First thoughts on the Navajo project

Before the readings I thought that a third person had edited the documentaries and I was really confused, now I know that they tough them how to edit and that makes more sense to me. I took a lot of notes while I watched the films so I would remember and try to analyze what I saw but it really didn’t make a lot of sense to me. There are some beautiful shoots like the one of the book and the wind blowing the pages or the wheel in “Intrepid shadows”.

The readings made me think of my own process of learning to film of how I used to shoot differently when I had less knowledge of visual time, of how I see now some of my old footage and to me it seems more realistic, naïve. I wonder how more or less knowledge would have changed the Navajo Project? Maybe it was better not to teach then that much who knows or maybe you need to know the rules to break them.

I understand the time and the importance of the project but I don’t know anything about their culture and I don’t see how they could draw conclusions out of it. We learn language in our first 5 years of life and even though not everyone is a writer or a good storyteller. I don’t think it was possible with this project to determine “how members of another culture use film” not that was the end or I even know exactly what was the end.