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In 1966, Sol Worth, John Adair and Richard Chalfen traveled to Pine Springs, Arizona, where they taught a group of Navajo students to make documentary films. Their students were Mike Anderson, Al Clah, Susie Benally, Johnny Nelson, Mary Jane Tsosie and Maxine Tsosie and later Susie Benally’s mother, Alta Kahn.
Navajos Film Themselves is a series of seven short documentary films which show scenes of life on the Navajo Nation. It was added to the United States National Film Registry in 2002.
- The Bio-Documentary
- An Anthropological Perspective
- Film & Language
- Communication & The Transfer of Technology
- Navajo Agency
Worth and Adair used a method of filmmaking which Worth designated “bio-documentary.” In Through Navajo Eyes, the researchers describe the method: Worth had used this method to teach film-making to “eleven- to fourteen-year-old Negro dropouts in Philadelphia and college students in a school of communication” (2) He also used this method with “young...
In his proposal to the National Science Foundation (NSF), Worth sited Malinowski’s idea that “The final goal of which an ethnographer should never lose sight…is, briefly, to grasp the native’s point of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision of his world (4).” In the proposal, Worth explained that the discipline of anthropology, and espec...
However, as the researchers also explained in Through Navajo Eyes, “the purpose of our work was not only to find out about the Navajo. We chose the Navajo precisely because much is known about them…We were interested in studying the general nature of the cognitive processes involved in film use within specific cultural contexts” (9). In terms of fi...
Why were Worth and Adair so interested in the the ways that people in different cultures worked with film? Worth came from a background in communication, and it seems that his true research interest had to do with the potential for teaching communication technology across cultures. Early on in the study, the researchers were uncertain that they wou...
While it seems that Worth and Adair were primarily concerned with the research goals mentioned above, they also emphasized, especially in their conversations with the Navajo people themselves, their goal to give agency to a people who had historically been subject to the anthropological gaze. In his field journal, Worth wrote, In his speech address...
They wanted to make a film about traditional Navajo culture in the hopes of learning more about it themselves. Mary Jane was 21 at the time of the project, and Maxine was 17. Note that the title screen of the film actually reads “Spirit of Navajos” but this title was changed in all of the materials by Worth thereafter.
Navajo Film Themselves is a series of seven short documentaries: Intrepid Shadows (1966), The Navajo Silversmith (1966), A Navajo Weaver (1966), Old Antelope Lake (1966), Second Weaver (1966), The Shallow Well Project (1966), and The Spirit of the Navajos (1966).
- Alfred Clah
Jan 12, 2020 · In the film Al Clah attempts to reconcile the Western notion of God with his traditional Navajo notion of gods. In 1966, six Diné (Navajo) students in Pine Springs, Arizona, learned 16mm filmmaking from communications professor Sol Worth and anthropologist John Adair.
Oct 25, 2014 · In 1966, communications scholar Sol Worth and anthropologist Peter Adair undertook a project to impart documentary filmmaking skills to Navajo people. The resulting works have been debated as to what they reveal about Native perspectives, but are now regarded as canonical works of visual anthropology, and stand as early glimpses of ...
