Portland Public Library

Return to the land of the head hunters, Edward S. Curtis, the Kwaka'wakw, and the making of modern cinema, edited by Brad Evans and Aaron Glass

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

government publication of a state province territory dependency etc

index present

non fiction

Return to the land of the head hunters

bibliography

862787946

edited by Brad Evans and Aaron Glass

Native art of the Pacific Northwest

Edward S. Curtis, the Kwaka'wakw, and the making of modern cinema

The first silent feature film with an "all Indian" cast and a surviving original orchestral score, Edward Curtis's 1914 In the Land of the Head Hunters was a landmark of early cinema. Influential but often neglected in historical accounts, this spectacular melodrama was an intercultural product of Curtis's encounter and collaboration with the Kwakwaka'wakw of British Columbia. In recognition of the film's centennial, and alongside the release of a restored version, Return to the Land of the Head Hunters brings together leading anthropologists, Native American authorities, artists, musicians, literary scholars, and film historians to reassess the film and its legacy. The volume offers unique Kwakwaka'wakw perspectives on the film, accounts of its production and subsequent circulation, and evaluations of its depictions of cultural practice. Like his photographs, Curtis's motion picture was meant to document a supposedly vanishing race. But as this collection shows, the film is not simply an artifact of colonialist nostalgia. Resituated within film history and informed by a legacy of Kwakwaka'wakw participation and response, the movie offers dynamic evidence of ongoing cultural survival and transformation under shared conditions of modernity. Brad Evans is an associate professor of English at Rutgers University. Aaron Glass is an assistant professor of Anthropology at the Bard Graduate Center

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