Keywords

• Forest of Bliss (1986) can be considered an exploration of the ancient Indian city of Benares
• focusing on both funeral and religious practices. The viewer comes to know the city through the eyes of the ethnographic filmmaker Robert Gardner. He describes the city through the use of complex editing that allows this documentary to be included in the subâ€
• “
• genre of city symphony. The film stands out both for its dense network of visual and aural symbols with which the cycle of death and regeneration is represented
• and for its ability to communicate the sensory experience of â€
• œ
• being there.â€
• 
• The filmic procedures of Forest of Bliss evoke synesthetic perception
• increasing the viewerâ€
• ™
• s participation in the daily life of the culture shown. Because of these features
• the film can be considered in relation to anthropologyâ€
• ™
• s recent attention to the role of the senses in a given culture.
• Forest of Bliss shows some possibilities for rendering ethnographic films effective from an anthropological point of view
• thanks to the peculiarities of the film medium