Why and How to Use Possibly Use Film as an Anthropologist

Secondary Medium
- material for someone else to analyze
- post-analysis
- illustration of something
Primary Medium
- ethnographic presentation

What is Film?

Definition: 25 films/second
Functionally
- compressing and extending time and space
- creating an illusion of continuity
- it can potentially incorporate footages from around the globe
- from chaos to explanation (expressive material culture)
Example film: Life in a Day by Kevin Macdonald and Hiroaki Aikawa (2011)
Be aware that film is a manipulative medium
- Example: Alfred Hitchcock “The Kuleshov Effect” - assemblage of film to form a different idea
- Whenever two shots are combined, a third meaning appears.

the photograph in itself doesn’t tell us what’s outside of the frame
What brought the person in front of the camera?
Example film: John Smith H. M. (1977)
Sound effects frame the image.
The photograph has the ability to capture
- Emotions
- Behaviors
- Patterns of Behavior
- Habits
Film can capture the duration of the moment
Example film: The look of silence by Joshua Oppenheimer (2015)

Non-fiction film allows constant evaluation
Anthropology text focuses on reflection while filming directly allows the filmmakers to directly engage with the incident
Example film: Louis Lumiere (1895) -> the differences between contrived footages and spontaneity

Unique mediation of the camera
- intrusive -> aid in the engagement of the audience -> collaborative opportunities with the people being filmed (giving them agency)
Example film: Fried Chicken Shop from Channel Four

compress time
visually document historical events
capture emotions
engage with people
All these are good for
- story-tellig: record the life of others and give them a voice
- specificity: experience and see the world in a unique way

generalization
illustrate theory
not as representative as questionnaires and interviews
- it is very subjective (every frame is a subjective choice)

Collaborating with a filmmaker or getting trained
- Technical Training
- Theoretical Training

What is key/important
Archive footage - what’s excluded? What were the conditions of the footage shooting? What potentially shaped the behavior of the interviewees?

What is it for?
What do you want to capture?
Who is your audience? If it’s for the general public, what should be added for them to understand?
Resources: time, skill, money

Always contains a substantial amount of observation
Participation
The best way to understand it is to go to film festivals because it’s largedly defined by practice

Desire to create a new form of expression, reach out to the audience
duration of the aspect - allows the viewer to experience the moment uninterruted
Example film: Let Each Go Where He May by Ben Russell (2009)
- the people in the film have little or no knowledge of the filmmaker
- no captions, narration, etc.
- give agency to the observed (who often still doesn’t have a voice in this case)
Critique:
- Illusion of a unmediated world
- The viewer can project any meaning
- lack of context
- Colonial gaze?

Example film: Chronicle of a Summer by Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin
- Embrasing subjectivity: the moment that subjectivity becomes something to build upon rather than deny
- The boundaries between non-fiction filmmaking and participatory filmmaking are blurred
Critique:
- Too much reflections from the filmmaker
Example film: Eye for India by Sandhya Suri (2005)

Ref: Robert Greene who writes for Sight and Sound
Result of the tension between the chaos of the world and the order of the filmmaking