Anthropology confronts the challenges of culture and differences in the contemporary social world. Typically anthropologists have written their accounts and ideas about “others” and used visual media as supplemental data and teaching aids. However, this course is designed to celebrate the use of technology (film, video, digital) as a means of study and communication of ethnography. In visual anthropology we do not document people’s lives per se, looking at “realism” as science, as objective records of culture. Instead we employ the theories of ethnography to understand human behavior and meaning through visual media. During the process we must always recognize our own cultural biases and assumptions, reflecting upon where our ideas about culture originate and how we use technology to portray others.

Communicating visually has early roots in our human ancestry – humans have been pictorializing their world to maintain a record of their achievements, to construct a reality, and to communicate knowledge. Some evidence suggests that our nonhuman primate ancestors also pictoralized. With this in mind we will examine image contexts and relations that yield meanings, both in terms of production and viewing via three dyadic relations: filmer/filmed; filmer/audience, and filmed/audience. In other words, what do we want to say as filmmakers? How are the subjects represented and portrayed? And how will the audience respond to and understand these messages?

Certainly depicting other cultures on film has been a goal of early anthropologists and documentary filmmakers, but what does such a practice say about those who made these films, their knowledge of the culture and their ethical behavior? How do images captured on celluloid or video reflect our societal ideas about other cultures and what they represent? What do ethnographic films say about our society, our conceptions of other societies and where we are in relation to them?

To answer these questions the course focuses on critical examination of ethnographic and anthropological films, beginning with early documentaries and extending to contemporary films for TV and the classroom. A sequence of films (videos) will be shown and discussed in class. Readings on anthropological filmmaking will be assigned to correspond to issues posed by specific films. Topics include filmmaking strategies and techniques, pros and cons of film versus written accounts, ethics of filmmaking, representation of cultural difference, and the nature of audience reaction.

New this semester will be the use of web pages which will be maintained by the students themselves. Each student will have his/her own webpage upon which he/she will post notes, updates, film journals and class assignments. Over the course of the semester students make a film or video and their progress will be monitored by the class via their webpage postings. As well, paper critique and analysis will be posted for all to read on the webpage.