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Returning Footage to the Himalayas

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Returning Footage to the Himalayas VF50.qxd 28/02/2003 11:17 Page 10 Feature Returning Footage to the Himalayas Over the New Year, two members of the Digital Himalaya project team travelled to remote parts of Nepal and on to Gangtok, the capital of the state of Sikkim in north-east India, to return footage shot between the 1930s and 1960s. Mark Turin and Sara Shneiderman describe and document the process. ‘It’s as if our life span has been doubled’ the system, creating a dynamic tool for parts of Burma, principally collected by said Rinchen Lhamo, a 65-year old comparative research. five different anthropologists and grandmother from the village of Lubra, travellers. These materials were com- Mustang district, Nepal, after she Collections piled as an analogue videodisc in the watched digitised 16mm footage of her The five collections involved in the first 1980s, and included some 10,000 mother in 1962 on a portable DVD phase of the project make use of a wide photographs, a large number of film and player. ‘How could I ever expect to see range of original recording media and sound clips, and original fieldwork her face again?’ she continued, echoing were chosen for their historical value diaries and notes in an associated the delight and surprise of many and their coverage of diverse geo- database. The videodisc is now prac- villagers as they viewed this historic graphical areas and ethnic peoples of the tically obsolete, and we hope to re- footage of their region and relatives for Himalayan region: release it in a digital format. the very first time. This event was the 4. Thak Archive: materials from a initiative of Digital Himalaya, a pilot 1. Williamson Photographic Archive: study of the Gurung village of Thak, project to develop digital collection, 1,700 photographs taken between 1930 central Nepal, including over 100 hours archiving, and distribution strategies for and 1935 by the British Political Officer of film, more than 3,000 photographs, multimedia anthropological informa- Frederick Williamson in Tibet, Sikkim and continuous censuses and fieldnotes tion from the Himalayan region. and Bhutan. Williamson’s collection is covering the period 1968 to the present, now held in the Museum of Archae- collected by Alan Macfarlane and Sarah ology and Anthropology at the Univer- Harrison. sity of Cambridge, and includes a 5. Thangmi Archive: digital video, number of rare historic images. photographs and ethnographic data 2. Fürer-Haimendorf Film Collec- from the Thangmi communities of tion: over 100 hours of 16mm film from Dolakha and Sindhupalcok districts in various parts of the central and eastern north-east Nepal collected by Mark Himalayas filmed between 1936 and Turin and Sara Shneiderman from 1996 1980 by Christoph von Fürer-Haimen- to the present. dorf, Professor of Anthropology at Of the above five collections, three SOAS. The films are supplemented by are finite, historical resources, while the Digital Himalaya Haimendorf’s detailed field diaries. latter two are collections that continue A still from the 1962 cine reel taken by Professor Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf 3. Naga Videodisc: part of Haimen- to grow. Depending on the success of showing local women dancing in their finery. dorf’s film archive overlaps with a large this initial phase, the project may ethnographic collection relating to the expand to include other high quality Based at the University of Cam- Naga peoples of north-eastern India and archives. bridge, the project began in December 2000. The initial phase involves digi- tising a set of existing ethnographic archives comprised of photographs, films, sound recordings, fieldnotes, and texts collected by anthropologists and travellers in Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Indian Himalayas from the begin- ning of the 20th century to the present. The project has three long-term objectives: (a) to preserve in a digital medium valuable ethnographic mater- ials that are degenerating in their current forms; (b) to make these resources available in a searchable digital format to scholars and the Himalayan com- munities from which the materials were collected; and (c) to develop a template for collaborative digital cataloguing that will allow users to contribute documen- Sienna Craig tation to existing collections and Sara Shneiderman introducing the Digital Himalaya project to the villagers of Lubra, eventually link their own collections to December 2002. British Universities Film & Video Council 10 No 50, March 2003 www.bufvc.ac.uk VF50.qxd 28/02/2003 11:17 Page 11 Feature choosing the format which will afford the widest range of people the most efficient and inexpensive access to these resources over time is not a simple proposition. We must consider the needs and priorities of each target audience, and create a flexible and adaptable system with multiple layers and entry points. If more than a few token members of the Himalayan communi- ties from which the material originated are to have access to this visual docu- mentation of their history, the multiple obstacles of illiteracy, unwritten lan- guages and poor technical infrastructure must be overcome. At the same time, in order for researchers to find the archive useful as a comparative resource, effective search and retrieval tech- niques, detailed documentation and high resolution images must be incor- porated. The challenge here is not so much in bridging the gap between Asia Sara ShneidermanSara and Europe, but rather that between From left, Mr. Khendzong Yapla and his mother recognise relatives from the Williamson collection educated, English-speaking computer dating back to the 1930s. users in urban centres like Kathmandu, Delhi or London, and their rural Technologies and Methodologies computer, is an option which bypasses counterparts, who often do not have the Each of the three aspects of the project some of the pitfalls outlined above. An education or facilities to make use of requires a different set of technologies. archive in DVD format would provide new technologies. Bridging this divide Digitisation is naturally the first step: access to non-literate and less advanced has been a central problem for ethno- scanning photographic prints, nega- users by offering limited interactivity graphic studies published in other tives, and slides, creating digital master together with high quality playable mediums: books published in English copies of film and video through content making use of voiceovers in have remained inaccessible to the non- telecine transfer and other analogue-to- local languages. With the advent of English speaking communities which digital conversion processes, and small battery-operated DVD-Video they describe. Digital technologies storing these masters in high resolution players, it is possible to play DVDs in provide unprecedented capabilities for digital formats. The second step is data areas with no infrastructure or elec- transporting and displaying large management and interface design, to tricity supply. Local groups could attend amounts of visual ethnographic which we will return shortly. The third demonstrations to watch film footage material. Only by dismantling the step concerns questions of storage and and listen to voiceovers on a battery- existing ‘digital divide’ can new distribution: should all of the materials operated DVD player. The widespread technologies surmount the communi- be available over the internet? Should distribution of single DVDs is limited, cation barriers which often frustrate the we use DVD? How will different users however, and in addition, the pace of ethnographic endeavour. respond to each format? Furthermore, technological development suggests we must think ahead to ensure that the that in its current form, DVD has a Consent and Confidentiality digital format in which we archive films limited life-span, making it a risky Whether online or on DVD, issues of and photographs can be easily migrated choice as a long-term archival medium. confidentiality and consent remain to new platforms as technologies Technology is now developing and central to the construction of an archive develop, and thus avoid the problems of changing at an unprecedented rate, and such as ours. While copyright clearance obsolescence that have plagued prev- has been received for the materials in the ious ethnographic archiving projects initial collections, privacy and protec- such as the Naga Videodisc. tion for the individuals appearing in the Broadband internet offers ways of photographs and films are of serious making archives available to a geog- concern. The potential problems are raphically diverse audience. In large heightened by the immediacy and lack parts of the West, however, and certainly of anonymity inherent in visual in the Himalayan region, the bandwidth representation, and the fact that many of necessary to transfer large digital files the images originated in generations with comfort is still unavailable. Even if past when mass distribution of visual the appropriate hardware and software information was inconceivable. Al- were soon put in place, many of those though anthropologists may have been who might like to view images of their certain that the people they filmed or own communities are not literate in photographed consented to these English or familiar with the basic activities at the time, the advent of the computing concepts needed to search digital age threatens previous under- an online database. While Digital standings of ‘informed consent’. When Himalaya continues to investigate the Fürer-Haimendorf first travelled to use
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