A film made as part of a Fejos Fellowship in Ethnographic Film, funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation (2017).
Herding communities in Mongolia treat themselves and their herd animals with medicines derived from different species of plant, animal or mineral. This multispecies-based ethnographic film engages with Mongolian herders’ knowledge and perceptions in relation to other species. This documentary was filmed within the two separate homelands (or nutag) of Ganbaa and Nara, in spring and again in autumn. Ganbaa drives in Ulaanbaatar for a living but travels with the filmmaker to reconnect with his extended family and friends; while Nara lives in a herding encampment during the warmer months. The film conveys how medicinal knowledge is actively passed on through forms of mentorship and everyday application within their extended kinship networks. In spring the herders’ focus is on the birth of newborn animals and boosting immunity, occasionally through bloodletting, but often through the use of plant or animal species in order to prevent illness; while in autumn the focus is on collecting medicinal herbs from the mountainsides, while preparing hay for the long, harsh winter months.
A still from 'Two Seasons'. Here two herding women describe the different medicinal herbs they are collecting in autumn.
While filming, we stopped for a break. The elder Dogsom described how he would use the tree he was resting on to sit and wait for wolves while out hunting.
Ganbaatar, driver and poet, knowledgeable elder Dogsom, a neighbouring herder and Shijiree, field interpreter, after collecting medicinal herbs and a marmot hunt.
Natasha is currently undertaking an environmental audiovisual project relating to the people who knew the environmental philosopher Val Plumwood, the connection with Plumwood Mountain as a place and the ecology of the remarkable Plumwood tree.
See related photo essays at:
Jackie French is well known in Australia as a prolific book author, probably most recognised for her children's book 'Diary of a Wombat'. Jackie and the environmental philosopher Val Plumwood shared a deep connection with one another through their mutual love of the bush, wombats, gardening and philosophy. Jackie knew Val better than most, sustaining an often fractious friendship that spanned decades. In a conversation with Natasha Fijn and George Main, who both knew Val through academia, Jackie relates stories from when she and Val first met and how they first related to one another.
Natasha published a photo essay for Landscapes: the journal for the international centre for landscape and language. The essay is entitled 'A Shadow Place: Plumwood Mountain' to indicate how bushland just off main arterial highways tends to be forgotten in the drive to speed from one destination to another.
The essay can be downloaded here from the Landscapes Journal site:
Natasha published a photo essay with Plumwood Mountain: an Australian journal of ecopoetry and ecopoetics entitled 'Impact on the Kings Highway' (2015). The dangerous Kings Highway passes by the entrance to the track leading up to Plumwood Mountain.
See: https://plumwoodmountain.com/photo-essay-by-natasha-fijn/
'Yolngu Homeland' is about Garrthalala as a place and how the Yolngu community who live there are connected with other beings, including ancestral beings, animals and plants. Aboriginal people have lived in Arnhem Land for over 45,000 years, which means that over time they have developed a deep, spiritual connection to the land. Totemic beings of significance include the saltwater crocodile, sugarbag (including stingless bees), crows, dogs and dingoes, crabs, sea eagles, turtles, and yams. Homeland communities are increasingly under threat from a lack of financial support and investment into housing infrastructure from the Australian government with a push for Yolngu to move into town centres, despite the fact that the quality of life on outstations is significantly better in terms of both mental and physical health. Unlike the negative portrayal of Aboriginal communities in the mainstream Australian media, the intention of this film is to show a positive side to a homeland community (in the tradition of Ian Dunlop and the Yirrkala Film Project) and how living on homelands are a means of maintaining a connection to Country and a unique way of life.
Yolngu Homeland (58 mins, 2015) is distributed by Ronin Films. Link to the Ronin Films site to order the film: http://www.roninfilms.com.au/feature/12665/yolngu-homeland.html
Here is the trailer for Yolngu Homeland. Distributed by Ronin Films, 2015.
In 1954 a missionary residing in Flores Indonesia, Father Verhoeven, discovered a 3-4000 year-old skeleton and evidence of human occupation at a rock shelter. The site had been lost to archaeology for forty years until local people revealed the location to a joint team of anthropologists and archaeologists. Locals had previously uncovered bones and were keen to show the scientific team where they had found them and to have them identified. The Indonesian archaeologists had previously discovered Homo floresiensis, or The Hobbit, in other caves on the island of Flores. The discovery of these new caves holds the potential for the discovery of more remarkable finds.
This video was part of a larger project where a joint team of anthropologists and archaeologists traveled to Flores in Indonesia to research ethnographic accounts of another kind of hominid (potentially Homo floresiensis, or The Hobbit) living in caves into historic times.
Prof. Deborah Bird Rose states:
"Natasha Fijn and I worked together to produce a film that communicates some of the joy and beauty of flying fox life, as well as discussing many of the perils. Following Flying Foxes tells three short stories, each of which offers insight into flying foxes, the people who rescue, care for, and defend them, and some of the perils they face in life. Natasha describes her approach to film this way: ‘I have a background in wildlife filmmaking but my approach to filmmaking is more observational in style, employing principles and ethics of ethnographic filmmaking. Just as academia has tended to focus exclusively on humans, or animals, but not both, this is also the case with filmmaking. My aim is to draw techniques from both wildlife and ethnographic filmmaking genres to make observational films, which include both humans and other animals as active participants in the film."
See this short piece by Deborah Bird Rose in relation to this project:
http://extinctionstudies.org/2012/06/10/night_falls/
This is the first film in the trilogy entitled 'Following Flying Foxes'. The video features individual flying foxes being cared for by Jenny and a team of volunteers at the Tolga Bat Hospital in the Atherton Tablelands, Queensland.
This observational video features Naomi and a young grey-headed flying fox, Peebo, who Naomi has been caring for in her home. This is the final day she is caring for the orphaned Peebo before he is transferred to a creche to socialise with other young flying foxes, prior to release back into a flying fox colony. Naomi has been trained in wildlife rescue and in the care of injured wildlife, including Peebo and another flying fox that was of a similar age.
This observational video features native flying foxes, or fruit bats, who reside in the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney. There have been ongoing debates as to whether the flying foxes should be removed from the Royal Botanic Gardens, as some rare, yet exotic, trees are being destroyed by them. Tim has been monitoring the flying foxes for a number of years. Through the monitoring, Tim wants to ensure that the flying foxes will not suffer from undue distress as a consequence of the planned noise disturbance. This third segment of 'Following Flying Foxes' shows the flying foxes 'belly dipping' and the fly out over Sydney at sunset.
Khangai Herds is an observational film made by Dr Natasha Fijn about the coexistence of two herding families and the herd animals living amongst them in the Khangai mountains of Mongolia. The herds consist of horses, cattle (including yak), and a combination of sheep and goats. In a land of extreme conditions, both herder and herd animal depend upon one another as a means of survival. Within broad river valleys, beneath steep slopes with patches of forest, herd animals are free to roam, existing within their own complex social structure and hierarchy. Herders successfully integrate themselves within this herd social structure by taking the role of lead animal within the herd, socially engaging and communicating daily in constant cross-species, cross-cultural, human-other animal dialogue. This is achieved through herders and herd animals growing up amongst one another from birth and throughout important stages in one another’s lives.
Link to the specific website created for this film project: 'Khangai Herds: an observational film in nine parts'
All video segments and photographs are the copyright of Natasha Fijn, unless indicated otherwise.
