Celluloid Subjects to Digital Directors. Jennifer Debenham

and Gillen began during the Horn Expedition in 1894. Named after its financial backer, William Austin Horn, mining and pastoral magnate eager for a knighthood, the expedition surveyed a vast tract of country from Oodnadatta northward to the MacDonnell Ranges in the Northern Territory. In fourteen weeks the members of the expedition made comprehensive findings and in particular, Spencer was able to record 398 genera and 171 new species of mainly insects and beetles, spiders, reptiles and molluscs as well as eight new botanical species, sixteen unknown and sixteen other species previously unknown in arid Australia.² Members of the expedition included Charles Winnecke (1857–1902), “an explorer, surveyor and entrepreneur who acted as both agent and manager in assembling stores and transport”.³ Professor Edward Sterling (1848–1919), was the medical doctor and anthropologist. An anatomist and director of the South Australian Museum, Stirling plays a significant role in developing the academic culture at that institution and its associate South Australian Board for Anthropological Research (SABAR), the body responsible for the films discussed in the following chapter. The expedition’s botanist and palaeontologist, Professor Ralph Tate (1840–1901) from the University of Adelaide was then the current chairman of biology at the Australian Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS). He was assisted by ←20 | 21→J. A. Watt, a University of Sydney mineralogy graduate. Two naturalists and taxidermists were F. W. Belt, an Adelaide solicitor and G. A. Keartland, a Melbourne ornithologist, along with two prospectors, a camp cook and four camel drivers employed to tend the twenty-five camels.⁴ As well as meeting Gillen, Spencer also formed lasting friendships with mounted police officer C. E. Cowle⁵ and naturalist P. M. Bryne.⁶ With the help of a network of Aboriginal people, both contributed large numbers of zoological specimens and Aboriginal artefacts for Spencer’s research. Appointed to the expedition as the biologist and photographer, Spencer also developed a keen interest in researching Aboriginal material culture and social customs.⁷ Gillen’s occupation allowed him to develop friendly relations with the local Arrernte communities and the opportunity to accumulate more than a superficial knowledge of their culture and habits. He claimed knowledge of the Arrernte language but according to his biographer, John Mulvaney, the extent of his mastery must be considered within the context of his flamboyant personality.⁸ The fractious interpersonal relations between some members of the Horn expedition encouraged Spencer and Gillen to organise an expedition of their own. They decided to concentrate their efforts on more specific anthropological data gathering and began planning for an expedition to be undertaken in 1901.

      The Film

Spencer’s decision to include a Kinematograph camera as part of the expedition’s equipment was confirmed in correspondence with British Anthropologist Alfred Haddon. Haddon used a similar camera on his ←21 | 22→expedition to the Torres Strait Islands in 1898 and his enthusiasm verified for Spencer his decision to include this expensive equipment in their load.⁹ Titled Aboriginal Life in Central Australia (1901), from the handbills of the lectures, the films comprise a collection of the 150-foot (the length of the film stock) sequences collated by the National Film and Sound Archive. The survival of the footage is remarkable given that it was recorded on highly volatile nitrate film that can cause explosions when the fumes are allowed to build up in confined spaces.

The sections of unrestricted film footage used in this study are a compilation obtained from the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA)¹⁰ showing Arrernte men demonstrating a ceremonial dance. These scenes comprise the “Kurnara which is one of the ceremonial dances of the Intitchiuma or Rain making ceremony”¹¹ and the “Quatara Okraninna of Okilchia the sacred ceremony of the great snake of Okilchia” are only two of a dozen or so recordings.¹² Other scenes show their preparation for another ceremony as well as a dance performed by a group of Arrernte women, “called the Unintha”¹³ and further scenes include food preparation. Like many films made in the early twentieth century, filmmaking was conceived by Western filmmakers as making a record of human movement and activities, in a sense, an animated photograph. From John Mulvaney’s account of Spencer’s notes, it was clearly Spencer’s intention to make an accurate record of Arrernte ceremonies and activities.¹⁴

Spencer needed to develop ways of filming events to allow for the restrictions imposed by the Warwick Bioscope camera. One such consideration was the short length, 150 feet (3 minutes), of the film stock, ←22 | 23→which made long dance sequences (that sometimes lasted longer than 10 minutes) difficult to record because the film needed frequent changing.¹⁵ Film theorists, Arthur and Corinne Cantrill believed that Spencer became quite proficient at utilising the film stock so that the end of ceremonies would be included.¹⁶

Spencer was also hampered by the lack of a panning mechanism on the camera to record the entire area covered by the dance ceremonies. Gillen records their frustration and Spencer’s resignation at the dancers moving out of the field of vision wasting valuable film stock.¹⁷ Gillen also records how Spencer often staggered under the weight and bulk of the camera as they trudged over the hills to arrive at a secluded spot to film a ceremony.¹⁸ Added to this, the lack of operational instructions, specifically, how fast to crank the wheel that fed the film through its various sprockets inside the camera.¹⁹ At times the film became a tangled mess when it popped out of the complex pathway of sprocket feeds, resulting in fogging and loss of useful footage. At this time there were no sprocket holes on the film stock to help feed it through the sprockets in the camera. There were also problems with the focusing mechanisms and viewfinders that made shooting more of a hit-and-miss affair.²⁰ The heat and dry climatic conditions caused the wooden camera body to split and crack, leaking light and dust onto the film.²¹ To remedy this they enlisted Aboriginal technology, using resin and spinifex grasses to plug the gaps. It was a culmination of these difficulties that Spencer and Gillen believed would increase as they travelled further north to more humid and hotter climes, so they decided to use the entire 3,000 feet of film stock at Charlotte Waters.²² This decision satisfied Spencer and Gillen’s three considerations: it enabled them to capitalise on their ←23 | 24→friendly relations with the Arrernte, who allowed them to record their ceremonies;²³ it solved the technical problems that arose when using the camera in harsh conditions and; it allowed for greater ease in dispatching the film to Melbourne to be developed.²⁴

The serendipitous discovery of the films was made by filmmaker Ian Dunlop in 1966 when he was researching the history of ethnographic films