MCST 342 - Representing the World As It Is: Histories and Theories of Ethnographic Film

Cross-Listed as ANTH 342 and INTL 342

How can an experience of the world as it is be represented? What are the promises and challenges of transcultural filmmaking? This course will explore what has been called ethnographic, cross-cultural and transcultural cinema from several points of view. We will look at ethnographic film in terms of its geo-political, anthropological and cinematic origins, and then delve into its various forms and contemporary manifestations. We will examine some of the major films of the canon of ethnographic cinema, and look at the developments of several of its most renowned practitioners (Flaherty, Mead, Rouch, Marshall, Gardner, Asch, MacDougall). We will explore the shifting forms and representational strategies of ethnographic film and how these are linked to technological and ideological transformations. We will see how scholars inside and outside of anthropology have defined, criticized or challenged the project of ethnographic film, and how recent film and video makers, including those who traditionally have been the subject of the ethnographic gaze, have created new ways of visualizing experience for themselves and for others. Every year. (4 Credits)