Astra Film

Most anthropologists, like many other intellectuals, have traditionally taken a rather sniffy attitude towards television, the most popular medium of information and entertainment in our age. But this standoffishness is peculiar from a profession whose proclaimed task is the study of human unity in diversity and diversity in unity. If one of the sacred tasks of television is to allow the public circulation and airing of the ever greater diversity of cultural, social and ideological currents in our societies, then surely anthropology has a role to play?

What kind of compromises have to be endured by a filmmaker? What are the challenges faced when bringing an erudite and complex understanding into a populist medium? And still, what sorts of opportunities arise?

There is no better person explore the answers to these questions than Michael Yorke, award winning film maker and anthropologist. After a hugely successful career as a professional photographer, Michael began formal anthropological training and fieldwork among a tribal population in India (PhD at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, “Decisions and analogy: political structure and discourse among the Ho tribals of India,” in 1976). Since then he has spent the past twenty five years producing nearly a film a year for transmission on British Television.

Michael is well aware that his latest career has taken him away from the ‘cannon’ of anthropological film making strictu sensu. Commissioning editors demand ‘urgency’ from the films they show and not all the films that are worth making demand our attention for that sort of reason. But Michael Yorke has found a way to meet some of the demands of both worlds, or to find a space where both worlds can meet. From his early acclaimed film Dossers on London’s homeless – this was made at a time of huge economic upheaval and welfare reform when a veritable tent city with over a thousand inhabitants had taken over one of the most beautiful squares in the heart of the legal establishment near the city – through to his most spectacular venture, the Kumb Mehla series on Channel 4 which brought the largest religious festival on the planet into the homes of millions of British viewers, he has demonstrated that ability to explore the leanings of the hearts of others that is at the heart of any anthropological project. In the portrait program we will present his film Dust and Ashes about the Kumb Mehla, made for BBC2 series, "Under the Sun". One of his most succesful films made for BBC in India is the award winning Eunuchs: India's third gender (and it will also be screened in this portrait program).  As a producer/director of BBC documentaries about remote cultures he has tried to do what many professional anthropologists do in their work: try to understand and to describe, and to present a culture in a complex way. His work has reached audiences that most academics cannot even dream of approaching directly.

British television today is in a desperate condition and in blind, panicked retreat from its historic mission to provide a springboard for the kind of complex, surprising and troubling material that is the basis for serious public deliberation in a democracy.
Michael has, like many others, found a sanctuary from this increasingly absurd and self-parodic world, and has started making independent documentary films (his latest film Holy Man and fools represents this new direction of his work in our program). Talking about this film he explained that he tried to be free of the constraints that arise from having to entertain a mass audience; "this would allow me to do what I truly want to do: to give a voice to indigenous people". At the same time he is teaching a new generation of young would-be film markers the skills of classic documentary production, most recently at a Marie Curie and Sony sponsored event in Astra Film Studio, Sibiu. The huge demand for such courses offers some hope for the future of television when the current generation of commissioning editors, who have in brief - with only one or two precious exceptions - sold their soul to the devil, are replaced by younger stars hungry to renew a media that sustains public life and not private envy and desire.

Television is made by program and film makers. At a time when there is both a far greater access to the means of production of film and a far narrower understanding of ‘what goes’ among television managers and editors it is worth to pause and consider how one generation of film makers shaped the medium.