【英文】全部旁白（画外音）：人类学/种族学纪录片的自我批判

Scarcely 20 years were enough to make two billion people define themselves as underdeveloped.

I do not intend to speak about, just speak nearby.

A film about what? A film on Senegal. But what in Senegal.

The Casamance, sun and palm, the part of Senegal where tourist settlements flourish.

In Anonpor, Andre Mongas says his name is listed in a tourist information book.

Above the entry of his house is a handwritten sign, which says 350 francs.

A flat anthropological fact.

In numerous days, woman is depicted as the one who posses the fire. Only she knew how to make fire. She kept it in the worst places. At the end of the stick she used to dig the ground with, for example, in her nails or in her fingers.

Reality is delicate. My irreality and imagination are otherwise there.

The habit of imposing a meaning to every single sign.

First create needs, then help.

Sitting underneath the thatch roof, which projects well beyond the front wall of his newly built house.

The Peace Corps volunteer nods at several villagers who stop by to chat with him. While they stoop down beside him and start talking he smiles blankly, a pair of headphones over his ears, and a Walkman Sony cassette player in his lap. “I teach the women how to grow vegetables in their yard.” “This will allow them to have an income”, he says. And hesitates before he concludes, “I am not always successful, but it’s the first time this has been introduced into the village.”

What can we expect from ethnology?

The land of the Serer people.

The land of the Mundang and the pearl of people.

“A film about what?”, my friends ask.

A film on Senegal. But what in Senegal? I feel less and less the need to express myself.

Is that something else I’ve lost? Something else I’ve lost.

Filming in Africa means for many of us, colorful images, naked breast women, exotic dances and fearful rides, the unusual. First create needs, then help. Ethnologists handle the camera the way they handle words, recuperate, collect it, preserve. The Baboon, the Bathery, the Bogo.

“What are your people called again?”, an ethnologist asked a fellow of his.

In numerous days, diversification at all cost.

Oral traditions thus gained a rank of written heritage.

Fireplace and woman’s face.

The pot is known as a universal symbol for the mother, the grandmother, the goddess.

Nudity does not reveal the hidden, it is its absence.

A man attending a slideshow on Africa turns to his wife and says with guilt in his voice, “I’ve seen some pornography tonight.”

Documentary, because reality is organized into an explanation of itself.

Every single detail is to be recorded. The man on the screen smiles at us, while the necklace he wears, the designs of the cloth he puts on, the stool he sits on are objectivity commented upon.

It has no eye, it records.

A fine layer of dust covers us from head to toe.

“When a sandstorm comes,” says a child, “we lay on our mat with our mother’s headscarf on our face and wait until it goes away.”

The omnipresent eye, scratching my hair or washing my face become a very special act. Watching her through the lens, I look at her becoming me, becoming mine. Entering into the only reality of signs, where myself am a sign.

The land of the Bathery and the pearl people.

Early in the morning a man is sitting with his little girl on his lap next to the circular stone hut, built after the mother of the Bathery house. A Catholic white sister comes up to him and blurts out, “It’s only seven AM, your little girl is not that sick.” “How many times have I told you our dispensary is closed on Sunday?” Come back on Monday. An Ethnologist and his wife gynecologist come back for two weeks to the village where they have done research in the past. He defines himself as a person who stay long, long enough in a village to study the culture of an ethnic group. Time, knowledge, and security. “If you haven’t stayed long enough in a place, you are not an ethnologist.”, he says. Late in the evening a circle of men gathers in front of the house where the ethnologist and his wife gynecologist stay. One of the villagers is telling a story. Another one is playing music on his improvised luth. The ethnologist is sleeping next to his switch on cassette recorder. He thinks he excludes personal values. He tries or believes so, but how can he be a Fulani? That’s objectivity.

Along the Senegal River, the land of the Serecule and Toucouleur people. I come with the idea that I would I say it’s the unusual by catching the person unawares. There are better ways to steal, I guess with the other’s consent. After seeing me laboring with the camera, women invited me to their place and asked me to film them. The habit of imposing every single sign.

For many of us the best way to be neutral and objective is to copy reality meticulously.

Speak about. About.

The eternal commentary that escorts images.

Stressing the observer’s objectivity circles around the object of curiosity, different views from different angles, the ABC of photography.

Creativity and objectivity seem to run into conflict.

The eager observer collects sample and has no time to reflect upon the media used.

What I see is life looking at me.

I am looking through a circle in a circle of looks.

115 degree Fahrenheit, I put on a hat, while laughters burst out behind me.

I haven’t seen any women wearing a hat.

Children, women and men come up to me claiming for gifts.

A van drives in the dust road greeted by another boisterous wave of children.

“Gift, gift!”, they all yell, while the car stops under the shade of a tree.

A group of tourists stepped out and immediately start distributing cheap candies.

Just speak nearby.

A woman comments on polygamy, “It’s good for men, not for us. We are accepted, owing to the force of circumstances. What about you, do you have a husband all for yourself?”

END.

compiled by Bob Chow