Tajen
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“…pushes the boundaries of sensory ethnography that is gorgeously affecting…”

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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

Download Discussion Guide

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

Read American Anthropologist Journal Article
Read Multimodal Anthropologies Blog

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

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.

Tajen
Robert Lemelson

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.

Tajen
Alessandra Pasquino
http://www.alessandrapasquino.com

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.

Tajen
Briana Young

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.

Tajen
Julia Zsolnay

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.

Tajen

Crew

Robert Lemelson

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.

Tajen
Briana Young

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.

Tajen
Annie Tucker

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.

Tajen

Contact

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