Commitment

Back when I was a 25-year-old film student and agreed with Hopi James Danaqyumptewa to help him and the Hopi elders to make their own film, I didn’t know what sort of adventure I was setting myself up for and what a lasting impression it would leave on me – to this day.

I met Danaqyumptewa for the first time in 1986 when he was on trip to Europe as a representative of the Hopi, in order to fight for the independence of his people at the UN in Geneva and the International Court of Justice in The Hague. We were brought together by a shared friend, Swiss artist Agnes Barmettler, because James was looking for someone who could re-edit his Super 8 film roll for his hearing. I edited together his footage like he wanted it, saw his Super 8 images of political campaigns and ceremonies for the first time and immediately fell under the spell of these special documents. For Danaqyumptewa, this was the start of the trust he placed in me – he had finally found the right person to film his mission after many years of futile attempts. Since, almost 20 years earlier, he had been asked by the Hopi elders to make a film by and for the Hopi. Yet up until that point, all of the filmmakers he’d asked had ended up making a film of their own. I agreed to do it relatively spontaneously. It sounded like an adventure and as Agnes knew the Hopi, I would have a friend by my side for support. Our agreement was as follows: the Hopi would determine the content of the film 100%, with Danaqyumptewa conducting all interviews and deciding which excepts were to be used and their order, while we would have a free hand with the creative implementation. As the filmmaker, my task was to write a film concept based on the things he told me. My sister Rachel Schmid took on the function of producer, as we ultimately didn’t want any production company interfering. Thanks to German and Swiss funding, two years later we were actually able to start making the film.

I thought I was just going to travel to the USA for six months, but this extraordinary work also demanded extraordinary dedication, as I was repeatedly challenged in radical fashion to really capture the “inside perspective” of the Hopi on film. I thus couldn’t just go and shoot for six weeks with a film team, but rather had to live a whole year there in order to be able to experience up close the Hopi’s attitude to life and how they conceived the world based on the seasons, and also to document this at the same time based on their farming methods.

For our cinematic collaboration, Danaqyumptewa needed to accompany the entire working process, observe his religious obligations and carry out his work as a Hopi farmer, which meant we had to create the corresponding conditions on location. We had thus set up a film workshop for editing that was outside the Hopi reserve, as in our village of Hotevilla there were neither electricity nor running water. (The reasons for this are explained in TECHQUA IKACHI, LAND - MEIN LEBEN with Super 8 footage and testimonies.) So we regularly went back and forth between our film workshop in Flagstaff and the Hopi village of Hotevilla, and worked together both on the film as well as in the fields. Being physically involved in such concrete fashion helped me gain an internal understanding from which to film the footage.

All too often, the Hopi have had to experience that music has been mixed at random in films showing their ritual dances, and that even music from other Indigenous groups was added.

The obligation to help the Hopi make their own film didn’t just demand leaving the final decisions to Danaqyumptewa in terms of content, but also finding a suitable narrative form for the Hopi’s specific form of oral tradition. For this reason, the film’s narrative structure follows the “logic” of the Hopi, which always begins at the start of the world of today, that is, the ascent from the third world into today’s fourth one. From our perspective, we describe this as mythology, while for our Hopi co-director it is as much historical reality as the testimonies of the elders about their mistreatment in American prisons.

A clear initial concession was to completely avoid any sort of explanatory commentary for outsiders. This was sometimes painful to me, as I found out a lot of fascinating background knowledge in my many conversations with Danaqyumptewa and his family that I would have liked to pass on. At the same time, it was always clear to me that this was exactly where the significance and strength of the film lie. The Hopi alone determine what they want to narrate and pass on and what not to. For this reason, there are no explanations in the entire ceremonial cycle and the only songs to be translated are the ones that the coming Hopi generations also have to understand. Yet even without words, it is a gift for us that we can even see these ceremonies – similar to staying in Hopiland as a guest. Danaqyumptewa worked with great precision during the editing of the ceremonial cycle so that the order was correct and his sound recordings could be combined with exact Super 8 images. All too often, the Hopi have had to experience that music has been mixed at random in films showing their ritual dances, and that even music from other Indigenous groups was added.

After a year of intensive collaboration, the rough cut was competed. Before we left, all the Hopi involved came to watch the film at the editing table to give it their approval. With visible joy, all the elders voted for it to be released – also to the great relief of Danaqyumptewa, who had carried a great responsibility for the realisation of this Hopi document over many years.

Afterwards, I did the fine edit in Berlin with editor Inge Schneider, which meant we edited the images and inserted the historical photos without changing a single word. Then Danaqyumptewa and Agnes joined us again to make the very last tweaks. But he soon had to return to take part in ceremonies at home. For the first public screening of TECHQUA IKACHI, LAND - MEIN LEBEN on July 6, 1989, Danaqyumptewa came back to Berlin with his daughter and granddaughter. Now, 35 years later, the Hopi film has been digitally restored thanks to the film heritage funding programme. This fills my heart with happiness, not just because the images now shine once again, images that have in the meantime been streamed 60,000 times on YouTube in poor VHS quality, but because the wish of the Hopi elders for their own film is being fulfilled for a second time. An important document of Native American history is being transferred into the digital world and can find a new audience in first-class quality. And looking back, I recognise how brave and radical I was as a young filmmaker and that it was only thanks to my absolute commitment that the Hopi film was able to be made in this extraordinary way.

Anka Schmid
Translation: James Lattimer