Documentary and ethnographic filmmaker

Ethnographic documentary is a distinct genre in the field of documentary. It began as a need for filmmakers to invent a new way to reconcile with the real and at the same time as a need for social anthropologists to find a new ethnographic tool.
The definition of the genre dates back to the early 1960s, when about two revolutionary documentaries appeared in the same period, one in America and the other in France. Direct cinema and cinema verité reacted to the film's opaque methodology of approaching the main subject while sharing the logic of a more "direct" and "true" encounter with their issues.
Chronicle of a Summer, Le joli Mai, Don't look back and Salesman, films discussed in this text, are typical examples of these pioneering currents presenting substantial differences in the logic of the approach to the subject, the type of cinematography, and the montage techniques used by their creators.

The way I see today is a collaborative audiovisual-based research project developed in the Rio de Janeiro favela known as Cidade de Deus (City of God). Through the perspective of a network of key local actors, the ethnographic documentary focuses on the outcomes produced by the novel and the film City of God, and unveils issues around control over representation as a consequence of the ‘distortions’ raised by the fictional narratives upon the reality of Cidade de Deus residents.

The companion text provides important aspects of the social history of the place and an overview of the research collaborators, as well as my own background of fieldwork experiences in Cidade de Deus. The text also presents some reflections on the use of film as a medium through which a collaborative relationship between the ethnographer and the research participants can be developed.

Keywords: favelas, collaborative methods, representation, self-perception.

The discussion about the categorization of a film as ‘ethnographic’, attending to its characteristics and whether or not is being made by a trained ethnographer, has been ‘hotly debated’ (Ruby, 2005: 159) among scholars, specifically from the area of visual anthropology. This essay will focus on the possibilities of the intertwining between anthropology and cinema. First, I will expose the different views on the ethnographic value of films. Second, I will draw on two examples of films made by Mercedes Álvarez and Agnès Varda, directors that have contributed to the innovation of the documentary genre, in order to analyse and synthesize their possible contributions to the discipline of anthropology. Lastly, I will consider the possibilities of the conversation between ethnography and film.

Nanook of the North forever transformed our collective consciousness regarding documentary film-making with his pioneering documentary about the lives of Inuit. A 1992 silent black & white American documentary, it hits the audience with a multi-sensory impact as it covers daily lives of an Inuk, Nanook and his family as they travel, search for food, and trade in the Ungava Peninsula of northern Quebec, Canada. Flaherty adopts a journey structure based on seasons, from summer to winter. It employs an episodic structure, rather than a linear structure. The film features four action scenes demonstrating how Nanook and his family secure food through fishing and hunting walrus and seal. The center of the film focuses on building an igloo out of snow, condensing familial bond and their everyday livelihood at a common nexus. "Nanook of the North" has also been called the first ethnographic film belonging to the genre of "salvage ethnography" since the focus of the documentary is on the daily activities of a family of Itivimuit, a tribe of Quebec Inuit. On one hand the film offers amazing views and a dramatic narrative. On the other hand, the film clearly reflects the zeitgeist of the time period of its production.

Over the past century, anthropologists have claimed primary authority regarding authentic filmic representations of indigenous peoples. The emergence of indigenous films since the 1980s—as well as changes within the discipline— have challenged the ethical grounding of such ethnographic representations of the “other.” Unlike the emphasis of ethnographic filmmakers on cultural explanation, many indigenous filmmakers currently engage a critical identity discourse that effectively addresses the complex historical and contemporary contexts of indigenous peoples. This paper contrasts Dustinn Craig’s (White Mountain Apache) experimental film, 4 Wheel War Pony, with anthropologist Jerry Leach’s Trobriand Cricket in order to demonstrate how indigenous and ethnographic films can differ strikingly in their treatment of similar subject matter. With complex hybrid subject positions, indigenous filmmakers are often well positioned to critically engage the most challenging issues facing native communities today. These films also highlight limitations of disciplinary notions of the insider-outsider distinction, ethnographic holism, and objectivity in visual anthropology.

Περίληψη

Τα τελευταία χρόνια οι διαδικτυακές εφαρμογές γίνονται όλο και πιο γνωστές στον σύγχρονο κόσμο. Πλέον συναντάμε συχνά διαδραστικούς ιστότοπους κατά την πλοήγηση μας στο διαδίκτυο. Η παρούσα εργασία στοχεύει στην ανάπτυξη μιας μορφής διαδραστικού ιστότοπου με τη δημιουργία διαδικτυακής εφαρμογής για το ντοκιμανέρ “Το έθιμο των φωτιών στη Φλώρινα”. Σκοπός είναι η ανάδειξη των νέων τεχνολογιών και της ιδιαιτερότητας που προσφέρει μια διαδικτυακή εφαρμογή σε σύγκριση με το απλό κλασικό οπτικοακουστικό ντοκιμαντέρ. Τα διαδραστικά ντοκιμαντέρ είναι λίγα ακόμα ωστόσο αυτή η μορφή τέχνης βρίσκεται ακόμα σε αρχικό στάδιο και έχει πολλά να προσφέρει μελλοντικά.

Abstract
In recent years, web applications have become increasingly popular in the modern world. We often come across interactive websites while browsing the internet. This project aims to develop an interactive web site by creating an online application for the documentary "The Fireside in Florina". The aim is to showcase the new technologies and specialties that an online application offers compared to the simple classic audiovisual documentary. Interactive documentaries are still few but this art form is still in its infancy and has much to offer in the future.

Based on numerous classified and established film genres, models, and modes, Baraka seemed to be a problem because it is deemed as unclassifiable. While this might be a problem for the system, it shows how revolutionary the film was. If analysed based on the two kinds of documentary that was identified by Nichols, which are Historiographic and Ethnographic, Baraka is unable to be put in either of them, and identifies itself as a nature documentary (1994). Among numerous of critical praises, the film was seen to “...exceed the boundaries of film itself (Roberts,1998)”. This is because, the film has established itself by not trying to obey to the boundaries and classification that was set up and studied. Due to this, the film is a perfect example of how film movements (as a part of art movements) are born, which are as experiments and to become different. This essay is aiming to provide a discussion regarding the echoing characteristics of various film movements in the poetic documentary mode of Baraka, which hopefully give a new perspective in analysing the film.

Starting from the diachronic impact of salt on humanity's numerous activities and spiritual reflexes, the author calls for establishing a new humanist discipline: the anthropology of salt. This first exertion lists the themes developed around salt and the sciences/disciplines involved primarily or sectorially in researching this mineral. The anthropology of salt is a discipline of the future, which will gradually become autonomous as the inter-and trans-disciplinary approaches to common salt will prevail over the mono-or multidisciplinary ones.

Mindanao is the Philippine's second largest island in the south. Identifying Mindanao-based documentaries that have development themes remain unknown or unacknowledged. Using Phenomenology as theoretical framework and method, as a result, the researcher found out that similar to other documentary films in other parts of the country and the world, the themes showed by Mindanao-based documentaries reflect  in agriculture, health, women and children, environment and population.
However unlike its other foreign and local counterparts, a number of Mindanao-based documentaries anchor the mentioned development themes under the context of peace and conflict situation, human rights, indigenous peoples and their ancestral domains.

Quando foi necessário produzir um filme etnográfico para uma disciplina do curso de Ciências Sociais, eu e meu grupo fizemos a escolha de nos deixar levar por nossos interlocutores. Foi somente após exibição do filme, com as reações e os comentários que se seguiram, que pudemos entender melhor o que havíamos feito. Mas, afinal, o que se destacava mais no filme como um todo? A resposta nos foi dada por professores e colegas: a Antropologia Compartilhada. Se para nós, o grupo do filme, deixar-nos guiar pelas pessoas que encontrássemos era a única opção satisfatória, cabe a mim, neste trabalho, dissecar essa opção, problematiza-la, e trazer para o texto os antropólogos e cineastas que tiveram papel fundamental em seu desenvolvimento. Não tenho, de fato, um problema teórico ou uma pergunta norteadora. Há, porém, uma experiência em campo que culminou em um filme cujo processo se mostrou digno de reflexão. Portanto, seja qual for o problema, ele está, neste caso, intrinsecamente ligado a uma discussão metodológica. Pretendo, neste trabalho, pensar esse modo de fazer antropologia, expondo reflexões sobre meus próprios dados a partir do material de leitura escolhido sobre o assunto. Este trabalho, portanto, não tem uma única e grande questão como foco, mas várias questões que, juntas, expõem e reforçam várias das incertezas que encontramos quando falamos sobre filme etnográfico. Sua relação com a etnografia escrita, com outros tipos de documentários, com uma “verdade científica”. Suas qualidades e limitações, divisões internas, atributos, escolhas técnicas e conceituais; sua contribuição para a disciplina. E por detrás destas incertezas sobre o filme etnográfico, reside ainda um outro plano: o dos limites e possibilidades da etnografia em relação à disciplina antropológica.

There has been a significant increase in the number of history programmes and documentary films about history shown on television since the 1990s. This is due to technological and institutional changes in international television but also to the wider commodification of history. The new technological means and approaches have also provided new opportunities for filmmakers in the field of history documentaries. In this article, we are interested in the role of history in television and documentary filmmaking in general, and in how developments in television and documentary filmmaking have affected the nature of historical documents on television. We explore new forms of film, such as re-enactments, reality-experiential history documentaries, mockumentaries and counterfactualities. What is the relationship between history documentaries and academic historical research? What do these changes mean from the point of view of both academics and filmmakers? We approach the question from the...

This article focuses on how Kurdish returnees experience the process of returning “home”, how they imagine and (re) negotiate their future, through the discussion of my documentary film, Haraka Baraka: Movement is a Blessing, which tells the story of my parents’ return to Iraqi Kurdistan after living in the Netherlands for more than 20 years. While over the past decade, the Kurdistan Region has developed into a safe- haven situated within a conflict-laden area, the recent tension around the Islamic State’s (IS) expansion has changed the social and political landscape significantly in the Middle East, leading to new considerations for potential returnees. Based on the fieldwork I conducted through filming my own family during their return journey, I argue that using visual anthropological tools can open a window onto diasporic movements and illuminate social life in times of crisis by challenging the representation of Kurdish migrants and addressing the impact of uncertainty in their lives.

Sociological Research Online, 21 (4), 13
<http://www.socresonline.org.uk/21/4/13.html>
DOI: 10.5153/sro.4158

Title 'Too much suffering': Understanding the interplay between migration, bounded exploitation and trafficking through Nigerian sex workers' experiences. Abstract Migrant sex workers' experiences of exploitation depend on a dynamic re-evaluation of the working conditions and relationships that frame their entry into the global sex industry according to the subsequent unfolding of their working and wider lives. Contrary to the essentialist obliteration of consent introduced by abolitionist scholarship and policymaking, migrants can decide to endure bounded exploitative deals with people enabling their travel and work abroad in order to meet the economic and administrative (becoming documented) objectives they set for themselves. When this deal is broken as a result of the betrayal of original negotiations, migrants can decide to reframe their migration and work experience as trafficking and denounce their original enablers as traffickers, which gives them a chance to obtain the right to reside in the country of destination through asylum. 'The question is too much', Joy replied when I asked her whether she felt she had been forced to work in the sex industry. Joy was a 20-year-old woman selling sex along with many other young Nigerian women in the Bois de Vincennes, on the immediate outskirts of Paris. Immediately prior to this I had asked her whether she had decided to work in the sex industry for herself, which she promptly denied. These two questions were the beginning of a short survey I decided to undertake with 500 migrant and non-migrant sex workers in France between March 2014 and March 2015. The survey aimed to understand what people selling sex in France thought about the proposed law put forward by the Socialist Government of François Hollande introducing the criminalisation of clients. The law, which was inspired by the so-called 'Swedish Model' and thereby aimed at fighting trafficking through reducing the demand for commercial sex through clients' criminalisation, was passed at the Assemblée Nationale on 6 May, 2016. Ninety-eight per cent of the surveyed sex workers, both migrant and non-migrant, were against it.

In the spring of 1987 Sergei Paradjanov was invited from Tiflis to Erevan by the Holy See to make a film on the Treasures of Etchmiadzin. The ArmenFilm Studio was ready as were all those to assist in the shooting, including the famous cameraman Albert Yavourian.  Problems and misunderstandings eventual led to exasperation on the part of Paradjanov and the project was abandoned. Paradjanov gave me the hand-written scenario he had prepared for Catholicos Vazken. I was with him daily for the five or six weeks of fruitless work and kept a journal thinking it would be interesting to record how a famous filmmaker went about his work. Only twenty years later was I able to publish the material during a tribute to him in Paris.

What do you see when you look at the world around you? Which story do you choose to see and which story do you miss when you make that choice?

For some, the blink of an eye happens in a fraction of a second, while this can be longer for others. While one person`s attention is captivated by the symmetrical structure of a honeycomb, another person focuses on a human tragedy occurring in the Mediterranean. One might be intrigued by the imagination of archives while another is concerned with the future of our fragile ecologies, our healers or our souls.
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After almost one year, the EthnoKino collective is pleased to finally welcome you back to the cinema. During our first Film Festival, we invite you to direct your focus towards, and then beyond, these asymmetries to truly see, think and feel.
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While asymmetries in the world are not inherently problematic, asymmetric power relations are generally troublesome. Through these exceptional films, we will engage with fundamental issues of knowledge and power addressing mental health, mobility, ecology, and much more. Our intention is to visibilize the invisible and showcase  each artist's vision for humanity through film and interactive discourse.

This years festival program includes 9 film screenings, EthnoKino Shorts, two Masters in Bern (Tala Hadid and Rama Mani), Vision Talks, two concerts (Prorok Karpo and Çiçek Taksi) and a Panel Discussion on archive films at the Lichtspiel / Kinemathek Bern.


EthnoKino is an ethnographic and documentary film program run by a collective of students and Bern-based anthropologist. Established in 2017 at the University of Bern we have since curated a regular program with over 50 screenings with Q&A's and other film related events in our home cinema Kino der Reitschule. Our aim is to make aspects of ethnographic filmmaking accessible to a wider public, its topics ranging from human labour, political activism, spirit possession and much more. More than just “documenting the real” visual anthropology makes full – and sometimes experimental – use of the medium film’s potential on a quest to frame and experience manifestations of life from different cultural and political contexts around the world. Over the years we have hosted many internationally acknowledged filmmakers and created a transformative space for dialogue at the intersections of science, cinema and society. EthnoKino brings together diverse communities via catalytic platforms:  Ethnographic Film Screening Seasons, Masters in Bern, EthnoKino Shorts, Vision Talks and now our first Film Festival from 17 - 20 June 2021.

You can find more general Infos here: www.ethnokino.com
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Finora la letteratura critica su cinema e Sicilia ci ha svelato solo una faccia di questo affascinante e composito binomio: quella mostrata dal film a soggetto, erede di Méliès, la maggior parte delle volte espressione di una cinematografia di genere, tenendo in penombra l’altra faccia, quella raccontata dal film documentario, discendente per filiazione diretta da Lumière, specchio della realtà, anch’essa, purtroppo, assai spesso riflessa con immagini ingannevoli. Se il cinema di fiction ha rappresentato la Sicilia dell’immaginario, del mito, dell’éros e dell’épos, il cinema documentario ha costruito la Sicilia della memoria, dell’antropologia, della poesia. Sovente, però, la rappresentazione dell’Isola attraverso lo schermo, per quei complessi meccanismi insiti nell’industria cinematografica, non è stata nitida e sincera, rivelando gli intenti, non sempre nobili, degli autori. Raramente l’obiettivo della macchina da presa è riuscito a racchiudere la poliedrica immagine delle “cento Sicilie”, cosicché personaggi, storia, tradizioni, paesaggio, letteratura e cronaca sono rimasti, il più delle volte, imbrigliati in una visione disforica o banalmente superficiale, che lascia inviolato lo spazio oltre la raffigurazione esteriore. Ciò vale anche per il cinema documentaristico, che troppo facilmente ha insistito su motivi abusati: sul pittorico e sul pittoresco, sul bozzettismo e sul “colore locale”, celando la realtà più profonda agli occhi dello spettatore, senza penetrare il velo della tradizione e della convenzione. Non mancano, certo, al cinema documentaristico siciliano splendidi fotogrammi e brani da antologia, dove affiorano con forza penetrante sentimento e poetica, verità e realtà, denuncia e lotta, così da potere assolvere il suo compito di documento, di testimonianza pregnante di una delle regioni d’Italia più ricche di arte, di storia, di cultura, ma anche di conflitti e contraddizioni sociali. Con quest’opera, frutto di una certosina ricerca durata lunghi anni, si intende dare un primo, ma approfondito, contributo alla ricostruzione della storia del cinema documentaristico nell’Isola nel corso di questo secolo. L’autore, partendo dalle “vedute dal vero” e dagli avvenimenti più salienti che hanno interessato il cinema muto delle origini, come: il terremoto di Messina, le frequenti eruzioni dell’Etna e le varie edizioni della Targa Florio, ripercorre i primi anni del sonoro attraverso i cinegiornali Luce e le successive Settimana Incom. E il periodo prebellico e postbellico con i cortometraggi veri e propri che, sull’onda della scuola documentaristica inglese, tentano di avviare la stagione neorealistica italiana, per poi allontanarsene quasi immediatamente, lasciando spazio all’orda del documentario turistico-folclorico dei primi anni Cinquanta, sollecitato da astuti meccanismi legislativi. L’itinerario prosegue lungo i decenni successivi fino ai nostri giorni, incontrando importanti autori, siciliani e non, come: De Seta, Saitta, Alliata, Mingozzi, Ferrara, Vancini, La Rosa, Antonioni e molti altri, alcuni altrettanto famosi, altri meno conosciuti, dandone resoconto in una puntigliosa ricostruzione filmografia, a oggi, la più completa possibile. Ne viene fuori un affascinante ritratto a tutto tondo di un mondo sconosciuto, ma di grande interesse per la cultura e la memoria collettiva della Sicilia, la regione più cinematografata della nostra nazione.

SOMMARIO

Ringraziamenti

Avvertenza

Presentazione
di Aldo Bernardini

Il documentario: teoria e pratica
di Mario Verdone

Cento anni di cinema documentario nell’isola
di Sebastiano Gesù

Il documentario e la Sicilia

Immagini di Sicilia nell’Archivio dell’Istituto Luce

This essay is a critical and creative meditation on the process of making my ethnographic film It Gets Messy in Here (2011), a thirty-two- minute short documentary that examines the experiences of Black and Asian American transgender men and masculine of center queer women in public bathrooms. This essay explicates a Trans* and TransFeminist approach to filmmaking, a transformative film praxis that has the ability to move people to a higher level of self-consciousness about their place in the world and the systems that produce that place. This essay explores an intersubjective and self-reflexive approach to scholarship in hopes that it might produce new knowledge about and for the communities being studied, but also new epistemological platforms for that very knowledge.

Les grands régimes totalitaires que nous avons subis en occident l'avaient bien compris : le cinéma est une arme pour le pouvoir, mais aussi pour le peuple, si on le laisse s'en emparer. Adoptée en Egypte dès le début du XXe siècle avec la volonté de s'ouvrir sur l'Occident, l'industrie du cinéma égyptienne devint rapidement l'une des plus importantes du monde, devançant même dans les années 1950 en termes de quantité les studios hollywoodiens. Elle influença profondément toutes les cinématographies arabes de cette époque, monopolisant les marchés régionaux, notamment syriens, qui se départaient difficilement de ce modèle florissant. Egypte : filmer en marge de l'industrie Introduit d'abord par des cercles cosmopolites, le cinéma, en Égypte, est vite pris en mains par des hommes d'affaires soucieux avant tout de s'assurer des gains rapides. Au fur et à mesure de l'extension de l'éducation, de la formation de classes « modernes », le cinéma s'étend et s'égyptiannise sous formes de « genres » : mélodrames, farces, « comédies musicales » qui deviennent vite d'immuables poncifs, catastrophiques.

En una producción documental, además de la genialidad, hace falta un equipo de producción humano y técnico que nos siga por la senda del quehacer audiovisual, aunado al ejercicio constante de la observación y la planeación al momento de elegir el tema con el que se quiere trabajar, garantizando el aprovechamiento de los recursos técnicos y humanos que, indiscutiblemente, se traducen en costos y tiempos de producción. Éste es un ejercicio que comienza individualmente y que, en ocasiones, será sometido al escrutinio público para validar el estilo, el argumento y el enfoque del autor. Vale la pena, entonces, tomarse el tiempo necesario para observar el entorno e interrogar la naturaleza social de las cosas.

For the film 'artist' or film 'poet' 1 the relationship between the filmmaker(s) and the works produced is likely to be a personal 2 one, in that the process of action and reflection is part of a finely balanced evolutionary process. While much study has been made of the relationship between films and their audience little, in relative terms, has been made of the intimate process that exists between creator and their work. The language of film, its socio-political and cultural contexts and its cultural heritage can all provide valuable insights to the student of filmmaking. But what of that often delicate, intimate and, perhaps, mystical relationship between the creator and the created? This paper does not seek to put forward a thesis, nor to pose an academically driven question. In my experience, it is relatively easy to engage in a discourse about the work of others, particularly when dealing with the socio-cultural contexts of its language and representation, compared to analysing one's own work, especially that intimate mystical relationship one has to the work and the process.

There has been a significant increase in the number of history programmes and documentary films about history shown on television since the 1990s. This is due to technological and institutional changes in international television but also to the wider commodification of history. The new technological means and approaches have also provided new opportunities for filmmakers in the field of history documentaries. In this article, we are interested in the role of history in television and documentary filmmaking in general, and in how developments in television and documentary filmmaking have affected the nature of historical documents on television. We explore new forms of film, such as re-enactments, reality-experiential history documentaries, mockumentaries and counterfactualities. What is the relationship between history documentaries and academic historical research? What do these changes mean from the point of view of both academics and filmmakers? We approach the question from the standpoints of media practice and the concepts of truth and history culture. As a case study, we focus on the documentary film A Man from the Congo River (2010), directed by one of the writers.

Keywords
history documentary film, television, history culture, rhetoric, authenticity, re-enactment

Link to a 26-minute documentary film entitled The War of the Princes of Rain ("La guerra de los príncipes de la lluvia", in Spanish) researched, directed and co-produced by Bernardo Pérez-Soler:

https://vimeo.com/119632830
(Please request password by writing an e-mail to bperezsoler@gmail.com)

The old Macehual Maya experts in the art of recalling events long gone-by from the state of Quintana Roo, Mexico, still evoke vividly and in great detail the final stages of the so-called “Caste War” of Yucatan, even though they did not witness them or ever read anything about them—actually, they never learned how to read.

The vividness of this evocation has to do with the fact that the remembrance of the Caste War is thoroughly intertwined with both Maya religion and agriculture, and, more generally, with how the people who still speak the Yucatec Maya language spend their everyday lives.

This film is about the old stories on the war three of these men recount, and about the main activities those who share (or, in one case, oppose) their beliefs engage in.

Albeit in its present form it is a fully completed short-film, I have recorded enough material to enlarge it into a feature-length film. I, however, did not get enough funding to edit and post-produce such longer version.

"Chaque année, à l'équinoxe de printemps, les 13 zaouïas ("confréries") musulmane des REGRAGA accomplissent le Daour ("tour"), un pèlerinage de 39 jours dans le pays Chiadma, entre Essaouira, Safi et Chichaoua (Maroc).
Ces Regrega seraient les descendants de 7 saints chrétiens qui, selon le mythe fondateur, se seraient convertis à l'islam en rencontrant le prophète Mohamed de son vivant..."

Réalisation : Manoël Pénicaud, Khamis Mesbah
Image : Khamis Mesbah
Son : Rachid Amirat
Journaliste France 3 : Emmanuel Vigier
1ère Diffusion : 26 mars 2005 / émission "Mediterraneo"
Durée : 6'47
Production : RisB, France 3 Méditerranée

A documentary by Manoël Pénicaud & Khamis Mesbah (2007)

Every spring, the Regragas go on pilgrimage for several hundred kilometres in Essaouira region, Morocco. Although modernists and fundamentalists would not agree, this tradition, issued from maraboutic Islam constitutes the roots of Moroccan culture.

These 'pure' men visit during forty days their holy ancestors' sanctuaries, following an itinerary only known by them and stamped with Baraka, the divine gift. This is a chance to deeply discover an astonishing reality of the Muslim faith, a ritual that may date back to the beginning of Islam and North Africa's Christian past.

Even today, the anticipation of the pilgrimage is palpable among the faithful followers. They watch for the caravan to come, with the hope of being cured of sickness, or getting married or giving birth, all of this thanks to Baraka.

This year, Si-Ahmed, a Regraga's chief, is sick. His eldest son Abdelhaq will replace him. Si-Ahmed, who knows the ritual very well, will be with his son in his thoughts during the pilgrimage.

Directors : Manoël Pénicaud and Khamis Mesbah
Production : Autoproduction (2007)
Lasting : 49'
Language : arabic (VOSTENG)

Broadcast on national Moroccan channel 2M in January 2014 (20 % audience / 1.8 million viewers) https://youtu.be/j-tB431e1Cc

This movie won also the best documentary prize at the Sol et Luna Festival in Palermo, Sicilia (2008).

Other Festivals :

• 2014 : « Festival international du film de Lama », Corsica, 2014
• 2012 : « Culture Unplugged Festival », India | USA | Indonesia | New Zealand
• 2012 : « Digital Marrakech III », Marrakech, 2012
• 2009 : « Religion Today Film Festival », Trente, Balzano and Rome
• 2008 : « Rencontres Ethnographiques », Bordeaux
• 2008 : « Festival International Jean Rouch », Musée de l'Homme, Paris
• 2008 : « FIFEQ », Festival International du Film Ethnographique de Québec, Montréal
• 2007 : « Sous le Signe d'Averroès », Cinémathèque de Nice
• 2007 : « Escales Méditerranéennes : Le Maroc, un occident proche et lointain», Cassis
• 2007 : « Festival international du livre et du film Étonnants Voyageurs », Saint-Malo

Although The Ax Fight is one of the most discussed films in the history of ethnographic cinema, we argue that commentators have overlooked certain key aspects of the film. Critical engagement with Asch&amp;#39;s techniques and how they work to shape a particular interpretation of the Yanomamo is crucial to understanding the kind of anthropological work that ethnographic film does and can do. Offered as an exercise in close reading, this essay is intended, first, to highlight the kinds of analytical skills necessary in taking film seriously as a medium of scholarly inquiry. Second, by juxtaposing The Ax Fight and associated Yanomami shorts with the work of his contemporary John Marshall, we extend our evaluation of Asch by challenging assumed continuities between the two filmmakers. We suggest that a careful examination of the complex web of overlap and distinction in their respective practice allows for a more nu-anced understanding of technique, knowledge, and reflexivity in anthropological work.

This article addresses the production of a documentary film twenty years ago that focused on several families in the Creuse department who had embraced counterurbanization. Back and Forth to the Land is a film about intergenerational transmission. It follows the social life of children born to people who had moved from the city to the countryside as they enter adulthood. Twenty years later, changes in the way we view the ideological legacy of the utopias inspired by May 1968, as well as the evolution of my own perspective as a researcher, encouraged me to re-examine this film and the investigation behind it, driven by the stimulating possibilities found in the concept of an “ethnographic revisit”.

This article explores the imagery of the Soviet Far East and its indigenous inhabitants in the films of Aleksandr Litvinov, who played a prominent role in establishing the expedition film practice in the Soviet Union. Analysing his early travelogues, I revisit the Soviet debate about the standards of cinematic authenticity and demonstrate a deep interconnectedness of cinematographic and literary representational practices. Contextual analysis of the production and reception of Forest People (1928), Through the Ussuri Area (1928), Terra Incognita (1931), Old Luven’s Hut (1935), and Girl from Kamchatka (1936), along with Litvinov’s incomplete or unpreserved films made between 1928 and 1936, offers an insight into the changing approaches towards situating a multinational frontier region within the boundaries of a composite federal state. The article emphasizes the role of individual agency in interpreting and adjusting ideological agendas of representing indigenous cultures and Soviet-inspired changes. Litvinov’s case problematizes the status of the Soviet ‘visual order’ in relation to global colonial technologies of rule and challenges the opposition of fact and fiction in cinema.

The work of parenting can be the most challenging and enriching in a person’s life. As an intimate process, however, it remains largely hidden from the view of society, and can often become an isolating experience. Collective spaces such as baby groups and play centres are a vital resource for parents struggling to maintain a connection with the wider world. However, as ‘austerity’ bites, these points of contact are pressured to adapt to the requirements of neo-liberalism or face closure. Those on the margins of society are increasingly cut off from the public sphere, left to endure the challenge of raising children alone and in isolation.

Through interviews and personal narration, Michal Nahman, an anthropologist and mother of two, foregrounds the crisis being experienced by the Bristol Children’s Playhouse, and looks at the wider effects of cuts on child and family services. Taking the viewpoints of those most susceptible to isolation, namely women, the working class, migrants and the ethnically minoritised, Atomised Mothers asks us to think and feel what isolation is.

While conducting research on the DOBAG carpet weaving cooperative in western Turkey in 2000-1, Kimberly Hart began to pay attention to weddings and marriage practices. The result was video documentation of wedding rituals. The videos in this collection were taken in Örselli village, a small place in a rural region called the Yuntdağ. This is a rural, mountainous, and arid region north of the city of Manisa and south of the town of Bergama with about one hundred and fifty small villages. Villagers in the southern part of the region are Sunni Muslim.

EVIA: Ethnographic Video for Instruction and Analysis, founded by Indiana University, the University of Michigan and funded by Mellon is an innovative effort to provide annotated raw ethnographic video footage, which is fully searchable online.  There are now over forty depositors who have annotated ten hours of their footage.  To use the collections, you must register with EVIA.