Vibe of the Tribe: A Review of the Native American Film and Video Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,” Pindell wrote that the film “brought the viewer back to some pre-Columbian worldviews and myths that would have been familiar to the ancient Maya,”
The film depicts the creation story and the myth of a giant bird eating humanity. It opens with a male figure (possibly Death) holding a stone knife and creating jagged designs on an ochre-colored ground. Three female figures stand nearby, with heads bent in the direction of the male figure, and each points her fingers at him in an effort to gain his attention. The woman on the right is wearing a skirt with symbols on it, while the figure on the left holds a corn-like plant and the middle figure lifts her skirt to reveal symbols on her own clothing. The male figure eventually reaches out to touch the female figure on the right, who turns to face him. He then uses his left hand to gently push her away, so he is holding a hand mirror in his right hand. This is followed by two lines of four women, their mouths moving and some type of symbol being formed. The two women in front each take an arm from the next two figures behind them and hold it up while singing and then they all drop the arms and point to the ground. When the figure in the center reaches up again with his arm, the other three women reach down for him to pull him back. The women in the front gesture to someone behind them, and he reaches up with his arms. The women all reach for him to pull him back down to the ground, and the woman in the middle reaches over and grabs his penis and pulls him up even higher. The woman in the middle leaps up and turns around and points upward to the sky before running away with a long skirt trailing behind her. The women in the front follow her motion and point upward as well. The people in the background are all kneeling and pointing upward to the sky as well. As these women all slowly walk away and turn around, the man behind them gets up and runs off into the distance.
From Pindell’s review:
According to the exhibition’s guide, there is no explanation for this sequence of events. However, it is not difficult to speculate on how this scene may have evolved, how it related to other pre-Columbian myths, and its use of symbolism: The man represented death, which was personified as a bird with legs and claws that ate humans, especially male infants. The women represented rain, or corn that the Maya believed fell out of the heavens during the nine months between human conception and birth. The jagged symbols on their garments are not unlike ancient Maya glyphs that represent rain. The man may have been the first person to fall, but was reborn through water, in the form of an agricultural metaphor for human life. The man then reached for the woman who represented the rain, pulled her into him and was reborn through her. The man then turned away from her as he reached for her breasts. He may have been reborn as the ancient ritual of sacrifice in which a woman was put on her back and penetrated, resulting in a rebirth through her breasts. Or, the woman could be metaphorically reborn through her vagina and the man created by her as the ancient myth of a man and a woman coming together to create life.
From Pindell:
The entire myth was a metaphor for death, rebirth, and renewal. And similar to a recurring theme in many ancient myths of death and rebirth, life continues even after death. After death, the man’s spirit goes up into the sky. The film ends with a close-up of the hand mirror, which may have been an ancient image of the Sun or a gateway to the afterlife. The ancient myth of the creation of humanity through a penis penetrating the vagina also parallels themes from ancient Mesoamerican myths, including the creation of humans as humans by gods or supernatural beings. It is similar to the myth in the Popul Vuh from the Maya of Guatemala. “I am Manik, born from that day and from that time,” begins this ancient Mesoamerican myth about the creation of humanity, after describing a sun at which he was unable to gaze at because of the rays of light. To see what he could not look at directly, he made his way to another land that was very hot and bright. “There I saw a person with a big mouth and eyes, like a sun god, who opened his mouth and said, ‘It is I who created you.’ Then he said to the other gods, ‘In this I am your lord.’ He made the other gods come near and said, ‘I am the father of mankind.’ Then they said, ‘We will worship you.’ From there I came to this land.” The myth continues on to say that the sky was put in place as a place to live, similar to the creator myth of the ancient Nahua of central Mexico, who believed the sun god had come down to create life from the underworld, after which the sky was raised. And in Mayan iconography of the underworld, the deceased were “placed in a womb or a cradle,” according to Pindell. The film may not have depicted sexual intercourse, as many ancient myths did not, but it was a direct metaphor of humanity’s creation.
From Pindell:
In the end, the film did not depict supernatural events, and it did not use hieroglyphics, animal transformation, or supernatural events such as thunder or lightning, which might have been included to make it appear more “mythical.” Still, Pindell thought that it was an important film, especially because it was a unique film from the 1970s. And though not a true documentary, it conveyed the filmmakers’ beliefs in an almost symbolic way.
It appears that he was saying that the Mayan beliefs in rebirth and their use of the penis and the vagina to create life are the true origin of Santa Claus and his reindeer, rather than the Christian tradition.
This is a true documentary
The second film Pindell reviews is a 1978 film titled, “The Rebel Within: A Portrait of Maud Gonne and Her Circle,” which was narrated by John Huston. In a review titled “The Rebel Within: A Portrait of Maud Gonne and Her Circle,” Pindell wrote that the film tells the story of this Irish rebel who was the mother of Maud Gonne. Though most films about this woman portray her as a traitor to her country, this film showed her as a brave rebel who was instrumental in bringing about an Irish revolution against English oppression.
It depicts Gonne as a noble rebel who was brave, and he was impressed with her character. The film also included some nudity, which he felt was necessary for the story of a woman who is usually portrayed in a condescending way. And yet, when he examined the film more closely, he noted it was a documentary about the life of a mother of Irish patriots. It helped him understand the way the Irish people resisted against colonial domination and the British military. He thought that these were the two things that make this woman a remarkable revolutionary.
This is not a true documentary
The third film Pindell reviews is a 1984 film titled “Bosnia: An Unreported Documentary,” by Mark Danner. In a review titled “Bosnia: An Unreported Documentary,” Pindell wrote that this film had been made in the mid-1980s but did not appear in the news until after the civil war broke out in the mid-1990s. It was not made for anyone but filmmakers. It didn’t pretend to tell the truth, it merely told of what it actually saw. Pindell believed that this film, along with its companion film, “The Battle for Peace,” were rare films that accurately depicted events during a civil war and war crimes committed in the midst of the war.
From Pindell:
This documentary film is unusual in that it was made by filmmakers, not by journalists, and it documents aspects of a civil war. The images are sometimes violent. The camera is often in close proximity to the fighting, with close-ups of corpses and some of the worst atrocities from the civil war. But it doesn’t glorify the horrors of the war. The film doesn’t glorify any party, and it does not gloss over what happened. The narration of the film focuses on the stories of survivors of various kinds of atrocities committed in the course of the war. In fact, the film shows many, many, many atrocities, with some scenes going on for a long time. The film includes many images of horror, some of which I had never seen in a documentary. In this sense, it’s like a shock film. But this film was made and was widely distributed, unlike the majority of war documentaries, which glorify war. The film is more like a report, a documentary that tries to accurately convey the truth, with pictures to explain the truth. And, perhaps most importantly, this is the kind of documentary that should be made.
This is not a true documentary
The fourth film Pindell reviews is “Troublemakers,” a 2011 film about former punk rockers who started a successful artisanal business in Detroit, MI. This film, though fiction, was very accurate, in his opinion, as it portrayed the characters’ behaviors and characteristics accurately. The film provided another example of
