Forest of Bliss: Sensory Experience and Ethnographic Film

Abstract

Forest of Bliss (1986) is a film that explores the ancient Indian city of Benares, focusing on both funeral and religious practices. The viewer comes to know the city through the eyes of ethnographic filmmaker Robert Gardner. He describes it by the use of complex editing that allows this documentary to be included in the subgenre of city symphony. The film is distinguished both by its dense network of visual and aural symbols with which the cycle of death and regeneration is represented and by its ability to communicate the sensory experience of being there. [more in the pdf]