Dabawenyang Iska

photo grabbed from www.mymedicalsuppliers.com

A week after signing up, Donna from Wom Nokia sent me an email asking if I wanted to test a Nokia E71 phone. I was stumped. That was fast, as in super fast, considering the fact that I’m not a tech blogger or a problogger. 

Still, why refuse right? The phone was supposed to arrive last week but since I recently moved to Makati, I had to change the forms which took me quite a while to do. It was only the other day when I finally sent them my new address and ta-da… the E71 arrived this morning, right on my doorstep. Cool.

Too bad I don’t have a camera here, I had to leave the Powershot A610 at home lest my siblings murder me. The E71 looks posh and I couldn’t help but gush over its sleek black form. It looks like a lighter version of the blackberry, and yes, it really is light!

The camera however is another story. It’s a complete FAILURE if you ask me. The label on the back says it’s a 3.2 megapixel camera, but the test shots looked more like they were taken using a VGA camera.

Camera aside, the E71 is great. It’s simple, easy to use, and so sleek. More reviews coming up in the next few days. Ciao!

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Ethnography, Film, and Capital

A Reflection Paper on the film Nanook of the North

The film Nanook of the North starts with a preface, an explanation of the author, or in this case the film maker, informing the audience his intent and the context of the film. Created by Robert Flaherty in 1960, the film showcases the everyday life of an Inuit family in the Arctic North with most of the scenes showing how Nanook and his people hunt for food in the Arctic wilderness. As a documentary it has earned both accolades and scathing criticisms- especially with the ‘staged feeling’ of the whole film which I’ll discuss towards the end of this paper.

The Big Aggie

Nanook of the North is now regarded as a classic. The film has been crowned as a pioneer of ethnographic film. Given the context of the film industry back in the 1960s, the accolades and the crown is well deserved by Nanook of the North. Flaherty’s methods, specifically the use of narratives in his film spurred revolutionary changes in the film. He lent his voice to the film and introduced the use of narratives in documentary making. This is something that most producers now use and something that we viewers tend to take for granted. Admittedly, I’ve been so used to hearing film makers use narratives in telling their stories that when I first saw Flaherty’s film I focused on how basic and sparse it was. Reading more about the background of the film however enabled me to appreciate Flaherty’s use of narratives and can only flinch at the thought of what Flaherty’s contemporaries presented to their audience.

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