Welcome – and Guide
Photo: (c) B&C Alexander/Arcticphoto.com
Welcome to this website. This is an array of work of different kinds, the bricks and timbers that make up the building of a life, or the various steps along a road that is a life of work. I switched back and forth between writing, film-making and anthropology. So there are many kinds of work here. Most of the writing is non-fiction, but there is a collection of short stories and a feature film; the films are mostly made with and on behalf of indigenous peoples, yet there are two that centre on British artists.
In many ways the anthropology shaped this sprawl of projects, giving some kind of design or continuity along the way. But not always so. I was never sure about which direction to take, always drawn from one kind of work to another - and within a life where work very often was the life itself. As a child I found excitement and peace - the two elements that must combine for work to be as much a joy as a challenge - in searching for birds’ nests and painting pictures. Also, I had to navigate a route between a very English childhood and Jewish immigrant heritage. I was never sure where I belonged, or if I belonged anywhere. So it is not surprising, I suppose, that my work moved between different islands of preoccupation or adventure. When writing non-fiction I often find myself longing to be in an imagined story. When alone at work on a text I dream of being in a team, making a film. When in the social and financial complexities of film-making, the appeal of the solitude of writing can be overwhelming…
In my recent book, Landscapes of Silence, I finally wrote about some of the ways is in which my own life, and especially my childhood in the north of England, led to my heading out to what seemed to be remote edges of the world. When I got to those edges, I was to find, of course, that for the people who welcomed me there this was the centre of the world - absolutely not some kind of inaccessible edge. And I came to realise that by travelling to what I had thought of as the margins, I was discovering the meanings of the centre.
So each of the books, films, essays and other pieces of work is both a project in its own way, an intellectual and creative destination, and able I hope, to stand for itself, but also is a part of a rather diffuse flow of work
The first film I ever worked on as an actor, was shot in Oxford when I was an undergraduate there, in 1963-4. Although it did get made, it has never quite seen the light of day.
The first piece of writing I published, as co-author, was a short study of life on Gola island off the coast of County Donegal in the west of Ireland. That was based on a visit to Gola in 1967.
The first Canadian work, Indians On Skid Row, came from field work in a city in western Canada in 1969.
The most recent film that I directed is Tracks Across Sand, the set of documentaries that came from a long period of work with the ‡Khomani San of the southern Kalahari, which was completed in 2012. There are two short films however, that I worked on with my son Tomo Brody in 2018 and 2019.
The most recent book was finished, after some five years of work, in 2021.
So this website, including all the projects between Gola Island, the southern Kalahari desert and the struggle to understand the prices of silence, moves across some 54 years. It is designed to make it possible to visit each project and find both what it was, some of the context in which it was made and, where I can find them, some of the questions or comments to which it gave rise - the project and the ripples spreading out from it.
I have hesitated for quite a few years before asking help to create this website. The possible hubris and conceit that has often struck me as implicit in this kind of promotion of oneself has held me back. I offer this now as a guide to my work, but all too aware that, if only it were possible, I would be happy to remake and redo and rethink just about everything I have done.
Some of these pieces of work will give rise to questions and challenges that are not addressed here. Please do send these in - there is a contact form to make this possible on the contact page.
With special thanks to those who have helped to conceive and develop this site. Jonah Brody began the work, the Goodwin Creative team continued and completed each part of it. Betsy Carson has inspired and sustained not only the details of this site but has been a brilliant inspiration - as always.