Encountering Ethnographic Film

Book reviewed in this article:
Innovation in Ethnographic Film . Peter Loizos. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. 224 pp.     

Whither Ethnographic Film?

Cinematographic Theory and New Dimensions in Ethnographic Film . Paul Hockings and Yasuhiro Omori , eds.
Anthropological Filmmaking: Anthropological Perspectives on the Production of Film and Video for General Public Audiences . Jack R. Rollwagen , ed.
Disappearing World . Andre Singer and Leslie Woodhead.
Visual Explorations of the World: Selected Papers from the International Conference on Visual Communication . Martin Taureg and Jay Ruby , eds.     

Reflexivity and the Challenges of Ethnographic Film

ABSTRACT

This article explores the cultural geography of a distinctive mode of bridal photography that developed in Taiwan beginning in the 1980s and by the 1990s had become virtually a universal cultural practice for weddings, cutting across the class and urban/rural social divisions. Characterized by large-scale high key portraits of brides and grooms dressed in a variety of finery, posed in numerous settings, and exuding varied emotional states, the photographs are a source of national pride for Taiwan as they are famous throughout the region. Using theories of competitive consumption, imagined community, and time-space compression, the article explores ways in which Taipei's bridal industry commands space and constructs place.     

Virtual Reality: Viewership and Ethnographic Film

This article deals with the numerous difficulties in locating accuracy in representation. It expands C.S. Peirce's notion of the phaneron as applied to production and reception to the question of viewing of ethnographic flims. It revisits Wilton Martinez's seminal work on interpretation and ethnographic spectatorship critically. Keyan Tomaselli's model of the Phaneroscopic Table, derived from C.S. Peirce, is applied to the viewing situation itself. This article uses the metaphor of “virtual reality” to discuss the nature of iconic representation in relation to the viewer context. It examines some approaches of a variety of film theorists and reception scholars who have conducted empirical studies on reception.     

Dead Birds Migrating: DVD Reinvigorates Classic Ethnographic Film

The DVD release of Robert Gardner's Dead Birds exemplifies the added value of extra features and the improvement in viewing quality when existing ethnographic films are distributed in this new medium. Whereas in the past, ethnographic films have been experienced as transitory performances, a nonlinear medium like DVD makes it possible to read a film the way one reads a book, stopping, reflecting, and reviewing. The inclusion of multiple soundtracks, additional sequences, and associated texts affords a density of content that has not previously been possible in either films or books.     

Rouch's Reflexive Turn: Indigenous Film as the Outcome of Reflexivity in Ethnographic Film

Western modes of thinking are usually associated with logic, reason, rationality and the positivist scientific paradigm. This is juxtaposed against “spiritual” ways of perceiving the world and different world views as associated with non-Western contexts. The article explores negotiations of differing ontologies where the positivist paradigm fails to explain phenomena. The possibilities of ascribing truth and reality to such an encounter are sought here in literary theory of the fantastic and notions of the surreal. These scientifically unexplainable events are illustrated with reference to the pro-filmic experiences of particular documentary crews, explained through Todorov's literary theory of the fantastic, incorporating the uncanny and the marvelous.     

Dislocating Ethnographic Film: In and Out of Africa and Issues of Cultural Representation

In and Out of Africa. 1992. 59 minutes, color. Produced and directed by Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Taylor. Original research by Christopher Steiner. Featuring Gabai Baaré. University of California Extension, Center for Media and Independent Learning, 2000 Center St., 4th Floor, Berkeley, CA 94704. (510) 642-0460.