Picturing the Primitive

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-vii

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2. Introduction

   1. Introduction

      • Assenka Oksiloff

      Pages 1-11

3. Filming the Primitive

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 13-13

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   2. The Body as Artifact

      • Assenka Oksiloff

      Pages 15-42

   3. The Evolution of Vision

      • Assenka Oksiloff

      Pages 43-69

   4. Paradise Lost

      • Assenka Oksiloff

      Pages 71-95

4. German Anthropology and Early Film Theory

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 97-97

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   2. Leo Frobenius and Kino-Vision

      • Assenka Oksiloff

      Pages 99-116

   3. Primitive Spectators

      • Assenka Oksiloff

      Pages 117-134

   4. The Visible Man

      • Assenka Oksiloff

      Pages 135-158

5. Conclusion: Documenting Primitive Cinema

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 159-159

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   2. Ethnotopia

      • Assenka Oksiloff

      Pages 161-177

6. Back Matter

   Pages 179-227

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Primitive Pictures explores the relationship between early German cinema and anthropology's fascination with 'primitive' cultures. At the core of this study is a mythic first contact between the camera and the non-Western body. The term that binds the two is the 'Primitive', referring both to cultures ostensibly existing outside of modern Time and also to a way of seeing the world via the lens. Asseka Oksiloff examines how the movie camera, with its capacity to record reality in a supposedly direct fashion, is legitimated by the primitive body in the first decades of the twentieth century. From the earliest research footage to popularized adventure footage, the film theory, the 'primitive' holds out the promise of a critical space that affirms modern, technological vision.

• 20. Jahrhundert
• 20th century
• anthropology
• culture
• ethnography
• fashion
• film
• Visual Culture

ASSEKA OKSILOFF is an Assistant Professor of German at New York University. She has written on modernist film and literary aesthetics, contemporary film, and romanticism. She is co-author of the critical anthology of early German romantic writings Theory as Practice.

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