Celluloid Subjects to Digital Directors. Jennifer Debenham
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38 “Australian Aborigines”. The Argus (Melbourne), 8 July 1902, 7.
39 “Australian Aborigines”. The Age (Melbourne), 8 July 1902, 5.
40 “Australian Aborigines” The Age (Melbourne), 8 July 1902, 5.
41 At this time the only moving film recordings produced in Australia were made by Alfred Haddon’s expedition on Tiwi Island in the Torres Strait in 1898. These films were not presented in Australia “until recent times but excerpts have been used in various documentaries, including Mabo – Life of an Island Man (1997), Dir. Trever Graham” [personal correspondence NFSA Simon Drake – Collection Reference Co-ordinator 23 October 2017]. The films (NFSA Title No. 8879) were given to the National Library of Australia by the British Film Institute (BFI) and cylinder recordings are held at Cambridge University with copies held by AIATSIS. Curator, Liz McNiven notes “three days before the expedition ended, Haddon received his new 35 mm Newman and Gardia movie camera. As a result he only managed to produce a small amount of film material”. Australian Screen <https://aso.gov.au/titles/historical/torres-strait-islanders/notes/> [Accessed 23 October 2017]. This claim appears to be at odds with what other commentators such as Mulvaney and Alison Griffiths who only mention the Warwick Bioscope camera. It was not until 1911 that Spencer again attempted to film in the field. Visiting the Northern Territory in 1911 and 1912 when he was appointed Special Commissioner and Chief Protector of Aborigines, he filmed a Tiwi Pukamani ceremony on Bathurst Island with an improved camera with a tilt and pan on the tripod. Film historian Michael Leigh notes that the only other films made about Aboriginal people between 1912 and 1922 were “Eric Mjöberg’s footage shot in 1913 in Cape York; William Jackson’s Chez les Sauvages Australiens (1917), shot in the Kimberleys; Frank Hurley’s Pearls and Savages (1921); Francis Birtles’s Coorab in the Island of Ghosts (1922); and Brooke Nicholls Native Australia, sponsored by Kodak (also 1922). Leigh emphases these were films shot by adventurers, body snatchers and developers rather than academics”. See Leigh, <https://aso.gov.au/titles/collections/ethnographic-film-in-Australia> [Accessed 23 October 2017].
42 Gillen, Gillen’s Diary, 8.
43 Gillen, Gillen’s Diary, 64.
←32 | 33→
Physical Traits: Life in Central Australia (1931)
Life in Central Australia (1931), E. O. Stocker – cinematographer for Board for Anthropological Research Staff – South Australian Museum. Permission: South Australian Museum. Blank Map: Australia Online Map – free printable – <http://allfreeprintable.com>
Background
Life in Central Australia is the sixth in a series of twelve films made by the South Australian Board for Anthropological Research (SABAR) and the South Australian Museum (SAM) between 1926 and 1937. It records the daily interactions of scientists with the Warlpiri, the Ngarti and the Anmatjere people. The interwar years marked a period when anthropometric measurements were a key component of anthropological data ←33 | 34→gathering worldwide. Depicting the scientists as experts conducting tests and experiments with scientific objectivity and purpose, the film made at Cockatoo Creek in 1931, foregrounded the data collection as purposeful and methodical. The film is a snapshot that demonstrates the collection of biometric data and the praxis of scientific research conducted on Aboriginal people during this period. It emphasises (intentional or not) the contrast between Anglo Australians and the Warlpiri, the Ngarti and the Anmatjere people.
In the early twentieth century, Australia was considered an important site to study “primitive” human societies. However, government priorities meant that only meagre resources were available to finance anthropological research and Australian scientists turned towards the United States of America for support. In 1926, SABAR was established to attract funds from the Rockefeller Foundation.1 A joint venture between the University of Adelaide and the South Australian Museum, it drew together an eminent group of internationally renowned scientists, chaired by Professor John Burton Cleland. Cleland was a doctor of Pathology, who like many academics of his ilk at that time, had diverse interests in other discipline areas such as ornithology, botany and physical anthropology. Another executive member, Thomas Draper Campbell, outlined that their collective goal was to unlock many of the questions being raised about Aboriginal people, their origins and how they adapted both psychologically and physically to their environment.2
Their greater emphasis on physical anthropology was to a large extent due to the circumstances in which the medical school was established. From its inception, the school enjoyed close connections with the Museum and the South Australian health department. Key individuals such as Edward Stirling augmented a research culture that ensured the medical faculty developed an international reputation in research. Stirling, a Cambridge-trained evolutionist, was a member of the Horn Expedition ←34 | 35→where Spencer and Gillen met. In Adelaide, he carefully nurtured a rising generation of scholars to study the physical anthropology of Aboriginal peoples including Cleland and Draper Campbell and Robert Pulleine, an ear, nose and throat physician, all members of numerous SABAR expeditions. Ramsay Smith, head of the health department was an evolutionist interested in testing theories of hereditary and adaptation among the Aborigines in the nearby deserts. The other was Frederick Wood Jones, a Lamarckian evolutionist and comparative biologist whose enthusiastic collection of anthropometric data appears incongruent from a twenty-first-century perspective with his humanitarian sympathies for the poor condition of many Aboriginal peoples. These inconsistencies occur regularly in the writings of most of these men, revealing the difficulties of engaging the concept of race as a biological determinant of behaviour and technological development.
When the Rockefeller Foundation indicated their interest in funding Australian research of Aboriginal peoples in the early 1920s, competition intensified between Sydney and Adelaide universities. Adelaide believed they had an advantage over Sydney due to their close association with members of the Rockefeller board, the similarities of their research objectives and their closer proximity to central Australia where most Aboriginal people lived in remote communities. The Foundation provided funding to the Australian National Research Council (ANRC), the central research administration body in Australia to use as they saw fit. The ANRC, based in Sydney, made decisions about which research would be funded and how much of the funds