Between 1925 and 2000 several documentary films were made about the Bushmen people of southern Africa. This book is the first study of this film genre, `Bushmanology’, bringing together two areas of important scholarship: the use of film as a source for the writing of history, and the history and mythologising of hunter-gatherer societies in southern Africa.
Critiquing several film `visualisations’ of Bushman cultures, documentary films aimed at international distriurbtion for a general audience, the author shows how these films have framed the Bushmen as mythically pristine hunter-gatherers, to varying degrees. Whether reinforcing or challenging this myth, these films reflect changing racial discourses, perceptions of the African environment and landscape by the West, theoretical debates, a shift in the approach to anthropology and history on film, and the changing significance of aboriginal people in nation states. The author argues that the status of the documentary film as more truthful, more investigative, than fiction film requires careful analysis by historians, and that understanding the power of film to define perceptions of indigenous peoples is an important step in defending and defining the place of such groups in our increasingly globalised world.
Recommended for: Scholars of film and film-making, African Studies, anthropology, southern African history, and historiography.
- ISBN13 9781775820734
- Publish Date 30 November 2014
- Publish Status Unknown
- Publish Country ZA
- Publisher Juta Academic
- Imprint University of Cape Town Press
- Format Paperback
- Pages 240
- Language English