FilmReviews 164

Sneakers2004 Femke Wolting, dir. 52 min. Color. Distributed by

Femke Wolting Submarine Production. (http:// www.submarine.nl).

Today’s Man2006 Lizzie Gottlieb, dir. 55 min. Color. Distributed by

Young Love Productions, 6 Varick Street, 9B New York, NY 10013, info@todaysmanthemovie.com

The War Tapes2006 Deborah Scranton, dir. 97 min. Color. Distributed by

Senart Films, 133 West Broadway, 5th Floor New York, NY 10013. (http://www.senartfilms.com).

When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts2006 Spike Lee, dir. 255 min. Color. Distributed by

Home Box Office (HBO), Studio & Broadcast Op-erations 120A E. 23rd St, New York, NY, 10010. (http://homeboxoffice.com).

Bury the Spear!

Directed by Ivo Strecker and Alula Pankhurst, 2004, 72 minutes, color, black and white. Distributed by Documentary Educational Resources, 101 Morse Street, Watertown, MA 02472, USA, www.der.org

Jon AbbinkAfrican Studies Center, Leiden, the Netherlands

Southwestern Ethiopia is the habitat of a relatively large number of ethnic groups that have not always lived in peace with each other. In the decades up to 1993 there was frequent conflict because of resource competition and micro-climate change, and because of political upheaval and the spread of automatic weapons in the area within a relatively short time span. Hun-dreds of people fell victim to armed conflict, ambushes and raiding in those years. This film, Bury the Spear!, divided into 6 parts or tableaux announced with black-and-white titles, is about a peace ceremony organized in 1993 in Arbore, one of the ethnic group locations in southern Ethiopia. The film centers on one main character, a ritual chief or bitta of the Arbore people, who are hedged in between more powerful neighbors such as the Boran (Oromo) and the Hamar. This man, gerazmach (a local title) Surra Gino, had called for the ceremony in 1993 and, in the footage recorded a decade later, he reflects back on the peace-making episode and its importance. He centers himself in the story and in his 2002–2003 statements emphasizes the message he wants to bring to the world at large: the uselessness of war, the dishonor of spilling human blood, and the need for peace. He insists on the possibilities of construct-ing peace between adversaries and underlines the need to discuss differences and invoke shared values of life.

He appeals to the anthropologist filmmakers to spread this message.

The film consists of the original black-and-white footage recorded in 1993 by anthropologist Alula Pan-khurst, then of Addis Ababa University, on the prepara-tions and the execution of the peacemaking ceremony, interspersed with better-quality color film footage re-corded in 2002-03 by cameraman Konrad Licht and di-rected by anthropologist Ivo Strecker, who knows the area intimately. The 1993 footage records the events leading up to the meeting: the assembling of representa-tives of some eight different local ethnic groups and the construction of the ritual setting. It records ritual acts to achieve or construct peace and the accompanying public discourse, the exchange of views between spokesmen, and the final phase of common curses of war and illness, and of blessings for peace, life, fertility, and rain. We see senior representatives of the Arbore, Borana, Konso, Nyangatom, Tsamai, Hamar, Wata, Dasanech and Karo ritually blunting spears with stones, then breaking and burying them, supported by rhetorical discourse that lit-erally creates the will to peace. We see elders attempting to understand each other and come to terms, solemnly promising not to resort to arms in times of disagree-ment or conflict. It is very tempting to quote sections from the film’s fascinating dialogues in order to hear the people deliberate and argue about the things that deeply concern them. The extent of their goodwill and desire to reconcile is remarkable. The scene I found intriguing, and in possible contradiction to gerazmach Surra’s—and the film’s—overall message, was the Part II exchange between the Arbore spokesmen and the Boran spokes-men at the public debate. The Boran representative asks how one can speak of peace if culprits of violence are not found and punished. The speakers from Arbore and other groups evade this issue and keep returning to the general, normative level of the debate, calling upon God (Waq) and emphasizing the objective need to forget con-flict and make peace. The film does not show whether the Boran, despite their reserve about the ceremony and their ambivalence about some participating groups, fi-nally accept the outcome.

The 2002-3 footage is based on a revisit to the scene of the peace-making and on additional interviews of the main characters, including gerazmach Surra and his articulate son Horra, who is shown giving his in-formed comments on the ceremony and its meaning as local people saw it. Aka Arkulo, a female elder who was present in 1993 as a ritual participant, also gives her comments.

The overall result is a very interesting “dialogic” film about thinking and talking about war and peace in a volatile area in the Ethiopian South, seen through

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its local protagonists. The message, as phrased by ger-azmach Surra, is clear: in view of the equality of humans vis-à-vis the Creator there is never a sufficient reason to fight each other; war should be banished; people are basically the same and are facing similar problems; in-ter-group contacts should be maintained; and the vari-ous groups would do better to cooperate to develop the local economy of cattle herding, cultivation, and trade. The film has a universal message: urging people to find new ways of making peace.

It is regrettable and somewhat of a mystery that the 1993 footage remained unused for so long, and these older images seem to show some lacunae in the story. But the formula of “overlaying” that footage with the 2002-03 story is quite effective, and the making of the film has added relevance after the massive war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, which led to a stalemate and a halt to any dialogue about the normalization of relations. Also, “ethnicized” conflicts were, and still are, frequent in Ethiopia, making the message of the film addition-ally relevant. Although the film does not pursue the point, it seems that, barring cattle raiding, the peace concluded in 1993 has largely held in the decade since, without major violent clashes occurring among the eth-nic groups. But the audience would obviously have liked to hear more about whether the ceremony indeed had a lasting effect and has changed attitudes.

In this film, anthropologists are prominently pres-ent, as filmmakers, as the director, and as conversation partners of the protagonists. Two of them give their own brief public speeches about the value of peace-making. Other scenes include dialogues between anthropologists and local leaders about the causes of conflict and the meaning of the ritual. Here I think that the interviewers could have been a bit more insistent in asking about the causes and dynamics of conflict. For instance, Surra replies that the irresponsible, “bad” behavior of politi-cal leaders is often the main cause of enmity and anger among people, even though the details are not clear. But this conversation about the role of leaders as in-stigators or perpetuators of conflict could be read as a relevant commentary on developments on the national level. This also comes out in a scene toward the end of the film, in a debate between Arbore elders on the perpetual threat of war, and “the government not being able to put things right.”

In one of the final and quite moving scenes we see gerazmach Surra returning to the place of the 1993 cer-emony, accompanied by Strecker, and then re-enacting the peace-making but this time explicitly appealing to the ancestral spirits, asking them to heed his request to watch over the people and the land, to keep it peace-ful. Seeing this remarkable old man quietly perform his

duties and uttering his prayers and blessings, we realize that this is his final public act as a ritual leader, sum-ming up his life, his values, and his role as peace-maker. Gerazmach Surra died some time after the recording of this scene. The film has thus become a memorable trib-ute to an impressive man and to timeless ideals.

Bury the Spear! is a subtle and convincing film, and demonstrates the possibilities of constructing and achieving a workable peace by discussing the differ-ences within societies usually characterized by local ethnocentrism and parochialism.

The film premiered in 2003 at the German Cultural Institute in Addis Ababa in the presence of various people featured in it. It was then shown at ethnographic festivals throughout the world, and in 2004 received a Special Mention award at the 23rd Bilan du Film Ethnographique in Paris. It is an excellent film to introduce students and policymakers to the ethno-cultural complexity of south-ern Ethiopia, to learn about local dialogues regarding conflict and peace, and to show the capacity of so-called “illiterate,” non-formally educated people to come to sensible local solutions to major problems.

Coding Culture: Bangalore’s Software Industry

Directed by Gautam Sonti with Carol Upadhya, 2006, 92 minutes, color. Distributed by the National Insti-tute of Advanced Studies, Indian Institute of Science Campus, Bangalore 560012, niaslib@nias.iisc.ernet.in

Sharryn KasmirHofstra University

Coding Culture is a series of three films, of approxi-mately one-half hour each, about the software industry in Bangalore, India. The films were made as part of a two-year ethnographic study (November 2003 to March 2006) of Bangalore’s information technology (IT) sector. The films document work life, management style, and related social transformations in three different compa-nies: MphasiS, Sun Microsystems, and July Systems. As a whole, they afford the viewer an understanding of the work of software developers, new management regimes in the IT industry, the intensity of start-up companies, and India’s increasingly important role in this sector of the global economy.

The first segment is titled “The ‘M’ Way: Time + People = Money.” Here we get a look at MphasiS Lim-ited, an Indian firm to which banking and financial ser-vices software is outsourced from corporations in the US and elsewhere. Deadlines and trouble-shooting cre-

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