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Ethnographic Film (2):
Film, Culture and Meaning:
the ‘ethnographicness’ of a film
Dr Kathryn A Burnett
MEDI 08001 Documentary
Themes for ‘Ethnographic Film’ Lectures
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2.
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Representing ‘the Other’
Film, Culture and Meaning:
‘ethnographicness’ of a film
Student outcome – to develop critical
awareness of relationship between the
study/practice of culture (anthropology)
and the study/practice of film
(documentary)
Reminder: ethnographic approach
To participate in and observe a culture
 To describe and systematically record data
 To appreciate and produce a theorised
account of the ‘insider-outsider’
dimension.
 Focus: to understand behaviour in context
through an appreciation of what is
meaningful within that context.
 Geertz: ‘Thick description’
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Recap: Representing ‘the Other’.
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An ideological practice of producing,
reinforcing and circulating particular images
and ‘values’ that serve to construct a sense of
‘difference’.
These ideas of difference (‘otherness)
legitimize (make ‘normal’) certain negative,
derogatory and dehumanizing attitudes and
practices.
 Following David Harvey (Geographer) we
should note that some are more ‘other ‘ than
others.
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Key legacies of cultural history in respect of
‘ethnic or ‘cultural otherness’ of ‘Slavery’; the
‘Orient’, ‘Empire’, Colonialism etc.
Wide reference to this in sociology,
anthropology, geography, history, film-theory
etc.
 Reading: E. Said; R. Dyer
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Online reading: recommended
Emberley, Jukia. V. (2007)
Defamiliatizing the Aboriginal:Cultural
Practices and Decolonization in
Canada.
Check out Chapter on Flaherty and
Nanook of the North especially. Yet,
also read the Introduction chapter for
an excellent introduction to the idea
of colonial histories and
representation and the construct of
‘other’. Reference is made to
ethnocentricism and the role of ‘text’.
Available online to read on at Google Books.
Link from the idea of ‘the other’
to a deeper appreciation of those
who have sought to engage
with, and represent through
film, the complexity of ‘other
people and other places’.
Anthropology & Film?
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Key debate rests on
the idea that film and
anthropology are two
quite different ‘fields’.
Furthermore,
ethnography is a
‘specialist field’ in its
own right.
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The categorization of
films as ‘ethnographic’ is
viewed by some as
‘problematic’.
Key critic is Jay Ruby.
However, many argue
their claim to having
made ethnographic films
or to have adopted an
ethnographic perspective.
In each case they have
been influenced by a
legacy we touch on here.
Ethnographic Film: some key figures
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Margaret Mead &
Gregory Bateson
Jean Rouch
Robert Gardner
John Marshall
Tim Asch
David MacDougall
Ethnographic Film: Mead & Bateson
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Margaret Mead & Gregory
Bateson
Mead encouraged the use of
camera as a primary recording
device and not simply “as a
mechanism to illustrate a
thesis”
Furthermore, Mead and
Bateson’s dialogue on camera
use explores the issue of
‘selectivity’ and scientific
capture.
Shot length, position of camera
and degree of ‘sequence’ are
key elements in their
explorations and reflections.
Reading: On the use of the
camera in Anthropology: Mead
& Bateson (reprinted in Askew &
Wilk (2002)The Anthropology of
Media.
John Marshall: a shift from objective to reflexive.
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A Kalahari Family is a five-part, six-hour
series documenting 50 years in the lives of the
Ju/'hoansi of southern Africa, from 1951 to
2000. These once independent huntergatherers experience dispossession, …
Ju/'hoansi fight to establish farming
communities and reclaim their traditional lands.
The series challenges stereotypes of "Primitive
Bushmen" with images of the development
projects Ju/'hoansi are carrying out
themselves.
"There are two kinds of films. Films that show
us in skins are lies. Films that show the truth
show us with cattle, with farms, with our own
water, making our own plans." -Oma Tsamkxao
Source: http://www.der.org/films/a-kalaharifamily.html
Check out/Download clips from DER
Jean Rouch: a key innovator
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Rouch's innovative approaches
effected more than anthropological
film. In the summer of 1960, Rouch
and sociologist Edgar Morin shot
Chronique d'Un Ete' (Chronicle of a
Summer), a film dealing with
Parisians' thoughts and feelings at the
end of the Algerian war. In Chronique,
now considered a pioneering "cinemaverite" film, the formerly invisible
barrier between the "objective"
filmmaker and his subject dissolved.
Source:http://www.der.org/films/film
makers/jean-rouch.html
Check out/Download clips from DER
Timothy Asch
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From 1968 to 1975 he traveled deep into the rainforest of South
America with anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon to live with, work
and film the Yanomamo Indians. Shooting 16mm film in the
jungles of Venezuela with native peoples who had a taste for
intertribal warfare was not an easy task. From this experience
Asch directed and produced his first important film, The Feast.
Another film from this series, The Ax Fight, will always stand as a
crucial work in the genre. In its understanding of the power of the
vignette in film and in its concern for the truth and the accuracy of
its representation of a society, it echoes the concerns and methods
of Flaherty in Nanook of the North. The Ax Fight, while
simultaneously embodying the legacy of Flaherty, also prefigures
the more self-conscious and experimental modes of ethnographic
filmmaking to come. Asch's collaboration with Chagnon resulted in
thirty-nine films on the Yanomamo, which were distributed world
wide, through television, international film festivals, and received
numerous awards.
Pioneer in the development of ‘ethnographic film
Source: http://www.der.org/films/filmmakers/timothy-asch.html
Robert Gardner
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“Forest of Bliss is an unsparing yet
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Made with anthropologist and film maker
Ákos Östör
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http://www.der.org/films/forest-ofbliss.html
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See also Comment by Brian L. Frye.
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/
03/24/forest_bliss.html
redemptive account of the inevitable griefs,
religious passions and frequent happinesses
that punctuate daily life in Benares, India's
most holy city. The film unfolds from one
sunrise to the next without commentary,
subtitles or dialogue. It is an attempt to
give the viewer a wholly authentic, though
greatly magnified and concentrated, sense
of participation in the experiences
examined by the film.”
Shepherds of Berneray (1981)
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Link from Gardner to Allen
Moore & Jack Shea.
A year in an island Gaelic
community, Outer Hebrides.
Its ethnographic qualities
include:
Participant observation
Recognition of ritual and
boundary
Contextual depth
Consider the tension
between ‘document’ of
fact/truth and filmic reality
of ‘representation’/frame
and aesthetic.
Film: as an ethnographic
insight/resource/practice
There is a claim to continue and develop
‘ethnographic film’.(e.g. Loizos, Pink,
MacDougall, Heider).
 But key questions arise: Intention?
Audience?
 Issues of objectivity and record v.
creativity and interpretation. (“reflexive
turn”).
 Relationship with technology.
 Relationship with subject.
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Key to this is an appreciation of different
‘knowledges’ and skills. (See Heider
quote to follow).
Karl Heider’s position:
“interpenetration of disciplines”
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What is "ethnographic film"? The term itself
seems to embody an inherent tension or conflict
between two ways of seeing and understanding,
two strategies for bringing order to (or imposing
order on) experience: the scientific and the
aesthetic.
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The evolution of ethnographic filmmaking has
been a continuous process attempting to
reconcile this tension, to achieve a fertile
synthesis. Ideally, ethnographic films unite the
art and skills of the filmmaker with the trained
intellect and insights of the ethnographer …
Heider cont.
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… argument rests on the fundamental assumption that film can be
an important medium for the expression of the ethnographic
enterprise.
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What is involved, though, is more demanding than a mere
mechanical joining of cinematography and ethnography.
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There must be interpenetration of disciplines: cinematographers
must accept the scientific demands of ethnography;
ethnographers must adapt their expressions to the expanded
visual potential of film and video. Filmmakers must think
ethnographically, or scientifically; ethnographers must think
cinematographically, or visually.
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There are great challenges on both sides, and the burgeoning
vitality of ethnographic film testifies to the rewards as these
challenges are met.
Jay Ruby: critical concerns?
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“Ethnographic film is undertheorized and
underanalyzed. Anthropologists tend not to be
very knowledgeable about film, semiotic, or
communication theory, as witness the writings of
Heider and Loizois.
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While film scholars who write about the genre
lack an adequate understanding of anthropology
as can be seen in the writings of Bill Nichols,
Fatimah Rony, and Trinh T. Minh-ha.
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Jay Ruby (1998) The Death of Ethnographic Film
What’s the ‘problem’ with
Ethnographic Film?
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Ethnographic film is a most perplexing form of cinema
occupying a position equally marginal to documentary
film and cultural anthropology. It seems to defy easy
categorization causing interminable debates about its
parameters. Anthropologists started making motion
pictures as soon as the technology existed. And yet
ethnographic film remains a minor pursuit of the few,
and a pedagogical device used in a relatively uncritical
manner by most teachers of culture. It is a genre
constrained by marketplace rather than considerations
and dominated by filmmakers with no training or
apparent interest in ethnography.
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Jay Ruby (1998) The Death of Ethnographic Film
Jay Ruby’s Critique
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I argue that ethnographic film is only marginally related to anthropology and
constitutes an impediment to the development of an anthropological cinema.
Those films most often associated with the term ethnographic are sometimes
produced without any input by anthropologists and those productions that do
involve an anthropologist follow the conventions of documentary realism
without any apparent consideration of the propriety of these devices.
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The result is a body of work better described as being documentary films about
various cultures rather than a pictorial expression of anthropologically
constructed knowledge.
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While potentially useful for teaching, these films remain outside any critical
anthropological discourse. Ethnographic film is as disassociated from
anthropology as psychological film from psychology or historical film from
history.
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Anthropologists interested in utilizing the medium of film to communicate the
results of their field research and their analytic insights must look outside the
conventions of ethnographic and documentary film for models to discover a
form appropriate for their purposes that will convey anthropology pictorially.
Study Task: Film and Ethnography
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Read again the previous slides and follow up with
module reading for this week.
Summarise here in your own words Jay Ruby’s key
concerns regarding ‘ethnographic film’. His position is
that of an anthropologist. How might a film-maker (who
is not trained anthropologist) respond to Ruby’s
concerns?
Read Henley and Russell (Supplied) and summarize the
key points they can make to this debate.
Reappraise the field of ‘ethnographic film’ in terms of its
history and – in your own words - how an understanding
of this field informs current (and future) documentary
filmmaking interests and practice.
Further resources
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Journals: Visual Studies http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/1472586X.asp
Web Resource including list of film festivals for film-makers http://www.visualanthropology.net/
Documentary Education Resource Website: a key site for the accessing
Asch, Timothy (1992), ’The Ethics of Ethnographic Film-making’, in Crawford, Peter Ian and Daivd Turton (eds), Film as
Ethnography, Manchester University Press, New York pp196-204.
Banks, M. 2001. Visual Methods in Social Research. London: Sage
Basu, P. (2008) Reframing Ethnographic Film, (Online availability) McGraw-Hill; discusses Caplan and ’Tribe’ debate.
Emberley, Jukia. V. (2007) Defamiliatizing the Aboriginal Cultural Practices and Decolonization in Canada. Available
online to read on Google Books. Check out Chapter on Flaherty and Nanook of the North especially. Yet, also read the
Introduction chapter for an excellent introduction to the idea of colonial histories and representation and the construct
of ‘other’. Reference is made to ethnocentricism and the role of ‘text’.
Henley, P. (1998). Film-Making and ethnographic research. In J. Prosser (ed.), Image-based research: A sourcebook for
qualitative researchers (pp. 42-59). London: Falmer Press. ( supplied as reading).
Nichols, B. 2001. Introduction to documentary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Pink, S. 2001. Doing visual ethnography: images, media and representation in research. London: Sage.
Reddy , Prerana (2002) The Emergence of Ethnographic Film Practice: Past Travels and Future Itineraries Copyright ©
2001-2002 African Film Festival http://www.africanfilmny.org/network/news/T01m1reddy.html
Ruby, J., 2000. Picturing culture: explorations of film & anthropology. Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press.
Ruby, J. 1975. Is an ethnographic film a filmic ethnography? Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication 2(2),
104-111. available at: http://astro.temple.edu/~ruby/ruby/is.html
Russell, C. (1999) Experimental Ethnography: the work of film in the age of video, London: Duke University Press
(extract supplied)
Safizadeh, Fereydoun (2003) Yeyloq, QishloqThe lure of Grass and the cinematography of Shahsavan nomads, January
30, 2003 The Iranian http://www.iranian.com/Travelers/2003/January/Migrate/index.html
Warnlof, Christofer (2002) THE `DISCOVERY' OF THE HIMBA: THE POLITICS OF ETHNOGRAPHIC FILM MAKING. Africa,
March 2002
Refer also to two articles supplied from previous week e.g. Pat Caplan’s piece on Tribe.
Example: Ethnodoc
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“ Ethnodoc … provides services for people
working in cultural heritage development and
institution (universities, centres of research),
with a special focus on anthropology of visual
communication, ethnographic film, ethnographic
photography, digital pictures. We love to
collaborate with people that would increase
knowledge about cultures and cultural heritage.”
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http://www.ethnodoc.org/webtv.php
End