Picturing the Primitive

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 dir