The film is the text

Caninbal Tours was the best film I watched in my Visual Anthropology and in my Anthroplogy Through the Lens classes. The author Nancy Christine Lutkehaus in her article, "Excuse Me, Everything Is Not All Right": On Ethnography, Film, and Representation: An Interview with Filmmaker Dennis O'Rourke, touches upon its importance in the study of anthropological films by saying, that is a “visual exegesis of a topic rife with implications whose different levels of meaning touch on issues that are of central concern to anthropology” (Lutkehaus 1989:425). In Cannibal Tours, there is a give and take between O’Rourke and the subject of his film, be they the tourists or be they the locals. (Lutkehaus 1989:426). His form of reflexivity constantly makes the viewer “conscious of the constructed or "filmed" nature of the images and of the control the filmmaker has over this process” (Lutkehaus 1989:426). As we edit our film there has been much discussion on whether or not, how much and how often, should we leave our questions in so that the viewer is aware of US. I think on that I am being overruled.  

Mariagiulia Grassilli has a quote from the notes of the director of the film, she reviews in the essay, Anthropology and Cinema: Visual Representations of Human Rights, Displacement and Resistance in Come Back Africa, by Lionel Rogosin, where the actors become informants on the reality of the culture he is portraying in his film.  “[The actors] told me that my idea of it was much too mild and the police were much rougher” (Grassilli 2007:229). Like Flaherty he allowed the actors to be involved in their representation. I appreciated the distinction of staging being a place where “reality is captured through situations” (Grassilli 2007:230).

Grassilli, Mariagiulia (2007)'Anthropology and Cinema: Visual Representations of Human Rights, Displacement and Resistance in Come Back Africa, by Lionel Rogosin', Visual Anthropology, 20: 2, 221 — 232.

Nancy Christine Lutkehaus; Dennis O'Rourke (1989) "Excuse Me, Everything Is Not All Right": On Ethnography, Film, and Representation: An Interview with Filmmaker Dennis O'Rourke. Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 4, No. 4. (Nov.,1989),pp. 422-437.

In and out of love with Jay

This piece from Ruby was a twisty turny road that for me started off in one direction and then changed completely, for me it has been the least straightforward of what I have read from him. Usually I agree with Ruby from the beginning to the end. When he speaks of documentaries as “a social service and a political act” that presumes to give "voice to the voiceless," I am totally in his corner. He is expressing what I want to do. (Ruby 1991:50) However he next brings me to a halt by questioning not only how documentaries are done but also the impact of documentaries, “socially concerned and politically committed documentarians erroneously assume that a compelling documentary automatically produces a desired political action”(Ruby 1991:51). I began at once to marshal my defenses. I remember the “war on poverty” and I am a firm believer in the efficacy of the visual image. It was those documentaries that spurred and brought into being my interest in the plight of others than myself. They also showed me that the problems of the poor were not because they did not pull themselves up by their boot straps. They also connected for me US government’s corporate policies with real people. Whenever I bought Minute Maid products after that I could see in my mind the houses, one step up from slave quarters, the workers lived in. Those documentaries indicted me in the welfare of many people in ways that I would not have thought of. Ruby is wrong about the power of documentaries!!! I am proof.

But who should represent who? After more reading I began to see where he was taking me. Ruby quotes from John Grierson interview where Grierson is discussing film with Elizabeth Sussex , “local film people making films to state their case politically or otherwise, to express themselves whether it's in journalistic or other terms"(Ruby1991:51). That just makes sense.

He next talks about author-ship of documentaries. And once again I am thrown for a loop. He states that a documentarian is “someone wishing other people to infer meaning in a specified way”( Ruby 1991:53). That seems like what an anthropologist does kind of. Of course as I finish the reading I see that Ruby is talking about taking responsibility for being the subjective beings that we are. He is speaking on reflexivity as the method of ownership of a view or position. He is talking about being honest about where the author of the piece is coming from, and not trying to present your view as the honest objective truth.

Loving him again

Ruby, Jay (1991) Speaking For, Speaking About, Speaking With, or Speaking Alongside—An Anthropological and Documentary Dilemma. Visual Anthropology Review 7(2):50-67.

Producing not displaying

Every time I thought I knew what she was talking about two paragraphs later I had to change my mind.  The concept of mimesis? What is that? I had better look it up.

I am thinking, “Okay this film must look something like “Over Washington” a PBS production that was stunningly beautiful in its depiction of the landscape and the people of WA State, that some people found incredibly boring, which I, of course, being a native of Washington State, loved. Then I am lost amid all that poetic talk about the “visual Poetics” and how they enable the “the flowing, the play of depth and shallows, the surging revelation

and concealments of patterns and shapes” (Deger 2007:114). Ohhh maybe I don’t like thick description…quelle horror!. And just when I am thinking that this is beyond me, the author speaks of the video as a way of producing culture, rather than displaying culture, “dictated by Western imaginations” (Deger:2007:116).  What caught me up in a wonder was that I want to acknowledge that cultures evole. They don’t always disappear. And just like thousands  of years ago, technologies are still under diffusion. This technology in the hands of cultural teachers can do so much good. I liked the way the film played into the concept of “Oral Traditions” by the use of the viewer’s imagination to create images that are linked to the water. Sometimes people forget that often have visual elments seen and unseen. That I understand and can appreciate.

Best words said:

“The point is that Gularri is not a film about Yolngu culture—it is film that seeks to produce Yolngu culture and identity by generating a specific experience of viewing that is immediately recognized by Yolngu as something other than the ordinary or everyday act of watching television”(Deger2007:116)

Deger Jennifer, Seeing the Invisible: Yolngu Video as Revelatory Ritual, Visual Anthropology, 20: 103–121, 2007
Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, ISSN: 0894-9468 print=1545-5920 online
DOI: 10.1080/08949460601152765

Interviews, the good, the bad and the endless editing we could avoid if we did it right

The essay or chapter entitled “Interviews” that appears in the book, Cross Cultural Filmmaking by Ilsa Barbash and Lucien Taylor was a perfect reading for this week in my Visual Anthro class. Although as I read it I could see how much it would have helped me to have read the whole book last year when I was trying to make movies. The reading has given me a list of things to remember for myself and a list to discuss with my comrades in filmmaking.

Do we want the Two shot= both interviewer and interviewee are present. I am not a fan as I don’t like to see myself. Alternative is to Shoot interviewer asking questions, once interview is over. I like that, that way one person can appear to asking all the questions…or is that too deceitful, ah ethics? The questions provide context and are needed. We could ask interviewees to repeat the question that is what I did in my interviews. What about reaction shots---interviewer and interviewee alike, each listening to each other or maybe two interviewees listening to each other. We should add Reflexivity…we could do that by adding film discussions of interviews, film meetings? Cutaways: film them at the time, make notes during if they talk about a particular place or item, symbolic items/places. Look for inserts; clocks, paintings, bugs,

Use tripod or monopod…Camera as an objective observer and I am shaky. I have done interviews before and never had a person uncomfortable in front of the camera. Of course I took time to let them relax, I was very informal and chatty.

Interviewees:
Film couples together…more dynamic, casual clothes, include unwind time, film at eye level, , give a comfort speech; interruptions, more footage than needed, can edit out bloopers/pauses. Ask the interviewees: do you have advice for the people still working there. What would be a good question to ask others?
Interviewers: This week we need everybody’s input on the questions we will ask
Film arrivals? Film a moving (movement, walking) discussion (with janitors nearby)
Maybe more of an oral history of retired or disenfranchised past janitors of UFL.

This reading has given me so many things to think about concerning the production of interviews. I am going to start on my questions right now as I am all inspired to get at it. I think that I should get a book like this and read the whole book.

Barbash, Ilsa and Lucien Taylor, (1997) Interviews. In Cross Cultural Filmmaking. Berkeley:University of California Press Pp:341-357.

Love that quote:

The authors quote French film historian Gabriel Marcel on the topic of the aesthetics of film and interviews. Marcel explains what he thinks of interviews of talking heads and why they are often misplaced and unappreciated.  "Why? Because the spectator does not go to the movies to listen to explications"(Barbash and Taylor 1997:341)

A skilled gaze, is learned

Felice Tiragallo’s article, Embodiment of the Gaze: Vision, Planning, and Weaving between Filmic Ethnography and Cultural Technology, discusses the responsibilities and techniques involved in turning a filmic gaze into a skilled gaze.  Tiragallo writes of how a young Dutch filmmaker, Joris Ivens, had trouble finding the right angle with which to film the workers of a reclamation project(Tiragallo 2007:201). Finally after he had experienced the work himself, he realized what was important for his film to convey. We should have done earlier collaboration with our subjects to find out what they thought was important. By the time we found out what was true important story for us to tell, it was too late for us to create the film we needed to. Although meaning is produced differently in visual anthropology, the anthropologist still needs to construct the vision with all the standards and critical expectation one would expect in a written work (Tirgallo 2007:211). Doing this would allow for a more interpretive identity rather than an objective one (Tirgallo2007:211).

The best quote in this week’s reading was in Inga Burrows essay, The Experience and the Object: Making a Documentary Video Installation.

 “The planned filming approach was quickly abandoned”(Burrows 2005:93). I could really relate!

Tiragallo, Felice (2007)'Embodiment of the Gaze: Vision, Planning, and Weaving between Filmic Ethnography and Cultural Technology', Visual Anthropology,20:2,201 — 219

Burrows, Inga (2005) The Experience and the Object: Making a Documentary Video Installation. In Visualizing Anthropology.90-99

A thousand words

I just bought my first camera. Now as an anthropologist I can record life…Or can I. All this learning and thinking about ethics has in effect cramped my style or at least the style I thought I would have, as I saw myself snapping pictures of everything whilly-nilly. Elizabeth Edwards in her essay, Beyond The Boundary: a consideration of the expressive in photography and anthropology, adds to my dilemma by asking me to think not just pointed out the cool part of photography, “it's potential to question, arouse curiosity, telling different voices or see through different eyes from beyond,” but also to recognize the inherent anthropological responsibilities to attempt to inform(Edwards:54).  

"While the results of such enterprises might not necessarily be' anthropological 'in the terms of fully informed and integrated theoretical position, they nonetheless constitute documents of culture or culture documents whose legitimacy is drawn from the fact that their creators are attempting to communicate values and negotiated realities which are integral to human experience and consciousness"(Edwards:54).

Edwards quotes the words of Edward Weston reminding us that ultimately the photo will give a message, it will inform the viewers of something. She quotes Weston as saying" learning to see his subject matter in terms of the capacity of his tools and processes so that he can instantaneously translate the elements and values in the scene before him into the photograph he wants to make" (Edwards 1997:54).

“Only through a photographic practice so informed, which presently might appear interesting and intriguing from within the discipline, in the empirical basis of these possible approaches the strengthened” (Weston 1980:173 as quoted by Edwards 1997:55).

Edwards is seeking for photography to become more regarded as having an empirical foundation. In an anthropological world of context information, can you correctly give contextual information in a photo? This essay emphasizes the old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words. Edwards offer a challenge to create photos that speak a thousand contextually informative right words.

Photos and Griots

Trudi Smith’s essay on repeat photography entitled “Repeat Photography as a Method in Visual Anthropology,” I found both perplexing and profound.

Interpretive repeat photography…hmmm not sure that I get it. Or maybe I just did not like the example given (figure 5).  I like the original Kurt Seel photo. I am just not as enamored of “repeat photography produces imaginative interpretive results” even if they produce, emphasize or “challenge perceptions of how space may be apprehended and experienced” (Smith 2007:193). This is probably because when it comes to photos I am a realist who doesn’t like my image subverted (Smith 2007:94).

Smith cites Joanna Scherer’s concept of archival records being the recovery of “forgotten worlds” [Scherer 1995: 201], and mixes it with Hal foster term “liberated worlds” (Smith 2007:196).  I really like that way of thinking about repeat photography.

Paul Stoller’s article “Ethnographies as Texts/Ethnographers as Griots” was an essay I found filled with wisdom. By the time I was done reading it, I was ready to pack my bags and go sit at the feet of a Songhay elder. Along the way the essay made me realize how much I have to learn and think about before I can begin to conceive of writing ethnography. The best part of this essay was his thoughts on what to do about postmodernism.  The postmodern question demands that ethnographies as Stoller says, “must now combine,

as does the West African griot, history and economics, past and present, narrative and exposition” (Stoller 1994:362)

These are some of my favorite quotes:

 “For most Songhay elders,the ultimate test of ethnographer is whether their words and images enable the young to uncover their past and discover their future” (Stoller 1994:354).
“Ethnographers, like griots, must learn history and cultural knowledge” (Stoller 1994:353).
“griots must know themselves before they let others know them (Stoller 1994:354).

Smith Trudi, Visual Anthropology Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713654067

Repeat Photography as a Method in Visual Anthropology
Online Publication Date: 01 March 2007

Stoller Paul, Ethnographies as Texts/Ethnographers as Griots

Source: American Ethnologist, Vol. 21, No. 2 (May, 1994), pp. 353-366 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/645893

questioning the authorities

The article, “Issues in the Ethics of Research Method: An Interpretation of the Anglo-American Perspective” by Simeon W. Chilungu should be mandatory reading for all anthropology students…beginning with my cohort. Last fall in my Prosem I class we discussed some of the issues that Chilungu tackles. Most of my cohort, felt that they could be objective about the cultures they would be studying. They felt that they could be unbiased.  They felt that perhaps(just perhaps) they should reveal that they might have some biases in the first part of their ethnographies.  But that after initial short acknowledgement of where they were coming from any reflexivity would just get in the way.  They really hated the fact that postmodernism even existed. They were resentful of the postmodern questioning of authority.  I remember someone saying if they could not be judged to be objective, “then what was the point!!” This quote should be written in stone and placed in the hall of Turlington.

“The important point is that, at every stage, the observer is subjectively making decisions, which again reflect any experiential categories of affiliation and loyalty he/she may have. These categories significantly influence the researchers concept formation in the field, his/her epistemology, his/her description of what is observed, and his/her interaction and information transaction with members of the target culture”(Chilungu 1976:459).

I especially loved the How dare he! attitude of the replies.

Marcus and Ruby

Nanook of the North…Travelogue? Ethnographic film? Documentary?  Just what is this 1922 film? Alan Marcus answers this question by proposing an entirely new genre, he names Primal Drama.  A name, a term, for the coterie of films that when they portray, “representations of the Other” they do so in manner that that has a heavy emphasis on a presumed shared world’s view that places man in a instinctual struggle for survival against nature” (Marcus 2006:202-203).  By exploring the making of filmmaker producer Robert Flaherty’s classic film, Nanook of the North, Marcus posits to the reader the idea that the film can teach us as much about ourselves as it does about the other. And he is so right.  All representation of the other is also a representation of self. 

The same week I watched Nanook I also watched the Edward Curtis film, In the Land of the Head-Hunters [1914], which purports to be about on/about the Kwakiutl Indians of Vancouver Island. Nanook qualifies as primal drama as it is designed to display man and his epic struggle to survive. In the Land of Head-Hunters is really more of a melodrama although both do a good job of maintaining clichéd stereotypes of Native North Americans. In Curtis’ film we are treated to the in the way other who is presented as savages with incomprehensible ways, while Flaherty gives us an out of the way other who is shown subduing an incomprehensible savage land. The Inuit “survival is linked to the acquisition of special skills and adaptability to one’s environment,” while the Kwakiutl are shown as barbaric head hunters (Marcus 2006 :210).

As Marcus chronicles Flaherty’s path I could see why he is revered by so many. “Rather he took his camera to a distant environment and trained an indigenous cast of non-actors and technicians to assist him in crafting the narrative and devising scenes closely drawn from their personal experiences” (Marcus 2006 :203). Having non-whites involved in crafting the narrative was unheard of at that time…maybe even in this time. 

Marcus does an admirable job demonstrating to the reader the importance of a message driven cinematic vision as he recounts Nanook of the North”s reception in the world and its impact in terms of creating and consolidating the western view of Eskimo identity.   At the end of the essay Marcus has driven home the lesson of how one man’s vision can change the world. 

In his paper from the December 2, 1998, Philadelphia meeting of the American Anthropological Association, entitled “The Death of Ethnographic Film”, anthropologist Jay Ruby takes to task the liberal use of the application of the term ethnographic on films that are truly not ethnographic.

 “The thesis of this talk is that the term, ethnographic, should be confined to those works in which the maker has formal training in ethnography, intended to produce an ethnography, employed ethnographic field practices, and sought validation among those competent to judge the work as an ethnography. The goal of an ethnographic film should be similar to the goal of a written ethnography - to contribute to an anthropological discourse about culture” (Ruby 1998:2)

I have no problem with filmmakers making movies about whatever they want, just don’t present them as ethnographic.  Call them something else.  It bothers me that these films purport to provide real information about various cultures.  Real information has verifiable vetted context. I say cease and desist!  What is missing when these charlatans produce film is the context that can only be provided by an informed anthropological study.   So my sentiments are somewhat aligned with those expressed by Jay Ruby in his paper..  But unlike Ruby, I say recapture the term and educate people to what the word ethnographic means. Define and find an ethnographic study standard for films.

However learning to control and work the technology will merely enable anthropologists to go back in time and channel a Robert Flaherty-like relationship, in where the Other, in Flaherty’s case the Inuit, is shown their images being created and have a direct influence in their own  portrayal (Ruby 1998:3, Marcus 2006 :203). 

Ruby misses the real reason that anthropologists themselves just don’t produce ethnographic film…it is because they don’t have to, in order to reach and add to the anthropological discourse as the traditional audience for an anthropologist’s ethnography is usually another anthropologist.  Ethnographies are written in an elitist esoteric academise that often can only be understood other anthropologists.  Film is all about accessibility.  Anthropologists in order to produce ethnographic film of any kind, theoried or not must first want to reach out to the common people. I don’t think they want, I think that they are satisfied with a discussion that can only be understood by other scientists.  Jay Ruby’s talk/essay should be called the dearth of ethnographic film not the death of. 

Ruby, Jay (1998) The Death of Ethnographic Film. American Anthropological Association paper. Accessed 8/15/11 6:41 PM http://astro.temple.edu/~ruby/aaa/ruby.html (Ind.)

Nanook of the North as Primal Drama, Alan Marcus, Visual Anthropology, 19: 201–222, 2006 Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0894-9468 print=1545-5920 online DOI: 10.1080/08949460600656543