Charcoal Makers by Colette Piault (review)

FILM REVIEWS Charcoal Makers. 1990. Directed by Colette Piault. 16mm, 30’, colour, sync sound. Original Greek and English subtitles. Distribution: Les Films du Quotidien, 5 Rue des Saints Peres, 75006 Paris, France. [Greece] At first sight this film may appear to be one thatdealswiththetechnicalprocessesofcharcoal making, but it is more than this. It is, among other things, an exposition on the discourses of men and women in Greek society on the nature and conceptualisation of work. Dealing with a peripheral and low status occupation (charcoal making) by a minority group (the Valchs) in Greek society, the film weaves together how changes in one village (a desire by an Epirot village community to enlarge its cemetery) sets inmotion awhole series ofeconomic exchanges which link up with economic activities many miles away in the restaurants in Athens and other tourist resorts, and have a specific set of socialimplications. This istheoverall social and economic framework within which the film is located: Avillage farfromthe touristtrack (Ano Ravenia in Epiros) rents out part of its forest territory for the production ofcharcoal which is then purchased by merchants who then sell the product to restaurants in the tourist sector. In between are the charcoal makers, the ‘slaves of thefire’whichunremittingly rules theirlives for aperipheralgroupemployedinoneofthe lowest status jobs imaginable in Greece: peripatetic, away from their homes, living in shoddy barangas (hastily erected flimsy corrugated iron huts) in the countryside, at the mercy of merchants and performing a lowly paid job withoutthebenefitoflabourorhealthregulation. ColettePiault, theanthropologistfilmmaker, has produced a film very much in line with her previous work. This takes a segmentor a slice of ordinary life and explores it. The narrativity of the film closely replicates the actual experience of fieldwork and is thus as fresh and possibly as significant or insignificant as any slice of that experience is likely to be. It is thus far removed from the TV documentary mode: there is no introduction, no voice-over, no reliance on the spoken word orprepared text as the main means for the transmission of information and consequentpadding-outwith images. Asaresult the film is distinctive and refreshing. But it is also hard work for the viewer who is plunged straight into the world of the charcoal makers. Slowly however the social context emerges in and through the conversations the film maker has with the people. Ostensibly about the techniques of charcoal making (which could easilybe seenasaboringtopic),thefilmactually reveals much more—although it must be said thatthis percolates through the reflexivity ofthe viewer after the film has ended (rather than during it as with the case of a more documen­ tary-type film). At first sight, too, the questions Piaultposestohercharcoalmakers could appear banal, dealing as they do with the technical aspects ofcharcoal making. Indeed on one level they may well be. After all who wants to know that? Some people perhaps but not many. However, slowly, the rather awful nature of the job thesepeopleperform breaks through. It does so through the desolate landscape these people workin, theirisolation,theirsenseofpessimism, intheirtightcomments aboutthedisappointingly low income they earned, and in the general lack of humour which is so important a feature of Greek village life, and also in the lack ofmusic. And itcomes throughalso intheresponses ofthe people. Themen inresponse toquestioning give ‘official’ and technical explanations on the techniques of charcoal production; the women by contrast give more ‘emotive’ and freer responses, complaining that they had to work extremely hard, and lamenting their isolation from urban and ‘civilised’ life, and from their homes. There isoneincidentinthefilmcaptured fleetingly, whichbrings outthe tensionbetween the charcoal makers and their merchants. The latter purchase charcoal by weight through individual contracts and tensions emerge between them and the Vlach charcoal makers. Theseareoftendisadvantagedhavinglittlemeans of redress and the structural relationship resembles that between merchants and the Sarakatsani highlighted by John Campbell. It may be objected that this film oscillates between an ethno-technical exposition of charcoal-production and an exploration of the social networks that this small group of Vlachs wereenmeshedin. Ontheobvious level thisfilm appears to be about the former, and in this respectitmaybelessappealingtoanthropologists 107 108 Film Reviews andMediterraneanists. Butthis wouldbetomiss the film’s elusive but important style, construction and evolving hints. For it raises questions about the style that anthropological films could explore and...