John Marshall, 72; filmed and aided lives of Kalahari bushmen
John Kennedy Marshall, 72, of Belmont, a visual anthropologist who dedicated his life to documenting the lives of the bushmen of the Kalahari Desert in Africa, died of cancer Friday in Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
''He was a pivotal figure in the development of the cinema verite form of filmmaking: one man with one camera out there filming reality," said Cynthia Close, executive director of Documentary Educational Resources, a Watertown film and video production and distribution company that Mr. Marshall helped found.
But Mr. Marshall's contributions were not only to the art of film. ''He dedicated himself to recording the evolution of a people as they came in contact with the 20th and 21st centuries," Close said.
In addition to his work in Africa, Mr. Marshall was the cameraman on ''Titicut Follies," Frederick Wiseman's classic 1967 exposé of the appalling conditions at Bridgewater State Hospital. He also worked with documentary filmmakers D.A. Pennebaker and Richard Leacock and shot the civil war in Cyprus for NBC.
But he is best remembered for his 50-year relationship with the Ju/hoansi bushmen, which resulted in more than a million feet of film and at least 30 documentary films, including the five-part, six-hour film series spanning 50 years in the life of ''A Kalahari Family."
It was, at times, somber. His 1979 film ''N!Ai: The Story of a !Kung Woman," details the disintegration of the bushmen's society after they were interned in a government camp, where they become sedentary and drew income from tourists who paid to take their photographs.
Mr. Marshall was born in Cambridge. He was the son of Laurence Marshall, a founder of
''We were looking for people who hunted and gathered, and we traveled throughout what was then South Africa and Botswana and finally found these people who really did live by hunting and gathering," John Marshall said in an interview posted on the website newenglandfilm.com in March 2003.
At the time of the expedition, he said, common wisdom held that the bushmen were treacherous and had no concept of time or social relationships. ''At one point we were told that they would hide behind bushes and shoot us with their little poison arrows and we wouldn't even see them," Mr. Marshall said in 2003.
Mr. Marshall said he learned his filmmaking technique while on the job. His first film about the bushmen, ''The Hunters," was released in 1957.
''He really became a part of their culture and learned their language. He wasn't on the outside looking in," said his sister, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas of Peterborough, N.H.
The expeditions were often a family affair, with his mother, Lorna, becoming one of the leading scholars of tribal life.
Mr. Marshall's documentaries won acclaim from filmmakers and anthropologists.
He did his best to disappear behind his camera.
''He always wanted to stay in the background," said Close. ''He said, 'It's all about the people. I'm not important.' "
But he was important to the bushmen. ''He fought for their rights," Close said. ''He was obsessed with discovering why millions of dollars of donated money gets poured into Africa and the bushmen are still starving and don't have butter."
Through his intercession with the Namibian government, Mr. Marshall was able to make conditions better for the bushmen. ''He worked for the good of the people and didn't want anything in return," his sister said.
Mr. Marshall was an energetic man with a square jaw and unruly shock of white hair. The bushmen called him called him /Toma !osi, or ''long face."
A cofounder of Documentary Educational Resources, which distributes his and other films, he was given a lifetime achievement award in 2003 by the Society for Visual Anthropology for sharing his vision of a hunting and gathering society with generations of American anthropology students. When he was asked whether there was a message in his 50 years of work, he replied, ''They are people just like us."
In addition to his sister, he leaves his wife, Alexandra Eliot Marshall; a daughter, Sonya; and two stepsons, Frederick and Christopher Eliot.
A memorial service will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday in Memorial Church at Harvard University.
