This paper seeks to explore the early twentieth century trend of ethnographic adventure filmmaking. A subgenre of the ethnographic film, these works blended ethnographic observations with scripted and staged adventure stories, advancing popular tropes of indigenous first contact and the superiority of Western civilization. Focusing on a 1931 expedition to the Amazon which resulted in the creation of the first sync-sound ethnographic adventure film, titled Matto Grosso: The Great Brazilian Wilderness, I argue that despite flaws in its conception, production, and media coverage, this film serves as an example of how non-academic sources of knowledge production can still create important primary documents for indigenous source communities. / Master of Arts / This paper examines the history and importance of ethnographic adventure films. Ethnographic adventure films, which were especially popular during the 1920s and 1930s, were a type of film that mixed scientific study with fictionalized accounts of adventure and romance in order to capture the attention of general audiences. I am particularly interested in the role that museums played in producing these films, as there appears to be a history of mutually beneficial collaborations between them and filmmakers; museums received valuable scientific material (especially plant and animal specimens) and access to remote locations, while filmmakers received institutional funding and an air of scientific legitimacy that impressed their audiences. Throughout this paper I explore a 1931 expedition to the Mato Grosso region of Brazil, an area covered mostly by the Amazon Rainforest, which resulted in the creation of an ethnographic adventure film titled <i>Matto Grosso: The Great Brazilian Wilderness</i>. Building off of research done by scholars such as Kate Pourshariati and Alessandro Pezzati, among other, I argue that this expedition serves as an example of how a commercial enterprise can serve a dual, unintended purpose as a source of remembrance and cultural heritage for indigenous communities.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/77691 |
| Date | 18 May 2017 |
| Creators | Attridge, Jeffrey Nathaniel |
| Contributors | Material Culture and Public Humanities, Ansell, Aaron, Winling, LaDale C., Cline, David P. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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