Indigeneity on Display: Ethnographic Adventure Film in Amazonia

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.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Material Culture and Public Humanities

Department dc:contributor.department

Material Culture and Public Humanities

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2017

Author dc:creator

• Attridge, Jeffrey Nathaniel

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Ansell, Aaron

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Winling, LaDale C.
• Cline, David P.

• Cultural Anthropology
• Latin American Studies
• Visual Anthropology
• Museum Studies

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

vt_gsexam:11856

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/77691