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| Then and now: David and Judith MacDougall with their son and neighbours in northern Turkana in the 1970s; and us, probably less then 50km away from the same place, 30 years later (when portraits were less formal)... |
God is a Liar, the film we made in Turkana in 2011, recently introduced us to David and Judith MacDougall, legendary ethnographic filmmakers who made three films in the 1970s called Turkana Conversations.
I say the film 'introduced us' to them because I've often heard it said that if you make a film, it takes on its own life and introduces you to people and places with or without your planning. God is a Liar has certainly done that over the years since we stumbled into making it!
We didn't know about the MacDougalls before or during our time in Turkana, but afterwards someone mentioned their Turkana past and we got in touch. They were by then in Canberra, with David teaching filmmaking at the Australian National University. We swapped films, and then excited email reflections on what had changed and what had stayed the same. I remember David and Judith were surprised to see how few women still wore traditional hide clothes by the time of our stay, but we were all struck by uncanny likenesses in the mannerisms of leading Turkana men 30 years apart.
Now that we too are in Australia, we finally managed to meet in person for a longer conversation. What an absolute privilege that was! We shared plenty of field memories that came rushing back, and Frederic and I gaped at their tales of Turkana filmmaking 70s style. They each wore a kind of exoskeleton frame bearing camera and sound equipment (David and Judith respectively), and they stored miles and miles of new and exposed film rolls in two unreliable paraffin fridges that needed constant attention to stay alive in their desert home. It's almost embarrassing how light footed we were by comparison. As a sign of how quickly those weighty days have been forgotten, one of David and Judith's students saw an old film container in their office and remarked in surprise, 'Why do you have such tiny tupperwares?'
