Anthropological filmmaking: an empirical art

This chapter provides an overview and guide to the methodology, theory, practice, and ethics of ethnographic filmmaking. Examining in turn the various uses of film in anthropology, the differences between anthropological writing and anthropological films, and the kinds of knowledge produced by each, it proceeds to discuss the practical concerns of the anthropological filmmaker: questions of point-of-view, method, and different approaches to the construction of films. It considers the pros and cons of teamwork and single-author filmmaking, aspects of film aesthetics, relationships with the subjects of films, the filmmaker’s behaviour in the field, and different modes of camera use. Finally, it addresses the different practical strategies possible for this kind of filmmaking, including a focus on individuals as subjects, the uses of narrative, and thematic approaches. Also considered is the filmmaker’s relation to the viewer, and ways of making the filmmaker’s intentions and practice more evident within the film.

Notes on cinematic space

This chapter addresses the problem of portraying space in the cinema and the position the film viewer imagines himself or herself to occupy when watching a film. Beginning with the rendering of depth in early films, the author argues that this was never the important question; rather it was the question of how the viewer related to sensations of being included or excluded by the images on the screen. The sense of exclusion was partly resolved through editing techniques such as the shot/counter-shot technique that incorporated the viewer into the action and also by employing deep focus and proximity to close objects, as in the films of Orson Welles. Equally important were narratives that involved the viewer through identification with the characters, as well as the culturally-constructed ‘cinema of familiarity’ of genre films and the work of certain filmmakers such as Ozu. Although none of the methods employed fully succeeded in overcoming the problem of cinematic space, the author argues that at least in nonfiction cinema filmmakers can limit it by being more open about their own intentions and the limitations of the medium.

Dislocation as method

Research in the sciences, including the social sciences, is usually supposed to be conducted in a systematic way, working from research questions to the gathering of empirical data, to conclusions. But in an analogy drawn from the art of fencing, the author argues for an alternative approach in visual anthropology. Films look at the world differently from the ways we conventionally see, and these differences have optical, social, and structural origins. To overcome these differences, filmmakers may have to voluntarily ‘dislocate’ themselves in order to put themselves in a position to view their subject from a different perspective, and so uncover new knowledge. The argument is supported by a discussion of the realities of ethnographic fieldwork, the processes of filmmaking, and the role of play and improvisation in the arts and other human endeavours.

Anthropology and the cinematic imagination

The anthropologist George Marcus has written that cinema helped to inspire the use of montage-like juxtapositions in ethnographic texts. In this chapter, the author argues that the emergence of a cinematic imagination, which imagines the world constructed around the viewer, had more effect on anthropological writing than the presence of films themselves. Concern about how the construction of documentary films represents reality also probably preceded similar concerns by anthropologists about the writing of anthropological texts. In the 19th and early 20th century, anthropologists conceived of images as a source of knowledge, but this waned as they turned to less visible aspects of culture. Interest in visual anthropology only revived after the Second World War with the work of Jean Rouch and John Marshall, the first of whom pioneered a form of intense, immersive cinema, and the second who employed filming and editing strategies that placed the viewer imaginatively within the three-dimensional field of the scenes filmed. This tended to counteract the perceptual and conceptual ‘flatness’ of earlier representations of culture. Malinowski’s and Evans-Pritchard's writing had contributed to a more immediate and rounded view, but ethnographic cinema confirmed it, making a significant contribution to anthropology as a whole.

Observation in the cinema

In this chapter the author notes that for some people ‘observation’ connotes an attitude of surveillance towards the subject. Despite this, the term is a useful summation of the original documentary idea, which was to show viewers as accurately as possible what the filmmaker had seen. ‘Observational cinema’ emerged as one of several closely related documentary approaches of the 1960s, with close ties to anthropology. Unlike other forms, it placed the filmmaker at the centre of the film as an investigator of on-going events, a position shared with the viewer. This approach was encouraged by the introduction of new, light-weight cameras and sound recorders and was inspired partly by Italian Neorealism and partly by live television. While often perceived as aspiring to detachment and scientific objectivity, it was in fact a highly authored form involving a close relationship between filmmaker and subject and representing the limited point of view of the individual observer. The author argues that while the long camera take is often regarded as the primary characteristic of observational cinema, its true marker is a commitment to the sustained witnessing of specific events. A further consequence of observational filmmaking is that it has stimulated reflection on what it means to observe.

Sensational cinema

This chapter explores the role of the senses and the evocation of physical sensations in the cinema. These evocations go well beyond the five primary senses, for combinations of images and sounds are capable of evoking a much wider range of sensations, including those of movement, pressure, nearness and distance, wetness and dryness, viscosity, and so on. Citing Michel Chion, the author examines how the sound-image becomes a new phenomenon that produces a heightened sense of material presence. Although some of our responses are innate, others are dependent on context and prior experience, which may explain why films are more effective at evoking sensations of touch than those of taste and smell. The aesthetic profile of different cultures is another determining factor. The cinema can be coercive in forcing us to see what we would ordinarily avoid, challenging our moral and cultural assumptions. On the other hand, its very technology often misrepresents our seeing, leading to an anodyne version of reality. The sensations and emotions of the filmmaker while filming are also important, and for filmmakers the cinema can become a way of reaching out to the subjects of their films. But ‘sensory’ cinema, the author argues, should not become an end in itself; it only achieves value within the context of other human relations.

The third tendency in cinema

This chapter traces the way in which films have evolved from portraying scenes to be ‘looked at’ to strategies of making the viewer feel present within the film, to films in which the sensory world is more fully evoked and embodied. The last tendency is apparent in the composition of images and the editing dynamics of silent Soviet cinema, but it later emerged in attempts to evoke a broader range of sensations involving touch, taste, and smell. In some films the presence of the human subject is often felt in ways that seem to transcend conventional ideas of representation, as in some of the films of Bresson, Tarkovsky, and Bergman. The reasons may be found in terms of ‘tactile space’ and ‘close-range’ vision as well as in a kind of shared proprioception, recently corroborated by findings in cognitive science. Such impressions may also be experienced by filmmakers in the act of filming and then be communicated in tacit ways to the viewer. Visual anthropology has been influenced by these moves through recent films attempting to create a sensory ethnography. This ‘sensory turn’ suggests the possibility of a cinema of consciousness that more fully reflects our experiences of everyday life.

Camera, mind and eye

This chapter argues that written and spoken language do not accurately convey how we actually think, or even how language presents itself in our minds. The ways images are organised in films also fail to represent accurately how we see and how we process mental images. The conventions of language and film are partly responsible for this, but the author argues that it is sometimes possible for individual artists to break the rules, bringing films closer to portraying the realities of conscious experience. For example, filmmakers such as Flaherty, Godard, and Hitchcock are able to construct new and distinctive ways of looking at the world. Referring to the work of the anthropologist and filmmaker Ivo Strecker and art critic Norman Bryson, the chapter closes with a discussion of the uses of the short and long take in nonfiction cinema, comparing these with the glance and the gaze in human perception.

Documentary and its doubles

This chapter provides a critical overview of the history of documentary cinema, arguing that it gradually lost sight of its early inspiration in the cinema of the Lumière brothers, adopting many of the features of fiction film production and modelling itself increasingly on didactic texts and journalism. In the sound era, British documentary films made under the aegis of John Grierson, despite his celebration of the ‘actual’, turned towards mass education and an idealised vision of collective humanity, and away from recording actual events in human lives. Italian Neorealist fiction films and changes to camera technology in the post-war period inspired a return to these objectives, but this found little space in television, which remained firmly fixed on journalism, entertainment, and public issues. Reactions took many forms, including experimental documentaries, social advocacy, biography and autobiography, and films exploring the relationship of film to reality, as in the work of Jean Rouch and Errol Morris. The rise of observational films gave promise of a return to the more modest aim of giving audiences shared access to what the filmmaker had witnessed, despite the challenges of manipulative ‘reality’ television and designer-packaged documentaries. The essay refers to a host of influences and commentaries, including those of Edward Said, Bill Nichols, Dai Vaughan, Robert Flaherty, Jean Rouch, Colin Young, and Grierson himself.

The experience of colour

Colour plays an important part in the aesthetics of everyday life. It has significant psychological effects as well as carrying symbolic meanings, both religious and secular, and it is an important marker of cultural identity. This chapter explores the role and uses of colour at the Doon School, an elite boys’ boarding school in India where the author made a number of films. In this highly controlled community, the social aesthetics of the institution becomes imprinted on the consciousness of its inhabitants. It is intimately associated with the students’ activities, social relationships, and sensory experiences. It defines their status and shapes their lives. The uses of colour at the school are also consistent with a wider social aesthetic emphasising restraint, logical thought, and the training and presentation of the body. Many of these values can be seen to have their origins in the school’s colonial history and postcolonial aspirations. The author argues that we can only understand the full implications of such sensory patterning in society through more extensive research in social aesthetics.