Tuesday night saw a hat trick of NEAT16 events at the Nottingham Playhouse. #timeatthebar gave punters the opportunity of a walk and a talk through Sillitoe’s Nottingham, the main auditorium buzzed with excitement at the prospect of a very condensed version of a very heavy book, as Gob Squad offered their unique interpretation of War and Peace, and upstairs in the darkened Neville Studio, away from the glorious sunshine, was my entertainment: an evening of documentaries by Michael Eaton which focussed on Alfred Haddon, James Frazer and Joseph Else.
The Priest of Nemi (2012, 15 minutes)
Eaton was born in Sherwood and so he’s got that lovely dismissive Nottingham attitude about him. But he also studied Social Anthropology at King's College, Cambridge, where, in 1976, he was awarded a double first. So this attitude is matched with an incredible, but warm, intellect. This shows through in the opening scene of the film where he subtly slags off our so called ‘castle’ which was largely demolished in 1649 and replaced with the Duke of Newcastle’s pad. But Eaton isn’t here for the obvious, he’s here for the artefacts.
Nottingham Castle Museum is home to numerous treasures, but Eaton is intrigued by a collection of Roman artefacts dug up from the Temple of Nemi in the 1880s, which are no longer on permanent public display. He then relates these to James Frazer, author of The Golden Bough, throwing magic and religion into the equation. Once we’ve been informed of some rituals that involve human sacrifice and a chap who hides inside a tree, the film ends with a poignant meditation on life. And this pretty much sums up Eaton’s work – he takes us away from the obvious (the castle), intrigues us through the abstract (archaeological artefacts), and then reminds us no matter how different we think we are we’re all united through the same fate (death).
Masks of Mer (2010, 40 minutes)
The Torres Strait Islands are a group of roughly 274 small islands which lie between Australia's Cape York Peninsula and the island of New Guinea. In 1898, Alfred Cort Haddon led an expedition here as a biologist but quickly fell in love with the natives and returned to document their stories. These historic cinematographs have been ‘synchronised’ with phonographic recordings of traditional songs and includes a traditional initiation ceremony.
Eaton has consistently championed the underdog and untold stories through his work. This film perfectly fits that bill as he argues that Haddon should be credited as documenting the first ethnographic film. It wasn’t shown immediately out of respect for the natives and their superstitious beliefs about viewing images of the dead, and so Haddon did not receive the credit he deserved at the time. The film is an important social document because missionaries attempted to suppress traditional initiation ceremonies. To capture the ceremony before it was too late, Haddon had replica masks created which the natives wore. These are boxed up in the archives of Cambridge University which Eaton visits. His excitement at being shown the artefacts for the first time is quite infectious. The film also includes original drawings and designs for the masks.
Haddon is the unsung hero of Anthropology and therefore a classic Eatonesque figure. We are reminded that he took the then ‘Cinderella Science’ of Anthropology away from the comfy confines of Victorian scholars and placed it firmly where it would become real: in the lived experience of native people.
Eaton is a self-proclaimed Nottingham propagandist and has consistently proven that everything is only a few degrees of separation away from his home city. But in his pre-talk commentary he admitted that he’d finally been defeated as he could find no link between Haddon and Nottingham (other than his film). But there is a very tentative one that’s relevant on 15 June. One of the men who accompanied Haddon on the trip was Dr. W.H.R. Rivers, who would later go on to become a psychiatrist in WWI and work with soldiers suffering from shellshock. Rivers is the subject of Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy, and she is in conversation at the Playhouse on 15 June, the first invited author from Nottingham’s UNESCO City of Literature team. I told you it was tentative, but not bad as a first go…
Allegories of a Great City (2015, 17 minutes)
The final film of the evening is very much focussed on the Queen of the Midlands and explores the figures carved from Portland Stone that adorn the front façade of the Council House - Cecil Hewitt’s grandiose, Neo-Baroque show-piece that was completed in 1929. These figures were sculpted by Joseph Else, who featured in Eaton’s recent play All Schools Should be Art Schools. In the play we learn that Else hated modernism, especially the likes of Picasso, so it was interesting to examine what Else constituted as 'proper' culture.
The camera pans over the 21 figures on the frieze of the Council House which represent the activities (and principles) of the Council. Eaton offers his interpretation of what’s going on and points out that Justice is not blind folded but looking clear ahead. We also see representatives of all of the major industries at the time such as tanning, blacksmiths, bell founding, mining, alabaster carving and, of course, lace making; the most important in terms of the city’s identity. Then we’re taking for a whirl around the dome of the Exchange Walk Arcade, which, in addition to frescos of Robin Hood and other folk, includes a long message I’ve never noticed before until now. All of which reminded me of a surrogate Notts lad, Ray Gosling, whose favourite and most used expression was: 'Look up, look up!' If you want to know what it says, you know what you need to do.
The documentary ends with a brief introduction to the lions, although, surprisingly, Eaton doesn’t delve into the local folk legends surrounding them, such as one is meant to roar if a virgin walks past (hence their ageless silence). Instead we learn that the Lions were originally named “Menelaus” and “Agamemnon” which are nods to the Trojan Wars and Greek history. In present day Nottingham, Eaton sarcastically notes, we now call them ‘Left’ or ‘Right’.
Documentaries by Michael Eaton was shown at the Nottingham Playhouse on 5 June as part of the NEAT16 Festival
Shoestring Press have published books of The Priest of Nemi (£10.95) and Head Hunters (£12)
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