The admirably matter-of-fact, even slightly combative approach of this pioneering anthropological series from Granada Television is signalled at the very start of the first programme, A Clearing in the Forest: ‘Caracas, Venezeula. We are on our way to film a people whose way of life our civilization will slowly destroy,’ says the narrator. In this case the film was about the Panare Indians. Other names follow in subsequent programmes – the Cuiva, the Embera, the Mehinacu, the Maku, the Barasana – a litany of peoples, some down to their last hundreds, whose ways of life were being threatened by economic and religious expansion of dominant industrial and farming cultures. In these programmes, it is their experiences, lives and languages that are brought to the fore.
It is striking just how good these documentaries are, with incisive but sympathetic filming and bold editing getting us to the heart of a peoples’ situation. Courtesy of the anthropologists who enabled the programmes to be filmed, the series also addresses pertinent questions about their representation. This first volume collects 15 documentaries, initially broadcast between 1970 and 1975. They are a powerful and poignant reminder of the many ways lives and cultures continue to be destroyed.
Granada’s landmark anthropological series, broadcast over three decades, remains an extraordinary triumph of cutting-edge documentary making. A series of internationally acclaimed, award-winning films offer intimate portraits of remote communities such as the Cuiva, Embera and Panare Indians of Colombia, the nomadic Tuareg of the Sahara, the Kurdish Dervishes and the Meo of China, while highlighting the fragility of these ancient cultures – many of which had been squeezed to the point of extinction at the time of filming.
Developed from an idea by former World In Action producer Brian Moser, who had witnessed at first hand the relentless and rapid destruction of native Indian tribes in Latin America, Disappearing World displayed an unprecedented foregrounding of its subjects, who spoke freely about their lives and values in their own languages and were filmed engaged in daily activities. A generous budget and much freedom was granted to the production and research team, and the series’ constantly evolving presentation format also acknowledged current concerns and debates within the field about the portrayal of ‘primitive’ societies. The films were made easily accessible to schools and universities, and remain a valuable educational resource.
Disappearing World was groundbreaking television whose aim extended far beyond the remit of ‘serious’ or ‘educational’ programming required by the broadcasting strictures of the day, setting the standard for future investigative programming. This first volume collects 15 documentaries, initially broadcast between 1970 and 1975.
