Trailer
Synopsis
A sensory ethnography on the Balinese cockfight
Shot in the arid landscape of West Bali, Indonesia, Tajen, Balinese for cockfight, follows multiple narrative threads of this ancient spectacle– that of the blade, the rooster, the cockfighter. It is the moment when these elements come together during the bloody match that the real drama begins.
With a richly sensory approach that embeds the viewer within the action of the arena, Tajen is a poetic visual evocation of the intimacy, brutality, and festivity of the fight. While neither approving nor decrying this tradition, the film immerses the viewer into the visual and auditory domains of steel, feathers, blood and the money that defines Tajen. (29 min)
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Learn more about the Balinese cockfight
www.tajeninteractive.com
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Explore the life of a gamecock
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Delve into the mind of a cockfighter
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Experience the cockfight
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Unsheathe the blade
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Witness the fight’s aftermath
A multimodal documentary project on the ancient bloodsport of cockfighting in Negara, Indonesia
Tajen: Interactive is a web documentary made by visual anthropologists, using different modes of representation to evoke and explain the cultural, historical, and psychological aspects of cockfighting in Negara, Bali.
Utilizing sensory ethnography, expository documentary, stop motion, mixed media, kinetic typography, whiteboard drawings, discussion questions, articles
Official Selection
- 2019
- CAMRA Screening Scholarship Media Festival, Pennsylvania, PA
- Intimate Lens Visual Ethnographic Film Festival, Caserta, Italy
- Society for Psychological Anthropology Biennial Meeting, Santa Ana Pueblo, New Mexico
- Nevada City Film Festival, Nevada City, CA (WINNER, BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY)
- Taiwan International Ethnogrpahic Film Festival, Taipei, Taiwan
- 2018
- American Ethnological Society / Society for Visual Anthropology “Resemblance” Conference, Philadelphia, PA
- Society for Visual Anthropology “Visual Research Conference”, San Jose, CA
- American Anthropologist Association “Resistance, Resilience, Adaptation 117th Annual Meeting”, San Jose, CA
- Society for Visual Anthropology Film and Media Festival, San Jose, CA
- Seattle Transmedia Interactive Film Festival, Seattle, WA
Videos
- History and anthropology of cockfighting
- Betting on a cockfight then
- Betting on a cockfight now
- Blade lore
- Choosing your weapon
- The perfect cock
- Spotting a winner
- Training a contender
- Compulsive gambling
- Balinese manhood
- The raw and the cooked
- Globalized animal rights perspectives
Articles
- Deep Play: Notes on a Balinese Cockfight
- Perspectives on Geertz
- Cockfighting and tabuh rah
- Human universals
- Re-enacting a cockfight
- Global animal rights perspective
- Applied anthropology
- Culture and moral relativism
- Informal learning
- Ethnographic pragmatics
- An alternate take on the cockfight
- Sacred and taboo
- Using ethnographic evidence to test theory
- Functionalism
- Ethnographic pragmatics
- Ethnographic literature research
- Cockfight and women
- Cultural factors in behavioral disorder
- Psychodynamic perspectives on culture
Crew
Elemental Productions
Production Company
Elemental Productions is a Los-Angeles based ethnographic documentary film company dedicated to the production of films focusing on the relationship between culture, psychology, and personal experience. Elemental Productions was founded in 2007 by anthropologist Robert Lemelson and evolved out of years of fieldwork and thousands of hours of footage gathered in Indonesia since 1997.
Robert Lemelson
Director/ Producer
Robert Lemelson is a cultural anthropologist, ethnographic filmmaker and philanthropist. Lemelson received his M.A. from the University of Chicago and Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology at UCLA. Lemelson’s area of specialty is transcultural psychiatry; Southeast Asian Studies, particularly Indonesia; and psychological and medical anthropology. He currently is a research anthropologist in the Semel Institute of Neuroscience UCLA, and an adjunct professor of Anthropology at UCLA.
Alessandra Pasquino
Director/ Producer/ Writer
Alessandra Pasquino is a filmmaker and producer of documentaries, commercials, and special projects. She has collaborated with many artists and celebrities including: Oliver Stone, Wayne Wang, Klaus Kinski, Gregory Colbert, Leonardo Di Caprio, Pietro Scalia and Matthew Rolston.
Briana Young
Director of Photography/ Editor/ Writer
Briana Young is a visual anthropologist. She earned a B.A. from UCLA in cultural anthropology and a Masters degree in visual anthropology from USC. Since graduating from USC she has worked on the Emmy nominated documentary Superheroes, created videos for Novica in association with National Geographic, and has filmed and edited in over 15 countries around the world from the Galapagos Islands to Nepal. Her short film, Screw It, I’ll Play Make Believe, has been screened internationally at festivals, broadcasted nationally on The Documentary Channel, and her thesis film Ladies of the Gridiron was selected to be part of KQED Truly CA Shorts, and is used as a teaching tool on gender roles and women in sports in classrooms across the country.
Julia Zsolnay
Assistant Director/ Writer
After graduating with a B.A. in Anthropology from UCLA, Julia began working in ethnographic film at Elemental Productions. For the past three years, Julia has worked on all aspects of filmmaking from initial concept to final output and distribution. She has a passion for storytelling and world cultures. When not working Julia can be found fostering dogs and cats as a volunteer for various rescue organizations in Los Angeles.
Crew
Robert Lemelson
Director
Robert Lemelson is a cultural anthropologist, ethnographic filmmaker and philanthropist. Lemelson received his M.A. from the University of Chicago and Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology at UCLA. Lemelson’s area of specialty is transcultural psychiatry; Southeast Asian Studies, particularly Indonesia; and psychological and medical anthropology. He currently is a research anthropologist in the Semel Institute of Neuroscience UCLA, and an adjunct professor of Anthropology at UCLA.
Briana Young
Director
Briana Young is a visual anthropologist. She earned a B.A. from UCLA in cultural anthropology and a Masters degree in visual anthropology from USC. Since graduating from USC she has worked on the Emmy nominated documentary Superheroes, created videos for Novica in association with National Geographic, and has filmed and edited in over 15 countries around the world from the Galapagos Islands to Nepal. Her short film, Screw It, I’ll Play Make Believe, has been screened internationally at festivals, broadcasted nationally on The Documentary Channel, and her thesis film Ladies of the Gridiron was selected to be part of KQED Truly CA Shorts, and is used as a teaching tool on gender roles and women in sports in classrooms across the country.
Annie Tucker
Writer
Annie Tucker is a translator, writer, and educator specializing in contemporary Indonesian culture, literature, arts, and health. After working as a dancer and choreographer in her early twenties, she received her PhD from UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures. Her dissertation addressed the treatment of autism in Java with a particular focus on the therapeutic use of traditional arts and the philosophies of development embedded within them. She is an adjunct lecturer for UCLA’s Disability Studies minor and a writer for Elemental Productions, an independent ethnographic film company making documentaries about Indonesia.