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Ambiguities & epistemology
(ways to know and produce knowledge):
documentary as organized ethnographic texts
SM4134 Visual Ethnography & Creative Intervention
February 18, 2009
Dr. Linda C.H. LAI
From last week (3rd meeting)…
*the epistemic…photography in ethnographic research is tied to
questions of knowledge production…
*”Objectivity” and “truths” could be misleading and take us away from
the more important issues, especially the fact that the epistemic and
the aesthetic work together hand in hand.
*theorization of photography: should move beyond medium-oriented
approach as well as the “photography-artist-subject” triangle to
include usage and the users
Photos as field notes, as documents…
…Photos as organized texts,
as ethnographic texts…
What matters with the term “documentary”?
– a “usage” approach
Convention, narrativity
Truth claims > method
The term ‘documentary’ properly describes NOT ONLY a style or a
method or a genre of filmmaking BUT an assumed MODE OF
RESPONSE to film material: a mode of response founded upon the
acknowledgment that every photograph is a portrait signed by its
sitter.
Anticipated documentary response (assumed usage):
A documentary film is one which seeks, by whatever means, to elicit
the idea that ‘the image is perceived as signifying what it appears to
record.’
Viewers’ perception
Interdisciplinary approach to the Visual in Ethnography
• Anthropological and photographic theories of representation may be
combined to produce a deeper understanding of the expressive
possibilities of photography for anthropological representation.
• Ethnography is only one aspect of a research project. Different
disciplinary uses of it are likely to situate ethnography differently.
Ethnographic filmmaking
Precursors?
Use of film to capture patterns of human behavior for scientific analysis: e.g.
Felix-Louis Regnault (1895) – high-speed chronophotography footage of a
Wolof woamn making pots at the Exposition Ethnographique de l’Afrique
Occidentale; later works compare movement across continents
Actualities in early cinema (pre 1905-6)
Travel films (Travelogues)
http://www.youtube.com/user/travelfilmarchive
http://www.travelfilmarchive.com
Edward Curtis’s In the Land of the Headhunters (1914)
…films whose subjects were non-Western, non-urban, and in pre-modern
societies
**fictional romantic melodrama made among the Kwaikutl
Reference: http://www.africanfilmny.org/network/news/T01m1reddy.html
“The Emergence of Ethnographic Film Practice: Past Travels and Future Itineraries” by Prerana Reddy
Ethnographic filmmaking
Documentation + Documentary
Robert Flaherty…(1940s…)
Re-staging everyday life episodes + use of film narration
Re-staging the only way to share knowledge
Organization – the need of a “story”
Camera position, mise-en-scene, duration of shots
Further reference: “How I Filmed Nanook of the North” by Robert Flaherty (1922) at
http://www.cinemaweb.com/silentfilm/bookshelf/23_rf1_2.htm
Ethnographic filmmaking
Paul Henley, 46
Documentation + Documentary
Dziga Vertov…(1920s…)
kinopravda = “camera truth”
Camera NOT from one fixed angle, but everywhere
“Eye-on-the-wall”?
What “truth”? Truth the camera is capable of: the camera should be constantly
moving, entering where it please, “catching life unawares.”
Camera is a means of insight beyond the surface features of everyday
observable reality.
1950s…
Popularization of TV broadcasting
Ethnographic filmmaking
Paul Henley, 46
Documentation + Documentary
John Grierson (Britain, 1930s…)
Grierson founded the GPO’s Film Unit in 1933…
Night Mail (released 1936, dir. Harry Watt, Basil Wright)
= “camera truth” “sound archive”
On the British postal system
Ethnography of technology…ethnography of urban sound
Screen on-line: http://www.screenonline.org.hk/film/id/530415/index.html
Ethnographic filmmaking
Paul Henley, 46
Documentation + Documentary
Maya Deren (Britain, 1930s…)
Grierson founded the GPO’s Film Unit in 1933…
Night Mail (released 1936, dir. Harry Watt, Basil Wright)
= “camera truth” “sound archive”
On the British postal system
Ethnography of technology…ethnography of urban sound
Screen on-line: http://www.screenonline.org.hk/film/id/530415/index.html
Ethnographic filmmaking
Documentation + Documentary
Jean Rouch…(1940s…)
use of documentary editorial devices + making “documentary fictions”
Play with boundaries of fact Vs fiction, observer Vs the observed…, and
tradition Vs modernity
1950s…
Popularization of TV broadcasting
Technological development re-defining documentary methods
•
Documentary Technology
– Late 1950s, Heavy 35mm camera and huge sound recorder restricted
the location, denied documentary
“New technology create new documentary form”
– Television journalism in US, filmmakers and producers looked for new
ways to present information within the documentary format.
– Robert Drew, inspired by Life magazine to capture events as they
unfolded -> Get funding to develop equipment
– Near end of 1950s, new sensitive film stocks permitted shooting in
low lights, thus replacing the need to illuminate the subject with
multiple spotlights. The 16mm film was loaded in magazines which
could be replaced in seconds, thereby reducing the downtime spent
reloading the camera.
– “Direct cinema” (developed by Drew and his associates) was deeply
implicated with the established discourse of journalistic objectivity
Documentary screens chapter 5, pp. 85-87
Technological development re-defining documentary methods
• Technology affects the documentary filmmakers
• Filmmaker now can be also the cinematographers
“cutting” is done in the camera
• Some of the human complexity of those being zoomed in
on can now be suggested
Fourteen Direct Cinema and Cinéma vérité, 1960, pp. 218-219
Frederick Wiseman: Titicut Follies
An example of Direct Cinema
• Director:
– Frederick Wiseman
• Release Date:
– 1967 (USA) Banned by US
Titicut Follies: Background Information
• Titicut Follies is a black and white 1967 documentary film by
Frederick Wiseman about the treatment of patient at Massachusetts
Correctional Institution in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. The title is
taken from a talent show put on by the hospital's inmates.
• The film’s release was banned( outside the field of education) in the
United States from 1972-1992 by the Massachusetts Surpreme
Judicial Court because it violated the patients’ rights.
• In 1992, it was allowed to be shown on PBS. The Supreme Judicial
Court of Massachusetts has ordered that "A brief explanation shall
be included in the film that changes and improvements have taken
place at Massachusetts Correctional Institution Bridgewater since
1966.”
CASE STUDY:
Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright, 1934)
Production:
GPO Film Unit for Ceylon Tea Marketing Board
…begun as an Empire Marketing Board film
CASE STUDY:
Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright, 1934)
Background of production:
Producer: John Grierson
Screenplay: John Grierson, Basil Wright …,
based partly on a book about Ceylon written by traveler
Robert Knox in 1680
Music: Walter Leigh
Cast: Lionel Wendt (Narrator)
……
CASE STUDY:
Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright, 1934)
Basil Wright was sent to Ceylon to film four one-reel travelogues as
publicity for the Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board.
When he was actually there, he was driven by his own “inner impulse”
which made him shoot other sites and themes. The idea of Song of
Ceylon was not in his mind when he was there until after he returned
to London to edit the footage.
• There was no shooting script, but a screenplay afterwards, also with
reference to an existing book.
• The editing and sound in the film were done in England. Eight tracks
of recorded sound and music and images were combined.
• The film’s narration was taken from Robert Knox’s book (1680),
which Wright discovered by chance in a store window.
CASE STUDY:
Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright, 1934)
I. the Buddha
• Pilgrims up a mountainside to pray…
II. the Virgin Island (10:54)
• Daily life of the people…
III. the Voices of Commerce (~23:00)
• Two systems of labors juxtaposed: sound track of British stock
market prices and the arrival and departure times for ships // natives
of Ceylon gathering coconuts ad tea leaves by hand
IV. the Apparel of the Gods (29:43)
• Religious and cultural life of Ceylon as lived before the arrival of the
British colonizers
The four titles were inserted afterwards.
CASE STUDY:
Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright, 1934)
• The film is often called the world’s finest example of
“lyrical documentary.”
• Grierson described the theme of the work,
“Buddhism and the art of life it has to offer, set upon by a Western
metropolitan civilization which, in spite of all our skills, has no art of
life to offer.”
CASE STUDY:
Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright, 1934)
Keywords…
Interpretation /
narrative composition /
sight and sound craftsmanship /
experimentation of sound /
anthropology and power structure
CASE STUDY:
Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright, 1934)
Bibliography:
http://www.filmreference.com/Film-So-St/Song-of-Ceylon.html
Screen online:
http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/442428/index.html
Cecil Starr
TWO modes of PRESENCE
Ethnographic filmmaker as…
A quiet observer (observational approach)
Objective reality is observable, as long as we minimize interruption.
The camera is a telescope or microscope – neutral, impersonal, distant.
An interpreter (interpretive approach)
**implicit theory of knowledge: “true social reality is not to be found in the
superficial observable details of everyday life but rather in the underlying
relationships, sentiments and attitudes which sustain them.”
(Paul Henley, p. 43, in Jon Prosser, 1998)
Epistemology: different positions
Realist / Representationalist view
Certain degree of certainty of knowledge produced about a real world is
possible with awareness of the methodology itself (reflexivity).
Post-structuralist/Postmodern view
“Sentences are the only things that can be true or false.”
(Chris Barker interpreting Nietzsche)
Knowledge is a matter of the construction of interpretations about the world.
*When we say something is true, we mean certain construction is taken to be true.
*An idea of truth is also taken so within a historical context, and as the consequence of
certain power function and power structure.
Post-structuralist/Postmodern view
Production of knowledge occurs within the
language-games of such activities.
Post-structuralist/Postmodern view
Reflexivity is a key feature…
Ethnography: what kind of knowledge production?
Between…
numbers 
 meanings
Counting 
 interpreting
Lived experience
↓
Intensive field work
↓
Thick descriptions (detailed holistic description)
Ethnography: what kind of knowledge production?
Thick description (Clifford Geertz)
Details……………..…………….social processes
(multiplicity of complex conceptual structures)
(whole way of life)
(life-worlds and identities)
Ethno-methodologies
A mixed range of qualitative methods…
Interviews, participant observation, focus groups, textual analysis…