John Marshall was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 anthropologist and acclaimed documentary filmmaker best known for his work in Namibia

Namibia

Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia , is a country in southern Africa whose western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and east. It gained independence from South Africa on 21 March...

 recording the lives of the Ju/'hoansi tribe (also called the !Kung Bushmen). Born in Cambridge

Cambridge

The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...

, he first traveled to the Kalahari Desert

Kalahari Desert

The Kalahari Desert is a large semi-arid sandy savannah in Southern Africa extending , covering much of Botswana and parts of Namibia and South Africa, as semi-desert, with huge tracts of excellent grazing after good rains. The Kalahari supports more animals and plants than a true desert...

, where the tribe dwells, in 1949 in the company of his family on a trip initiated by his father Laurence Marshall, who founded the Raytheon Corporation. In 1968, Marshall and Tim Asch

Tim Asch

Timothy Asch , was a noted anthropologist, photographer, and ethnographic filmmaker. Along with John Marshall and Robert Gardner, Asch played an important role in the development of visual anthropology...

 founded Documentary Educational Resources

Documentary Educational Resources

Documentary Educational Resources is a US non-profit producer and distributor of film and video in anthropology and ethnology.It was founded in 1968 by independent filmmakers John Marshall and Timothy Asch and is based in Watertown, Massachusetts...

, a non-profit organization

Non-profit organization

Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...

 dedicated to facilitating the use of cross-cultural documentaries in the classroom. In 2003, the Society for Visual Anthropology bestowed on Marshall a lifetime achievement award for his work among the hunter gatherer society. Marshall died of lung cancer

Lung cancer

Lung cancer is a disease characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. If left untreated, this growth can spread beyond the lung in a process called metastasis into nearby tissue and, eventually, into other parts of the body. Most cancers that start in lung, known as primary...

 in April, 2005.
Marshall's documentary footage and edited films and videos of Ju/'hoansi are held at the Human Studies Film Archives, Smithsonian Institution. Known officially as the John Marshall Ju/'hoan Bushman Film and Video Collection, 1950–2000, the collection was added to UNESCO's Memory of the World Register for documentary heritage of world importance in July 2009.

Filmography

• 1957: The Hunters
  The Hunters (1957 film)
  The Hunters is a 1957 ethnographic film about a giraffe hunt in the Kalahari Desert by four members of the JuǀʼHoansi tribe. The footage was shot by John Marshall during a Smithsonian-Harvard Peabody sponsored expedition in 1952–53....
  
  
• 1961: A Group Of Women
• 1962: A Joking Relationship
• 1967: Titicut Follies
  Titicut Follies
  Titicut Follies is a 1967 American documentary film directed by Frederick Wiseman, about the treatment of inmates/patients at Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane, a Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. The title is taken from a talent show put on by...
  
  (cinematographer)
• 1969: An Argument About Marriage
• 1969: ‘N/um Tchai: The Ceremonial Dance of the !Kung Bushmen
• 1969: A Curing Ceremony’'
• 1970: Inside/Outside Station 9’'(Pittsburgh Police Series)
• 1970: The Melon Tossing Game
• 1970: The Lion Game
• 1971: Three Domestics (Pittsburgh Police Series)
• 1971: Vagrant Woman (Pittsburgh Police Series)
• 1971: Bitter Melons
• 1972: Investigation of a Hit and Run (Pittsburgh Police Series)
• 1972: 901/904 (Pittsburgh Police Series)
• 1972: Debe’‘s Tantrum
• 1972: Playing With Scorpions
• 1972: A Rite of Passage
• 1972: !Kung Bushmen Hunting Equipment
• 1972: A Wasp Nest
• 1973: After the Game (Pittsburgh Police Series)
• 1973: A Forty Dollar Misunderstanding (Pittsburgh Police Series)
• 1973: The Informant (Pittsburgh Police Series)
• 1973: A Legal Discussion of a Hit and Run (Pittsburgh Police Series)
• 1973: Manifold Controversy (Pittsburgh Police Series)
• 1973: Nothing Hurt But My Pride (Pittsburgh Police Series)
• 1973: Two Brothers (Pittsburgh Police Series)
• 1973: $21 or 21 Days (Pittsburgh Police Series)
• 1973: Wrong Kid (Pittsburgh Police Series)
• 1973: You Wasn't Loitering (Pittsburgh Police Series)
• 1973: Henry Is Drunk (Pittsburgh Police Series)
• 1973: The 4th, 5th, & Exclusionary Rule (Pittsburgh Police Series)
• 1973: Men Bathing
• 1974: The Meat Fight
• 1974: Baobab Play
• 1974: Children Throw Toy Assegais
• 1974: Tug-Of-War-Bushmen
• 1978: If It Fits
• 1980: N!ai, the Story of a !Kung Woman
  N!ai, the Story of a !Kung Woman
  N!ai, the Story of a !Kung Woman is a film by ethnographic filmmaker John Marshall.The film was first broadcast in 1980 as part of the Odyssey series on PBS and is distributed by Documentary Educational Resources....
  
  
• 1985: Pull Ourselves Up Or Die Out
• 1987: The !Kung San: Traditional Life
• 1988: The !Kung San: Resettlement
• 1990: To Hold Our Ground: A Field Report
• 2001: Between Two Worlds: John Marshall
• 2002: A Kalahari Family

Publications

By John Marshall

• "Filming and Learning," in a special edition of Visual Anthropology entitled The Cinema of John Marshall, Gordon and Breach Publishers, 1993
• "Plight of the Bushman," Leadership Magazine, Johannesburg, South Africa, 1985
• "Where are the Ju/'hoansi of Nyae Nyae? Changes in a Bushman Society 1950-1981," with Claire Ritchie, for Center for African Studies, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa, 1984
• "Death Blow to the Bushmen," in Cultural Survival Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 3, 1984
• "Urban Film," with Emilie de Brigard in Visual Anthropology, Paul Hockings, Editor, H. Mouton & Co,, The Hague, 1975
• "Man as a Hunter," Natural History Museum, 1958

On John Marshall

• Tomaselli, Keyan, Visual Anthropology, Encounters in the Kalahari, Chicago, 1999.
• Ruby, Jay, The Cinema of John Marshall, Switzerland, 1993.
• Kapfer, J., Petermann, W., Thoms, R.,Jager und Gejagte John Marshall und seine Filme, Germany, 1991.

External links

(biographical short documentary on John Marshall) (interview with John Marshall)

• Guide to the John Marshall Ju/'hoan Bushman Film and Video Collection, 1950-2000, Human Studies Film Archives and National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
• Web exhibition on the John Marshall Ju/'hoan Bushman Film and Video Collection
• Press Release on 2009 inscriptions to the Memory of the World Register, UNESCO