Mauro Bucci – Università di Bologna, Italy
Abstract
Forest of Bliss (1986) is a film that explores the ancient Indian city of Benares, focusing on both funeral and religious practices. The viewer comes to know the city through the eyes of ethnographic filmmaker Robert Gardner. He describes it by the use of complex editing that allows this documentary to be included in the subgenre of city symphony. The film is distinguished both by its dense network of visual and aural symbols with which the cycle of death and regeneration is represented and by its ability to communicate the sensory experience of being there. The filmic procedures of Forest of Bliss evoke synesthetic perception, increasing the viewer’s participation in the daily life of the culture shown. Because of these features, the film can be considered in relation to the recent attention anthropology has given to the role of the senses in a given culture, even though Gardner did not intend this film for scientific purposes.
Keywords
Robert Gardner, Forest of Bliss, anthropology of the senses, ethnographic film, Benares, being there, city
symphony, sensory experience.
