In this course we will identify what makes an ethnographic film work. We will ask: how can we portray other people’s way of life on film truthfully? What is the appropriate way to represent them? Is it possible to translate their experience objectively? What does the ethnographic method bring to filmmaking? We will consider how anthropology has used filmmaking since the birth of cinema and how filmmaking practices in anthropology have evolved with advances in technology. This course will introduce you to what you can gain in understanding and making images with the tools of anthropology. Each week we will watch a classic ethnographic film which helped to shape the discipline of visual anthropology. Each film will be followed by a discussion considering the pros and cons of the film, the filmmaker’s perspective, the way they represent the subject matter and the methods used. During this 10 week short course we'll explore the ambiguous relationship between anthropology and film, including an ongoing reflection on questions of representation and observation. Some of the key questions we'll be asking include: What is an ethnographic film?.. What kinds of films do anthropologists produce and why?.. What does it mean to depict other people in the films and images we produce?.. What are our responsibilities to the people we choose to represent?.. How have changes in technology changed the nature of anthropological film making?.. Can anyone make an ethnographic film? We'll introduce you to viewpoints drawn from diverse fields of anthropological investigation, including: Visual anthropology. The anthropology of film and media. These approaches will then be drawn into conversation with documentary and other forms of film-making.
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London
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New Cross, SE14 6NW
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Media
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Film Making
Course programme
WEEK 1 ETHNO-GRAPHIC FILM Screening: Photo Wallahs. (Judith MacDougall, David MacDougall. 60 min. 1992.) This week we shall consider the question of what makes a film ‘ethnographic’ and explore the possible relationships between film and anthropology as an academic discipline. We will debate whether, as filmmaker Tim Asch claimed, the 16mm movie camera is to the anthropologist what the telescope is to the astronomer, and the microscope is to the biologist... WEEK 2 THE POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION Screening: Nanook of the North (Robert Flaherty, 79 min. 1922) This week we will explore issues raised by the classic film Nanook of the North and begin to discuss issues of representation and those concerned with the relationship between filmmakers and their subjects. In examining the idea of an ‘ethnographic present’ and Rony’s notion of ‘taxidermy’ in film, we will consider the implications of filmmakers and anthropologists representing the past as the present... WEEK 3 IDEAS OF PRIMITIVE SOCIETY Screening: Dead Birds (Robert Gardner, 84 min. 1963) This week we will explore ideas about ‘primitive society’ provoked by Gardner’s film Dead Birds and in anthropology more generally. We will also question the extent to which a film’s narrative and the aesthetic choices made by the filmmaker can be reconciled with the priorities of academic anthropologists... WEEK 4 INTERPRETATION AND CONTROVERSY Screening: Les Maîtres Fous ‘The Mad Masters’ (Jean Rouch, 36 min. 1955) This week we will discuss the controversial French ethnographic film ‘Les Maîtres Fous’ by Jean Rouch. The film is credited with establishing a new genre of ethnographic film and was banned by both French and colonial authorities when it was first released. It raises questions of consent and interpretation – how voyeuristic is the film? Do the participants really give their consent to be portrayed in this way? Is it fair to expect an audience to be unsettled? What is the purpose of the film? It will also help us to think about the life history (or ‘biography’) of a film over time... WEEK 5 FIGHTING ABOUT REALITY Screening: The Ax Fight (T. Asch and N. Chagnon, 30 min. 1971) The Ax Fight and the anthropologists involved in its making have provoked considerable controversy since the film was made in the 1970s. This week we examine some of these controversies and the complex reality that is seen in the film itself and in the web of social relationships that surrounded its making, production and publicity. We will also question the ethics of filmmaking and ethnographic representation more generally. WEEK 6 THE COLONIAL ENCOUNTER Screening: Trobriand Cricket (J. W. Leach and G. Kildea, 54 min. 1973) This week we will look at representations of what happened to patterns of knowledge and practice during colonial encounters and the implications this can have for anthropological understandings of social change. We will also explore the controversial relationship between colonialism and anthropology as a discipline and the role of film in this relationship... WEEK 7 ETHNOGRAPHY AND SUBVERSION Screening: Cannibal Tours (O’Rourke, 70 min. 1988) This week we will watch Dennis O’Rourke’s film Cannibal Tours as a way of thinking about subversion in ethnographic film. The film will help us to think about what objectification means both for the tourists in the film and for the filmmaker... WEEK 8 MELISSA LLEWELYN-DAVIES AND THE MASAI Screening: Maasai Women (Melissa Llewelyn-Davies, 1974) This week we will look at what happens when anthropology is popularised through television and consider the debates this has spawned on issues such as authenticity and the public image of anthropology. We will also examine issues of gender and representation in ethnographic filmmaking... WEEK 9 'INDIGENOUS MEDIA' Screening: The Kayapo: Out of the Forest (T. Turner and M. Beckham, 51 min. 1989) This week we will look at the debates on authority and manipulation spawned by Turner and Beckham’s film The Kayapo. In particular, we will consider the implications of documentary and other films made by indigenous groups traditionally studied by anthropologists. We will raise the question of how indigenous media might change the role of anthropologists in ethnographic filmmaking and in the discipline more generally. WEEK 10 RETHINKING ETHNOGRAPHIC FILM Screening: Sweetgrass (Lucien Castaing-Taylor 101 min 2011) This week we will bring together various strands of discussion from the module and view a film that somehow deals with some of the current trends in ethnographic film such as the so-called corporeal and sensorial turns in anthropology. At the same time, we will explore alternatives possibilities to ethnographic film that the digital revolution offers for the use of audiovisual media in anthropological research.
