MA Visual Anthropology

This course will examine some of the main features of a complex relationship between documentary filmmaking and anthropology, giving special attention to questions of representation, “truth”, veracity, realism and reality, images of the Other and reflexivity, colonial relations of power, and ethnographic narrative. It will do so by tracing the historical development of various documentary styles through the works of particular authors on a week-by-week basis. This mode of presentation will give students the opportunity to explore the reciprocal influences between the practices and theoretical preoccupations of film and anthropology. They will come to understand how styles of filming relate to different ways of representing the lived world, they reflect the questions and conventions of a certain period while undergoing non-linear changes over time.

The aim of this course is to examine the relationship between ethnographic documentary film and anthropology, with a strong regional focus on Europe and North America, through a systematic examination of the history of documentary film-making practices since the beginning of the twentieth century. The course will concentrate primarily on documentary film work that has emerged in some way in dialogue with anthropology as an academic discipline, even if appealing at the same time to wider audiences.

Students will become familiar with the main colonial and postcolonial debates surrounding the use of film for anthropological purposes:

• By watching a range of classic films and reading key critical texts, students will be able to assess critically the limits and possibilities of creating ethnographic attention through film medium
• They will learn how to depict and recognise different styles of ethnographic filmmaking while watching films
• Learn to identify the relationship between different cinematographic styles and technics with various epistemologies
• They will understand what is at stake in the kinds of power relations involved in the practice of representing others in film
• Students will become aware of the social political conditions surrounding the production of images in research and as ethnographic representation.

Postgraduate students: Enhanced intended learning outcomes for postgraduate students in this course are mostly delivered through the different kind of discussion in tutorials and seminars. They will be able to discern the cinematographic techniques in ethnographic films that set them apart from other documentary film styles, as well as acquire a critical eye for unpacking filmmaking narratives. Postgraduate students are expected to do one extra reading, which they can choose from the Additional Readings.

All lectures and tutorials will be delivered face-to-face unless otherwise indicated by the University or the lecturer in the first week of lectures

An assessed essay of 3000 words - 100%

Students receive electronic, personalised feedback on their assessed work and on the film review presentations during tutorial discussions.

Crawford, Peter and David Turton, eds. (1992). Film as Ethnography. Manchester University Press.

Grimshaw, Anna and Ravetz, Amanda (2009) Observational Cinema. Indiana University
Press.

Henley, Paul (2009) The Adventure of the Real: Jean Rouch and the craft of ethnographic cinema. University of Chicago Press.

Hockings, Paul ed. (2003) Principles of Visual Anthropology. Mouton de Gruyter.

MacDonald, Scott (2013) American Ethnographic Film and Personal Documentary: The Cambridge Turn. University of California Press.

Ruby, Jay (2000) Picturing Culture: explorations in film and anthropology. University of Chicago Press.

Suhr, Christian and Willerslev, Rane eds. (2013) Transcultural Montage. Berghahn.

Taylor, Lucien, ed.(1994) Visualizing Theory: Selected Essays from V.A.R. 1990-1994 Routledge.