Alison Griffiths, "Nomadic Cinema: A Cultural Geography of the Expedition Film" (Columbia UP, 2025)

Jun 11, 2025

Alison Griffiths, a film historian and media studies professor at Baruch College, delves into the captivating world of early expedition filmmaking. She reveals how films like *In Borneo, the Land of the Head-Hunters* were shaped by colonialism and capitalism, providing a skewed view of Indigenous lives. Griffiths discusses the transformative power of decolonial perspectives, the influence of the Explorers Club, and the financial complexities behind these ambitious projects. Her insights challenge dominant narratives and highlight alternative accounts of exploration.

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INSIGHT

Complex Nature of Expedition Films

Expedition films are hybrid objects combining ethnographic, documentary, and travelogue elements.
They carry colonial assumptions but also reveal Indigenous intermediaries' crucial role and potential for resistance and reclamation.

INSIGHT

Medieval Maps as Proto-Cinema

Medieval maps mirror expedition films by blending fact and myth to depict unknown lands.
They serve as proto-cinematic devices that shape colonial imaginaries and invite visual exploration.

INSIGHT

Explorers Club's Cultural Influence

The Explorers Club shaped early 20th-century exploration culture, defining adventurer ideals and expedition film norms.
It highlighted Indigenous helpers' essential yet minimized roles and served as a collaborative makerspace for explorers.

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From In Borneo, the Land of the Head-Hunters to The Epic of Everest to Camping Among the Indians, the early twentieth century was the heyday of expedition filmmaking. As new technologies transformed global transportation and opened new avenues for documentation, and as imperialism and capitalism expanded their reach, Western filmmakers embarked on journeys to places they saw as exotic, seeking to capture both the monumental and the mundane. Their films portrayed far-flung locales, the hardships of travel, and the day-to-day lives of Indigenous people through a deeply colonial lens.

Nomadic Cinema: A Cultural Geography of the Expedition Film (Columbia University Press, 2025) by Dr. Alison Griffiths is a groundbreaking history of these films, analyzing them as visual records of colonialism that also offer new possibilities for recognizing Indigenous histories. Dr. Griffiths examines expedition films made in Borneo, Central Asia, Tibet, Polynesia, and the American Southwest, reinterpreting them from decolonial perspectives to provide alternative accounts of exploration. She considers the individuals and institutions—including the American Museum of Natural History—responsible for creating the films, the spectators who sought them out, and the Indigenous intermediaries whose roles white explorers minimized. Ambitious and interdisciplinary, Nomadic Cinema ranges widely, from the roots of expedition films in medieval cartography and travel writing to still-emerging technologies of virtual and augmented reality. Highlighting the material conditions of filmmaking and the environmental footprint left by exploration, this book recovers Indigenous memory and sovereignty from within long-buried sources.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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