Paper short abstract:

The lecture is about Robert Gardner’s „Forrest of bliss". The film focuses on the problems of the relation between classical ethnografic objectivism and the potential of experimental artificial documentary film strategies in the perspective of an critical postmodern epistemology.

Paper long abstract:

Robert Gardner's "Forrest of bliss" is set in Benares, the holy Indian city of death, as an ambivalent place of transcendent and profane space. The documentation of the ritual journey from the Ghats at the holy river Ganges to the fields on the outskirts of town to pick the flowers for the ceremonies connects time and space with a unique film language in the tradition of the avant-garde. However, the film was accused of reproducing a mere aesthetic fiction.In the history of ethnographic film the "Gardner case" came to be the epitome of fierce discussion on the relation of scientific objectivism as the paradigm of classical ethnology and anthropology and possible experiments on artistic form. However it is only the use of explicitly artistic fiction that provides an opportunity for documentary elements beyond naive objectivism, which veils its implicit assumption of authority.