The Impulse to Preserve: Reflections of a Filmmaker

Anthropologist Gardner used his passion and training to become a celebrated documentary filmmaker, whose nearly 40-year-long career includes such films as Ladakh, Deep Hearts and Rushes: Forest of Bliss. This collection of his writing, covering such far-flung locations as Nigeria, Columbia and Kashmir, is fully illustrated with beautiful photographs by Gardner and others. The bulk of the text comes from Gardner's journals, beginning in 1960s New Guinea, where he lived among ""the last practicing stone-age society on the planet."" The journals are fascinating, not just for their immediacy and the cultures they explore but for the anthropoligcal conundrums they present, especially the tricky question of how his very presence affects the communities he wishes to document; arriving in New Guinea, he observes ""I have not seen toys or games ... We are their entertainment at the moment."" Gardner's short essays are equally intriguing. Readers without knowledge or access to Gardner's films may find the text incomplete; for example, when Gardner notes that an old Ethiopian man he spoke to at length made some ""quite profound"" remarks, he fails to note what those remarks were. For those readers, entering this intriguing and worthy book requires a sense of curiosity and the knowledge that it may go unfulfilled-at least until Dead Birds or Rivers of Sand make it to Netflix. Photos.