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About the Film

Remembering John Marshall presents a brief portrait of John Kennedy Marshall, the late filmmaker and activist who began his career in the 1950s documenting the lives of the Ju/'hoansi people of Namibia—among the last remaining hunter-gatherers—for anthropological audiences. In the 1980s Marshall became an activist helping the Ju/'hoansi fight for land and water rights. He made important contributions to cinéma vérité filmmaking and leaves behind an extensive ethnographic film archive including over twenty films on the Ju'/hoansi beginning with The Hunters (1957) and culminating with A Kalahari Family (2003).

The film weaves together photographs, film clips, archival footage, and interviews with family, friends, and colleagues including Elizabeth Marshall Thomas (John's sister and author of The Old Way), Robert Gordon (Anthropologist and author of The Bushman Myth), Alexandra Eliot Marshall (John's Wife), Cynthia Close (Executive Director, Documentary Educational Resources), Sandeep Ray (Editor, A Kalahari Family), Karma Foley (Editor, A Kalahari Family), Jayasinhji (Bapa) Jhala (Visual Anthropologist), and Rakhi Jhala (Filmmaker).

The project began as an article Alice Apley and David Tamés wrote shortly after John's death and then it evolved into a series of video interviews. This 16 minute piece is just the tip of the iceberg as the filmmakers continue to interview family, friends, and colleagues and plan to complete a feature-length film on John Marshall in the future.  

Screening History

10. EthnoFilmfest, Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin-Dahlem, November 8-11, 2007

2007 SVA/AAA Film, Video, and Interactive Media Festival, (Society of Visual Anthropology/American Antropological Association), Washington, D.C., November 30, 2007

Plymouth Independent Film Festival, July 20, 2007, screened as part of a special program including three short films by John Marshall (Bitter Melons, A Fourty Dollar Misunderstanding, After the Game, and Youth and the Man of Property) followed by a Q&A session with the filmmakers.

10th RAI International Festival of Ethnographic Film, (Royal Anthropological Institute), Manchester, June 30, 2007 (short listed for an RAI award)

CMS Media Spectacle, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, April 23, 2007

Washington, D.C. Independent Film Festival, March 10, 2007

Retrospective: The Films of John Marshall, Anthology Film Archives, March 7-8, 2007 (two screenings, followed by Q&A with Cynthia Close and David Tamés)

Northampton Independent Film Festival, November 11, 2006 (followed by Q&A with filmmakers)

New Documentaries, The Tank, New York, October 15, 2006 (followed by Q&A with filmmakers)

Vermont International Film Festival, October 14, 2006

Rioscreenings, Festival do Rio 2006 (Rio International Film Festival), September 21-October 5, 2006

15th Woods Hole Film Festival, August 4, 2006 (festival premiere, followed by Q&A with filmmakers)

Mediating Practices Conference on Visual Anthropology, Temple University, April 14, 2006

A Tribute to John Marshall, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, April 5, 2006, Premiere, introduced by Cynthia Close and David Tamés, screened as part of a program including John Marshall's first feature, The Hunters)