we didntwant to provide the students with an experi-ence which could, too early, become a con-straint on the final film organization thatthey were planning and discussing with us inthe taped interviews. We wanted, first, toallow at least two weeks for the formationof ideas about the film each of them was tomake and, second, to provide them with aquick opportunity for exploring the mediumand their own intuitive ways of organizingit. I t might be of some interest at this pointto describe what Worth has termed the de-velopmental structure of film organization.This structural heuristic will help clarify notonly how, but how far, each filmmaker pro-gressed in the developmental process of filmcommunication. I t will also be used as oneof the basic dimensions in our analysis ofthe films.L et us first make a distinction betweenthe shot as it comes out of the camera,which we will call the cademe, and the shotas it is actually used in the utterance-theediting shot, or edeme (Worth 1968:133-

18 American Anthropologist [72, 1970134). The cademe is the unit that resultsfrom the pushing of the start button of thecamera to its release, producing one contin-uous image event. One cademe, limited onlyby the length of film in the camera, can be afilm. This was precisely what the firstmovies made in 1895 were. On the otherhand, a film can be composed of thousandsof edemes, cademes cut up and sequenced inan infinite number of ways. Edemes can beparts of cademes, or several edemes may bemade from one cademe.Historically and developmentally, the pro-cess might be something like this. First, thecommunicator has at his command one unitjust as it comes out of the camera. He con-trols the subject matter to the extent that hepoints the camera and controls the length byhis decision to start or stop the camera. Thisis his film.A t a later stage, he realizes that he canjoin cademes by merely pressing the buttonand allowing the camera to start again, put-ting the next set of images on the same stripof film contiguously. He does this until hisfilm runs out. He now shows the length (asdistinguished from true sequence) of severalcademes as it comes out of the camera, andthat is his film. This stage might correspondto the invention by Porter in 1893 inwhich he placed three cademes together toshow a fire truck leaving the firehouse, fol-lowed by a cademe of the truck racing alonga street, followed by a cademe of the fire-man putting out a fire. A further stagecomes with the realization that everythingone shoots (all cademes) are not needed ina film. Some may be thrown away as beingno good or not needed.Next, one would expect that the cademeitself would become divisible-and theedeme is developed. The filmmaker realizesthat just as every cademe is not necessary,so all of each cademe is not always neces-sary. He now makes edemes out of cademes.He has still not learned that the originalorder in which the cademe is made can bechanged.One would expect the next step to be the


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WORTH & ADAIR] Navajo F ilmmakers 19development of some primitive syntacticsense. Worth does not have any evidence toshow that any of the following steps mustfollow one another in a specific order, butthe general notion of sequence contains sev-eral distinct concepts: first, that cademesthemselves can be placed in sequences otherthan that in which they were shot; and sec-ond, that several edemes from any single ca-deme may be used as modifiers for otheredemes. F or example, a cademe of a close-up of a man walking can be cut up andmade into two or more edemes. T he cut-upcademe-now two edemes-of a man walk-ing can be inserted before and after a longshot of the same man walking. We wouldtend to see edemes 1 and 3 (the close-up ofa man walking) and edeme 2 (the longshot) as belonging to a structure signifyingobject and modifier.The next steps focus on the dimensionsalong which cademes and edemes attainmeaning-their length, their time of oc-currence, their spatial dimension (long shot,close-up, etc.) and their semantic content.Here too, in terms of semantic usage, theremight be a developmental sequence in whichone joins cademes according to some rulesof occurrence, causal or associational.Analyzing precisely what rules the Na-vajo followed in this scheme and how faralong they would go in the developmentalprocess was the purpose for which much ofour data was gathered. That is, at whatpoint did they break cademes into edemes?What edemes served as modifiers for otheredemes? What cademes were extensivelyused and which were discarded? How com-plex a structure, and how predictable astructure, did each Navajo develop individu-ally, and what rules did all of them seem tofollow? Did they correspond to our rules,or were they different?It might be useful to describe some of thefirst one-minute films made by the Navajostudents. M ike said he wanted to make amovie of a piiion tree. He wanted to showhow it grow. He set about finding a piiionseedling and making a shot of it. Then he

photographed a little taller tree, and so on,until he had photographed a series of sevencademes ending with a full-grown tree.Worth thought he was finished, but he con-tinued with a dead piiion tree that still hadsome growth on it, then a tree that hadfallen to the ground, then some deadbranches, then a piiion nut, ending with ashot of the same piiion bush he started with.When the film was returned from the lab-oratory and shown to the group, we detectedsome puzzled looks. The film consisted oftwelve cademes, as described above. A l-though Mike and the others couldnt thenmake clear the reasons for their surprise atthe result of their first shooting experience,Mike later was able to articulate his diffi-culty. He had photographed a sequence oftrees in a particular order, a cademe se-quence. I ts sequence and semantic content,he felt, should imply the meaning how apiiion tree grows. Instead, all the imageshad the same spatial relation to the size ofthe screen; that is, because he shot all thetrees, both small and large, as close-ups(filling the full frame), he failed to commu-nicate the process of growth which can beshown when something li ttle becomes big.Because all the images-those that repre-sented in reality big things and those thatrepresented small ones-were made to ap-pear the same size in relation to the size ofthe screen, their representative or iconicqualities of bigness and littleness, whichwere the relevant semantic dimensions ofthe cademes, were lost.In another case, that of J ohnny, we haveevidence of the independent discovery ofwhat might be called the modifier-object re-lationship. J ohnny said he wanted to make amovie about a horse. A fter getting permis-sion from its owner to use a horse that wastethered near the trading post, J ohnnystarted shooting. First he proceeded to ex-amine the horse through the various focal-length viewfinders on the camera. He re-mained in the same spatial relation to thehorse but tried seeing the horse from thedifferent distances that various focal-


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20 American Anthropologist [72, 1970length lenses allow. He finally told Worththat he was going to make pictures ofpieces of the horse so you (meaningWorth) would get to know a Navajo horsewhen you see my film.He shot about ten close-ups, of the head,the eyes, the tail, the penis, the legs, and soon. He took perhaps two minutes of thoughtto determine each shot. H e worked quietly,asking few questions, setting exposuure anddistance with care. A fter about twenty min-utes he started looking at Worth frequently,not turning his head all the way, but withthat quick sideways movement of the pupilcharacteristic of the Navajo. Then he said,Mr. Worth, if I show pieces of this horse,and then tomorrow take a picture of a com-plete horse at the Squaw Dance-or lots ofhorses, can I paste them together and willpeople think that Im showing pieces of allthe horses?Worth managed to restrain himself andsaid merely, What do you think? J ohnnythought a bit and said, Id have to thinkabout it more but I think this is so withmovies. Worth asked, What is so? A ndJ ohnny replied, T hat when you paste piecesof a horse in between pictures of a wholehorse people will think its part of the samehorse.During the rest of that week the studentsworked on their 100-foot films, and we in-terviewed them about the real (as theycalled them) films that they were to startthe following week. A ll the students nowknew very clearly just what they wanted todo. This is in contrast to Worths graduatestudents, who frequently are not certain oftheir subject matter for several months andoften for as long as six months. Susiewanted to make a film about her motherweaving a rug. She wanted to show howhard it is, how good my mother is, and whyNavajo rugs must be so expensive. J ohnnywas going to make a film about a silver-smith. I t also should show how good Nava-jos are with silver, and how hard it is tomake good jewelry. M ike wanted to makea film about a lake, just to show all thingsthere are there. A1 kept talking about a

film that would have lots of symbols, thatwould be about the world, and that wewould understand later. M ary J ane andMaxine decided that they wanted to worktogether and that they wanted to make afilm about the old ways, about our grandfa-ther, who is a very important medicineman.By the second week, when they startedworking on their real films, we stoppedany formal instruction. W e would answerquestions, and we drove them to whateversites they wanted to go to for their photo-graphing. This, of course, gave us a naturalexcuse to hang around as observers. O ur ob-servations were quite extensive and on manylevels. Adair obtained life histories on eachstudent and his place and position in thecommunity, and on his relations with Worthand Chalfen as teachers. He kept a runningrecord of the communitys reactions to thefilmmaking project. We all kept extensivenotes and tapes of how the students con-ceived, photographed, and edited their films.On their conceptualizations of their filmsin progress we obtained frequent taped inter-views, asking such questions as What do youwant to make your film about? Why?Who is it for? What will happen whenpeople see it? and so on. As work continuedwe asked what they wanted to shoot tomor-r o w : Where d o s t fit into the film? Why doyou need that? How will you do it? Asthe film came back from the lab we viewedit and asked our students how they likedwhat they had done. As the editing pro-gressed we asked Why does this shot gowith that one? Why did you leave thatout? Whats the purpose of that? Whydid you splice here instead of here? Whenthe films were finished we asked each one inan extended interview why he had choseneach shot and what it meant in the film.These tapes are all transcribed now and arepart of the material we are analyzing.Other kinds of data were provided by ourobservations of how the students were pho-tographing and editing. Our daily field notesare full of remarks such as They are doingit all wrong, They dont start at the begin-


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WORTH & ADAIR] Navajo F ilmmakers 21ning, They have no idea of how an eventis structured, and They dont know howto spot the important things.While Susie Bennally was working on herfilm, we observed how smoothly the film-making procedure became integrated intothe daily life of Susie and her mother andfather. People wandering by would stop andlook through the viewfinder. Susies mother,A lta Kahn, was quietly curious and askedseveral times if she could look through thecamera, which Susie let her do. The evidentsatisfaction that her mother showed pro-vided us with the opportunity to see if itwould be possible to pass on to a non-En-glish speaker the same technology we hadtaught the bil ingual. W e asked Susie if shewould be willing to teach her mother tomake movies. A Ithough Susie was extremelyshy, she responded to this in a more overtlypositive way than to almost anything else wehad asked her to do. In agreeing to teachher mother, however, Susie laid down therules of the game. She must be alone withher mother at first, and then Worth mightobserve her and record on tape what wassaid. (W orth was not allowed to come be-tween mother and daughter.) A lso, themother must be able to see the film as itwas returned from the laboratory, in pri-vacy, and no other Navajo was to bearound during the editing.That the mother was readily able to learnto shoot and edit is an indication of the abil-ity of a monolingual Navajo to learn newtechnology quickly, but, more importantly,it is corroboration of the method of lettingthe participants in the transfer of the tech-nology structure situations that are compati-ble with traditional role enactment.

J ohnny Nelson, in an interview, broughtout his feeling that Worth could teach a Na-vajo medicine man to make film depictingritual performances, providing he workedwith an intermediary, like himself, in therole of interpreter. He was also of the opin-ion that the medicine men would be inter-ested in this means of preserving ceremoniesfor future generations.The fieldwork was completed in two

months, during June and J uly of 1966.TheNavajo students made seven twenty-minutefilms and five smaller one- and two-minutefilms.By July 24 all the films were finished inrough cut except the one being made by Su-sies mother. On the afternoon of the 2Sth,we showed the films to the community. A tthe suggestion of the Tsosie sisters, noticeshad been placed in the trading post and else-where with the wording World PremiereNavajo Films. A pproximately 60 Navajoshowed up, including children. A fter theshowing A dair interviewed nine of theadults, five of whom were women and fourmen. We were especially interested in whatthe films said to the interviewees and howthey evaluated them.Generally speaking, the films were likedbecause they conveyed information. Sometypical responses were: Y es, that certainlyteaches a lot of good things about weaving,I think they all bring out good points as faras learning is concerned, and there is a lotof teaching behind this work. The filmsconcerned with crafts were highly valuedbecause they were related to the economicwelfare of the community. One of the re-spondents said she liked the films becausethey taught

how to do these things. I think that is whatthe film is intended for. The same is true ofthe silversmithing. This should also be taughtto the children.Others responded:

This is the type of work that some of thepeople are supporting their families . . . soit is good and a good thing to know.Perhaps the Navajo rugs would bring a littlemore money from now on. . .White peoplenever give much money for anything. Maybethis is why they want to show them and howthe rugs are made,I t was showing how to make silver craftswhich will bring more money and will beon demand.Johnnys film showing how a shallow wellis made was liked because it teaches how to

fix water so you can always have cleanwater to use, and the Tsosie sisters The


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22 American Anthropologist [72, 1970Spirit of the Navajo was liked because He[the medicine man] did not make any mis-take. He performed the ceremony like heshould.I n these nine interviews we had two in-stances in which the Navajos made somerather interesting remarks about their rea-sons for not understanding certain films (In-trepid Shadows and Shallow Well). Boththese films were somewhat outside theframework of Navajo cognition: IntrepidShadows because of its complex form, andShallow Well because of its nontraditionalsubject matter.When asked, Does that film tell you any-thing? one respondent, a woman aged 44with one year of schooling, who stated inthe same interview I never been to a moviebefore, replied,

I cannot understand English. I t was tell ingall about it in English which I couldntunderstand.A nother response was,

That picture was also being explained inEnglish. The reason I didnt get the meaningis because I cant understand English.None of the films, of course, had any

sound at all. Since these interviews wereconducted in Navajo, we didnt see thetranslated tapes until we left the reservation,and have not been able to question our in-formants further along these lines. W e canonly speculate that when someone in a situa-tion such as we are describing sees a filmthey dont understand, i t seems reasonable(not only to the subject in this case but alsoto the Navajo interpreter) to assume it is ina language different from theirs. I n this case,since we spoke English and she didnt, andshe couldnt understand the film, she as-sumed that the film, in effect, spoke in En-glish even though the film was silent.While these interviews were all too briefand sampled too small a group from thecommunity, they did tend to indicate thatthe camera in the hands of the Navajowould in fact serve to reveal their value sys-tem, since the values of the individual film-makers were, with the exceptions noted,

communicated to these nine viewers. EthelA lberts statement (1956:232) about theNavajo value system-( it is) empiricallybased, pragmatically phrased, and geared toconsequences-characterizes the films aswell as the values of the viewers who judgedthem.Since that time we have been engaged notonly in transcribing and studying the verbalmaterial but also in devising methods for de-scribing and organizing what might be con-sidered the first corpus of fi lm utterances byanother cul ture gathered under systematicconditions.

ANALYSISWe would l ike now to develop some ofour preliminary analyses. F rom this point onwe are reporting work in progress ratherthan a finished analysis of work completed.Unfortunately, we are not ready to proposea theory of codes in context that would beintegral to a complete analysis of our data.The corpus of the material we have col-lected is too diverse, and the possible levelsof analysis too heterogeneous, to allow us atthis point to attempt formal theory building.

However, we have had to keep some possi-ble theoretical structure in mind, if only asan organizing principle for this preliminaryanalysis. We are asking the following ques-tions: Who, in what culture, with what in-structions, can produce communications, ordiscourse, by the use of movies? Second,how do those who can discourse in thismovie mode organize their communication?Do they code it at all, and if so, do theycode it in a manner that enables others tounderstand it or to infer meaning from it?Third, if humans can use this mode, andcode it so that it becomes communicative,what is the relation between the code andthe culture in which it is produced and un-derstood?A lthough generalizations beyond the Na-vajo, and beyond several groups of Negroteenagers in the Philadelphia area (withwhom some of Worths students haveworked in the same way), can only be pure


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WORTH & ADAIR] Navajo F ilmmakers 23speculation at present, i t is now possible tosee whether the coding and patterning ofsuch films follow cultural or linguistic pat-terns, or both. That is, will similar culturesmake films similarly, and will members ofthese cultures understand each othersmovie discourse in the same way?We can report that teaching filmmakingto the Navajo, and members of other groupsin our society, was easy. The Navajo seemedto know what films were-even those whosaid they had never seen one-and theylearned to make them quickly and easily.Why should people of a culture so differ-ent from ours learn a new and seeminglycomplex mode of communication soquickly?

The notion of a common usage of amode of communication corresponds insome way to what might be called the uni-versals of a language. The Navajo learnedto put together discrete records of imageevents in a sequence that they assumedwould be meaningful to someone looking atthe movie that they made. I t is as if in somesense they were programmed to accept thenotion that visual events in sequence havemeaning. T he fact that the specific way inwhich they strung these image events to-gether showed differences from the way wesequence events seems to us much less im-portant than the fact that they strung themtogether assuming that someone else wouldunderstand.Another striking thing we observed wasthe fact that, although we found it compara-tively easy to teach people with another cul-ture to make a movie, this did not meanthat they used it in the same way that wedid, were interested in it in the same way, orwould continue to use it and find aplace intheir culture for it.L et us now attempt to delineate some ofthe differences we noted. In order to do this,however, we will need to know certain ele-ments of the context, as well as of the code,for later comparative analysis.There are basically two areas with whichwe will deal. The first might be said to bethose dimensions that represent the cultural

context. These are (1 ) the learning situa-tion, comprising the students previous levelof learning, as well as what we taught them,and including the specific arrangements andmethods under which they learned; (2) thechoice of students, including how they werechosen (or how they chose themselves), aswell as how they chose the actors for theirfilms; (3) the choice of film subjects orthemes; (4 ) their method of working,both technical and perceptual; and ( 5 ) theinterrelation of the community and the film-making and teaching process, comprising adescription of the social controls and free-doms available within this culture to its film-makers.The second area of analysis might bethought to be composed of those elementswhich relate to the code itself, its descrip-tion and, at a final stage, the rules by whicha Navajo film can be generated. Here arather difficult problem is posed: to describeadequately the parameters and units we aredealing with, on both micro and macro lev-els, without being able to define clearlywhere one ends and the other begins.Roughly the areas under considerationhere will be (1) the narrative style of thefilms, related to mythic forms and symbolsof the culture; (2) the syntactic organiza-tion and sequencing of events and units ofeventing; (3) the cultural, perceptual, andcognitive taboos influencing either semanticor syntactic organization and structure; and(4 ) the relation between verbal languagestructure and visual language structure.

First let us consider that dimension of thecode we are calling narrative style. One ele-ment of this might be thought of as thoseevents in daily life important enough toshow in a film about any subject. Or con-versely, those events-irrespective of subject-that are always part of film utterances ordiscourse by the Navajo.A lmost all the Navajo films portray whatto us seems an inordinate amount of walk-ing. A s we observed the films being made,excessive cademes of walking seemed clearlywrong filmmaking. I n Nelsons film on sil-


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versmithing, for example, most of the film iscomposed of edemes of the silversmithwalking to get his materials. I n this fifteenminute film, almost ten minutes are spent asthe silversmith walks to the old mine,walks to find his silver nuggets, walksaround looking, walks back to his hogan,walks again to find sandstone for the mold,walks back to the hogan again, and soon.A s the Navajo were making the films andtelling us about them, they repeatedly said:M y mother, or my brother, goes lookingfor . . ., then she goes to get . . ., then shegoes . . ., then my brother goes. . . .Wedidnt notice this repeated emphasis of theverb to go at the time of the interviews; ina sense, we screened it out, paying attentionto what was important to us. I t wasnt untilwe saw the edited film that we realized thatwalking was an event in and of itself, notjust a way of getting somewhere. We ex-pected the filmmakers to cut out most of thewalking-but they didnt. This was the leastdiscarded footage. I n questioning them, itbecame clear that although they didntverbalize it directly, walking was necessaryto tell astory about something Navajo.J ohnny Nelson said to us on J une 13:Then the way the film is going to open-its going to be John Baloo, hes going to bewalking and wandering around those holesin the ground-were going to have the feel-ing that hes alone, and its very hard to findwhat hes going to find. He mentionedagain in this interview that we dont see theface-well see him walking.I n Susie Bennallys fi lm about a Navajoweaver the same proportion of time is spentin walking. I n a twenty-minute film, Susiesmother spends fifteen minutes walking togather vegetables for dye, walking to collectroots for soap, walking to shear the wool,and walking to and from the hogan in be-tween all activities. Her son walks with thesheep and in one spot rides his horse awayfrom and then to the hogan to indicate thepassage of time.I n reading Navajo myths and stories wewere struck by the fact that in many Navajonarratives the narrator spends much of his

24 American Anthropologist [72, 1970time describing the walking, the landscape,and the places he passes, and dwells onlybriefly on what to us are the plot lines, as inThe Killing of Tracking Bear (Sapir1942:137):

Then he again started off to the east. Hewent there and back in vain. There were nomonsters. He also went to the south andback. There were again no monsters. He alsowent to the west and back. There were nomonsters. He also went to the north andback. There were no monsters. He againwent back to his home. T ruly there were nomore monsters. Now here the story stops. NowI have nothing more to tell.Or, in the Night Chant (M atthews

Happily I go forthMy interior feeling cold, may I walk.No longer sore, may I walk.Impervious to pain, may I walk.With lively feelings may I walk.As it used to be long ago, may I walk.Happily may I walk.Happily with abundant dark clouds, may IHappily with abundant showers, may I walk.Happily with abundant plants, may I walk.Happily on a trail of pollen, may I walk.Happily may I walk.Being as it used to be long ago, may I walk.A ll the films but one (which we shallnote later) display this unusual use of walk-ing, not only as an intrinsic part of theeventing in the film, as can be seen in thequotes above, but as a kind of punctuationthat separates activities. The mother andthe silversmith, for example, are alwaysshown walking toward or away from thehogan to indicate a structural break some-what akin to phrase, paragraph, or chapterstructure. Compare Tracking Bear with A lta

K ahn and John Baloo (in the weaving andsilversmith films), who go to get roots andback again, or go to get silver and backagain, or go to light the fire and back again.Throughout the films the actor goes and re-turns, and as in T racking Bear, when thegoing stops, N ow here the story stops. InSusies film of her mother, the film endsabruptly (for us) when her mother holds upthe finished rug. We havent been shown

1910:54-55):

walk.


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WORTH & ADAIR] Navajo F ilmmakers 25much of her mother weaving the rug; it hasbeen a film of coming and going. The actualweaving is only barely started. But the walk-ing parts, of mother and family, are fin-ished. One can almost hear Susie saying,Now that youve seen how I go and comeback in making my mg, I have nothingmore to tell. A fter the going and comingyou see the rug. In the concluding words ofthe Night Chant, In beauty it is fin-ished. (Matthews 1910:55).Several people who have seen these filmshave commented that it doesnt seem sur-prising to have first films composed chieflyof walking. A fter all , they say, what doother beginning filmmakers do? They alwaysshow people walking. A lso, they argue,walking is used in such avant-garde films asthose by Antonioni to show upset, lassitude,or general qualities such as the passage oftime. Several facts, however, tend tostrengthen our argument that walking in Na-vajo films is used uniquely. First, whenwalking is used in our films it is hardly, ifever, seen as an event in and of itself. I t isused in most cases as a bridge between ac-tivities, a structural device used to get peo-ple from one place to another, similar to thefamiliar shots of a railroad train speedingalong the tracks, or of an airplane takingoff, followed by a shot of the main characterrelaxing in his seat, followed by a shot ofthe airplane landing. When used as an event,as in an Antonioni film, it is seen as a some-what unusual event. I t is hardly the kind ofthing we see in all movies, and certainly wecannot remember films in which the majoraction is composed of the main charactermerely walking. I t has been suggested thatthe reason for so much walking is not thatthe Navajo were following a particular pat-tern derived from the structure of their nar-rative, but rather that they were imitatinglife. That is, that of Navajo, being a prim-itive people, walk a great deal and there-fore show walking in their films in imitationof their actual daily activity. The strikingobservation in this regard is that the Navajodislike walking. They will go to greatlengths to ride, and will at every opportunity

use some means other than walking to getsomeplace. Hardly ever did we observe ourfilmmakers walking to where they were pho-tographing. They always insisted on driving,and almost all the members of the PineSprings community owned pick-up trucksand often used them for journeys as short asone hundred yards. We observed scores ofinstances where Navajos waited patiently forhours at the side of a road for a ride.Another striking example to support ourclaim for difference in the use of walking asevent is our analysis of two films on Navajolife made almost twenty-five years ago byAdair on his first visit to Pine Springs. Wehave therefore been able to compare hisfilms with those made by the Navajo. One isa finished film, photographed by Adairbut edited by M itchell Wilder, then at theTaylor Museum in Colorado, and the otheris a fi lm that is unedited and contains all thefootage shot by Adair showing some of thedaily activities surrounding weaving and sil-vermaking. This was Adairs first attempt atfilmmaking, and although made by ayounganthropologist, these films can still be saidto reflect his way of structuring events, incontrast to the ways of our Navajo students.What is most notable is that Adair does twothings that are different from the Navajoand are quite consistent with what we doin filmmaking today. Both his films (the ca-deme version and the edeme version) showalmost no walking. People just are in theplaces they are supposed to be. Nobodysearches for silver that is hard to find orwalks to get roots and plants for dye. Sec-ond, his footage is full of face close-upsshowing the expressions of the Navajo asthey go about their activities.

This leads us to another difference, thatof (3), the cultural, perceptual, and cogni-tive taboos influencing semantic or syntacticorganization and structure of an utterance.The Navajo do not use face close-ups, ex-cept in very limited circumstances. Mostshots are either cut off at the head or showthe head turned away from the camera. Inall the films there are no more than five face


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close-ups, and these, as far as we can deter-mine, are in two specific situations.The first is most common, showing a fullfront view of the face with the eyes lookingslightly upward-a sort of inward staring.When questioning the meaning of theseshots, we were told by several of the stu-dents that this shows my mother (or mybrother) thinking about the design. Theyoccur in those places in the film in whichthe subject is about to embark on the actualwork of weaving or making a piece of jew-elry. T he second kind of close-up is in theform of an in joke. T he Navajo stares atthe camera and makes a funny face.One speculation as to the reasons for thisis that the Navajo generally avoid eye-to-eyecontact. Staring at someone, or looking himstraight in the eye, is a form of insult, un-less done for clearly humorous purposes.This relates to values of privacy in Navajoculture, where close living and modesty ta-boos must be reconciled by some form ofperceptual avoidance behavior. I t seems pos-sible to conclude that this has been carriedover into film discourse.A fter more than a month of observationsit became clear that although close-ups wereused frequently, face close-ups were hardlyever taken or used. During the shootingof asequence for the Tsosie sisters film about amedicine man, the girls were photographingtheir grandfather making a sandpainting.Worth was observing this sequence, and hebecame increasingly upset as he noted howbadly the girls were photographing it.They werent showing the important partsof the action. T hey didnt photograph any ofthe preliminary steps: bringing the sand intothe hogan, placing it in the right place,smoothing it with a smoothing stick, findingthe center, preparing the colored sands, andso on. His restiveness and upset became ap-parent to the girls, who finally asked, A rewe doing it right? Wi thout thinking, W orthbegan suggesting that they shoot more foot-age of these important steps that are hap-pening right now. Once he had intrudedinto their way of seeing and recording theevent, Worth decided to try directing them

26 American Anthropologist [72, 1970to make shots that they had never made bythemselves. He suggested that the girls try totake some face close-ups of their grandfa-ther. M ary J ane refused. She said she didntknow how. Maxine reluctantly took thecamera from her and started lookingthrough the viewfinder with the 3-inch (tele-photo) lens. Finally she said that shecouldnt see through it and handed it backto her sister. M ary J ane finally stood overher grandfather, pointed the camera at thetop and back of his head and pushed thebutton. W orth asked her if she were gettinga shot of his face, and she looked surprisedand said, NO, cant see it from here-youdo it-I dont know how.The only way to get the face was to liedown on the floor shooting from low, whichWorth then did and made one shot. Hehanded the camera back to M ary J ane andsaid, See, its easy; now you do it. M aryJ ane said she couldnt and handed the cam-era (as it it were a hot potato) to her youn-ger sister, saying, Y ou do it. M axinelooked at Worth, lay down on a sheepskin,and put the camera to her eye. She soonlooked up and said to him, I cant see.Why? Worth asked. M y eyelashes get inmy way, she replied. Worth acted as if thiswere not a good reason, and she got up andsaid, M y hands are too weak-see, they areshaking. She held one hand before her, andWorth couldnt see a single sign of tremoior shake. H e said, I dont see you shaking.She replied, But I am, and that was theend of any attempt at face close-ups.

T o return to the walking. We mentionedearlier that one film did not show an inordi-nate amount of walking. It is an interestingdeviation in support of our original observa-tion.J ohnny Nelson made two films. The firstwas about a silversmith, in which walkingoccurred a great deal. The second was aboutthe building of a shallow well. In this filmno walking occurs at all. I n style it is similarto Adairs early filmsof Navajo activity.Our explanation for this dramatic shift instyle is that in the silversmith film J ohnny


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WORTH Br ADAIR] Navajo F ilmmakers 27was telling a traditional story, and thereforenaturally told it in the old Navajo way. I nthe shallow-well film he was telling aboutnon-Navajo ways, and in effect told i t inEnglish, not Navajo,I t might be thought that a better explana-tion for this change in style is the fact thatno walking occurred in the making of ashallow well, while walking naturally occursin making silver jewelry. The reverse is ac-tually the case. A dair was quite stunnedwhen he noted that J ohnny was asking hisactor to go to the mine to look for silver.The fact of the matter is that silver wasnever mined by the Navajo. This event inthe filmderived from necessities imposed onthe narrative style by other factors in thecontextual situation. On the other hand, inthe building of the well, much walking ac-tually occurs in order to get the materials,and much coming and going of the truckscarrying the materials was observed by us.None of this motion and activity is in eitherthe finished filmor the cademe footage.What we are suggesting here is that peo-ple within the context of their culture havedifferent codes for saying different things,that ones cognitive system might well em-ploy a metacode or program that would re-late the rules for one mode of communica-tion to rules for the other. If one has a setof rules for talking about certain things, ortelling certain stories, he might reasonablybe expected to apply those rules to structur-ing a movie about these subjects. I n theabove observations we seem to have someevidence that the rules of Navajo myth andstorytelhg are more relevant to how eventslike weaving a rug, making silver jewelry, orbuilding a shallow well are shown than tothe real events that take place when theseactivities are actually performed. WhenAdair questioned J ohnny, after the filmswere made, about the fact that the Navajonever mined silver on the reservation,J ohnny answered (without definitely deny-ing Adairs statement) that thats the wayto make a film about it.

In going now to (2)-the syntactic orga-

nization and sequencing of events and unitsof eventing-we shall be dealing with theway pieces or units of film were used.Here, as with verbal analysis, it is extremelydifficult to separate the semantic from thesyntactic, but by syntactic we shall meanthose rules primarily governing the wayevents are structured by editing-how andat what point cademes are cut apart; what isallowed to follow what; and where thefilmmaker needs something in between. I na rough way, we shall be dealing with no-tions similar to, but much more primitivelyunderstood than, what linguists call privi-leges of occurrence.On this level we found that in general theNavajo were joining elements under whatseemed like quite different rules from ours.Here are two (out of many) rules for ourfilms:Rule 1.The major purpose of editing andsequencing units is to make it appear thatno join exists, so that the viewer sees onecontinuous pieceof action.Rule 2. Things that are not joined on ac-tion and that appear suddenly on the screen(such as a glass suddenly appearing in apersons hand) are a form of magic, arefunny, and are not the way things happen.I t is interesting to note that the Frenchand other avant-garde filmmakers deliber-ately break these rules occasionally. Theyuse the so-called jump cut for some of thesame reasons that painters began using prim-itive art forms; or, what is more to thepoint, for the same reasons that poets will saythe achieve of the thing, knowing that thewrong grammar will add power to thephrase, and further, knowing that we knowthe rule and know that the poet knows it andis breaking itdeliberately.The Negro teenagers with whom weworked followed the Hollywood-TV rule(rule l ) , They werent deliberately taughtthis rule but had learned it (although theycouldnt verbalize it), perhaps by watchingmovies and television or by being membersof our society and sharing with us the sameculture and cognitive style.The Navajo didnt follow this rule at all.


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28 American AnthropologistI

172, 1970

I - 1 I

I I IFIGURE.

The notion of smoothness of action or non-noticeability of a connective didnt occur tothem. There are numerous examples in theirfilms of people suddenly appearing on thescreen or jumping from one place to an-other, or magically going from a kneelingto a walking or standing position. When wequestioned them about this, we had greatdifficulty even getting them to see what wewere asking about. Finally, after askingIsnt it strange that Sam suddenly is seenwalking when he was in a kneeling posi-tion? or Isnt it strange that the boy seemsas if by magic to jump across the landscape,never going behind the tree at all? we wereanswered, with a condescending smile, Oh,everyone knows that if hes walking he musthave got up, or Why show him behind thetree-you cant see him.There is one point in M ikes finished film(Antelope L ake) where the actor is walkingacross a field. The scene is a long shot of abare plain with one tree approximately inthe middle of the shot. The actor is walkingacross the field, going from left to right. Inactuality he passes for a moment behind thetree. When M ike shot this scene he did it intwo cademes. T he first had the actor walkinto the frame, walk across the field, go be-hind the tree, reappear on the other side,walk a bit more-and then the camerastopped. The second cademe starts at apoint before the actor goes behind the treeand continues having him walk behind thetree and continue out of the frame on theright side. Since the two cademes overlap inaction, M ike had a great choice of points atwhich he could cut both pieces of film and

join them to get the actor across the field. Ina small study done by Worth, he askedtwenty students and faculty at Penn to indi-cate on the diagram reproduced in Figure 1at what point they would cut the film toachieve the effect of having the actor getfrom the left side of the screen to the rightside. T he subjects chosen were faculty mem-bers in communication, anthropology, andpsychology, with varying degrees of knowl-edge about editing, and students at the An-nenberg School. Eighteen of the twenty indi-cated that they would combine the film inparallel fashion; that is, no matter wherethey would cut the first cademe, they wouldmatch that point on the second cademe.The dotted lines on the drawing representsome of the places where they indicatedthey would cut. The subjects more sophisti-cated in film marked the cut as occurringwhen the actor was behind the tree. Thiswould make the cut least noticeable. T heothers varied as shown.M ike, on the other hand, cut the se-quence as shown by the heavy line in thediagram. He had the actor walking up to thetree and then appearing as if by magic onthe other side. When asked why he did this,he said, Oh, nothing happens when hes be-hind the tree so I cut i t out.Two of Worths students, however,marked the diagram in such a way as toachieve a jump cut, that is, so as not toachieve continuous action. But what is moststriking is the fact that both (they did this atdifferent times and had not spoken to eachother) immediately looked at Worth aftermarking the diagram and said, with smiles


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WORTH & ADAIR] Navajo F ilmmakers 29on their faces, Fooled you, didnt I? andThat screws up your experiment, doesntit?Both students knew of our work with theNavajo and were clever enough to see thepoint of the study without being told. Theymade the necessary connections and de-duced what it was that Worth was attempt-ing to demonstrate. Apparently, they knewthe rule of continuous action so well thatthey deliberately broke it, but couldnt re-sist telling Worth about it. When he pointedout that they were confirming the hypothesisthat continuity of action was a rule for us,they sheepishly agreed.There are several other areas of differ-ence that we observed, but we shall indicatethem only briefly.The Navajo choice of actors for theirfi lms, and the restrictions of locale, were dif-ferent from those of people living in ourculture. While graduate students at the Uni-versity of Pennsylvania and at schoolsthroughout the country can make filmsabout anybody living anywhere-evenabout the Navajo-the Navajo limited them-selves to a choice of actors and locales thatmight be categorized as kin or kinsmensproperty. The Navajo were extremely loathto photograph nonrelatives, and alwayssought the closest kin as their subjects andshowed the greatest ease and ability with thecamera in that situation. They felt extremelyuncomfortable photographing someone elsesland, sheep, hogans, or horses. If the situa-tion was such that they had no alternativethat fit their plan for their film, they alwaysasked elaborate permission or tried to bor-row the person or object from someone re-lated to them. Apparently, the use of animage was closely tied to their feelings aboutthe use of the actual person or thing theimage referred to.T o illustrate this: M ike was editing hisfilm of Antelope Lake. A t one point therewas a sequence in which he had juxtaposedsome shots of what we took to be mud witha shot of a horse and a shot of some sheep.I n interviews with Mike when his film wasfinished, we asked, Why does the shot of

the horse going into the lake come after theshot of the mud? and later, Why does theshot of the sheep come after this shot? Heexplained that the first mud shot showedhorses hooves going into the water and sotherefore the next shot must be of a horse.When we asked whose horse it was, he an-swered, I borrowed it from my brother.The next mud shot was, as he ex-plained it, ashot of sheep going away fromthe lake, and so it was reasonable that itshould be followed by a shot of sheep.Worth didnt ask him whose sheep theywere, assuming they were his or some rela-tives. I t was only later, during our analysisof the footage shot by all the students, thatwe learned that this shot had been bor-rowed from Susie. Neither Mike nor hisfamily owned sheep, and rather than photo-graph someone elses sheep, belonging to an-other family, he borrowed a piece of film ofa sheep sequence from Susie, who had pho-tographed her mothers sheep. I t must bepointed out that there were innumerable o pportunities for M ike to take shots of sheep.They were everywhere, grazing freely allover the landscape. He chose to borrow ashot of them from a fellow student ratherthan to photograph a strangers sheephimself.There was a marked difference on almostall levels of observation between Al, the art-ist, and the other Navajo. As A1 put it,They [the other Navajo] want to makethings about outside. I want to make thingsabout inside. His method of work, his no-tion of what he wanted to make a filmabout, and his behavior seemed much morelike that of graduate students-introspec-tive, somewhat hostile and neurotic, andslightly competitive. None of these qualitieswere displayed by the other Navajo. Y etAls film is also intensely Navajo, particu-larly in his use of motion as a form to con-vey meaning and in his intense feeling for,and ability to portray, the animism of hisworld. While all the Navajo made more useof movement than we do, his was, we think,especially complex and self-conscious.There was also a remarkable difference in


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30 American Anthropologist [72, 1970the way all the Navajo students edited theirfi lm from the way we do. They workedfaster, with such certainty that at one pointWorth was convinced that they must be cut-ting the film at random. If not, they wereable to perceive and remember individualshots and single frames of event in what toWorth was an impossible way. A t one pointJ ohnny set up two viewers on two tables,running film through both, jumping fromone side of the room to the other and splic-ing sequences for different sections of hisfilm at the same time.I n order to determine whether they reallyknew the points at which they were cuttingthe film, Worth several times grabbed theend of a piece of fi lm as it was cut and askedboth J ohnny and Susie to describe the exactpoint of the cut. I n all cases they were able-easily-to describe the point in the imageevent that they were cutting. I t is not thattheir perception of individual frames wasbetter, but rather that their ability to per-ceive a single frame in a motion sequenceand to remember it for both short and longperiods of time was better than ours. In dis-cussing this with Johnny Nelson, he ex-plained that perhaps its because we alwayshave to have the design in our heads. Hetold us that you have to use your knowl-edge and the machine is there but you haveto use your head and whats up there tomake a good movie. This, I think, is thesame way with the weavers, that if theywant to make a good rug for themselves,they have to concentrate there, very hard onwhat designs would impress the buyers . . .its the same way with the silversmith.

We started with the notion that if theWhorfian hypothesis had any value in thisstudy we would be able to find that the Na-vajo use motion in some different and signif-icant way. By a tentative and incompleteanalysis this seems to be the case. Theyseem to move the camera more, move it in amore controlled fashion, and move it in acircular rather than linear fashion.Y ears ago M argot Astrov (1950:45)pointed out:

The concept of motion in all its possiblevariations is the perennial current on whichNavaho culture is carried along and fromwhich it receives its unfailing stimulus.Motion pervades the Navajos universe; itpermeates his mythology, his habit systems,and his language.Harry Hoijer has written (1951 15-117) :

It would appear that Navaho verb categoriescenter very largely about the reporting ofevents, or better, eventings. These eventingsare divided into neuters, eventings solidified,as it were, into states of being by virtue of thewithdrawal of motion, and actives, eventingsin motion.But this is not all. A careful analysis ofthe meanings of Navaho verb bases, neuterand active, reveals that eventings themselvesare conceived, not abstractly for the mostpart, but concretely in terms of the move-ments of corporeal bodies. . . .Movement it-self is reported in painstaking detail, even tothe extent of classifying as semantically dif-ferent the movements of one, two, or severalbodies, and sometimes distinguishing as wellbetween movements of bodies differentiatedby their shape and distribution in space.

But this high degree of specificity in thereporting of movement is not confined inNavaho to verbs having particular referenceto motion of one sort or another. On thecontrary, it permeates the Navaho lexiconin the sense that many verbs, not at firstsight expressive of movement, prove to beso on more detailed analysis. . . .

To summarize: in three broad speech pat-terns, illustrated by the conjugation of activeverbs, the reporting of actions and events,and the framing of substantive concepts, Na-vaho emphasizes movement and specifies thenature, direction, and status of such move-ment in considerable detail. Even the neutercategory is relatable to the dominant concep-tion of a universe in motion; for, just assomeone is reported to have described archi-tecture as frozen music, so the Navaho defineposition as a resultant of the withdrawal ofmotion.In the Navajo fi lms, we can best under-stand the long sequences of walking in thecontext of the above. The walking providesa means of depicting eventing, (the search-ing for and finding of the mine, the rock forcasting, the dyes for weaving, and so on).


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WORTH & ADAIR] Navajo F ilmmakers 31A s an example of how one Navajo ex-pressed the importance of motion in hisscheme of things we quote J ohnny Nelson,when asked to compare writing about howto make a shallow well with making a filmabout the same subject:

Y ou make a movie about it and then itsmoving around where you actually see whatis being done, how it moves. See, in a letter,you can read it over and over but you cantexpress exactly what, how the shallow wellwas, unless you want to write a whole bookabout it. But . . . if you write a whole bookabout it, then its still. You try to give it tosomebody and he reads it through and hedoes not really get the picture in his mind.You cannot express just exactly how

Sol Worth & Jane Adair - Navajo Filmaker

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