Schamanen im Blinden Land

At the end of the 70s, ethnologist Michael Oppitz travelled three times to the Magar people of Nepal in order to carry out research on their form of shamanism. Accompanied by a small film team, he discovered that the camera was the ideal companion for the holy grail of ethnology, field research. After spending three months in the Himalayas with the Magar each time, the team then waited in Kathmandu for the 16mm footage, which had been sent to New York to be developed. The nearly four-hour film was edited together from 35 hours of material. Oppitz referred to this work with the material as “ethnography in the dark room”, although the film footage served him first and foremost as a research aid. But the term research aid comes across as a considerable understatement when describing this film. It wasn’t not just its treatment of the subject, but also its precision, feeling for rhythm and careful approach to language that soon made it into a classic of visual anthropology. SCHAMANEN IM BLINDEN LAND showed at the Berlinale Forum in 1981 and in a restored digital version in 2014. (Anna Hoffmann)