Ethnographic filmmakers have long considered and debated the role of ethnographic films as tools for public scholarship. Perhaps because of their presumed accessibility, ethnographic films have been seen, on the one hand, as ideal media to convey anthropological material to the general public. On the other hand, they have been seen as specialized films that should not conform to mass media conventions or audience preferences. In my research on community-based rural development in the southeastern United States, I collaboratively create films to share my research with wider yet specific audiences including the participating and surrounding communities, development organizations and nonprofits, and extension agents and local government officials. This article will explore the process of engaging specific public audiences as a tool for both ethnographic research and an effective means to insert my research into relevant conversations about issues of rural development.

The Attala County Self-Help Cooperative, based in Mississippi, United States, formed with the intention of helping rural African American farmers utilize their land resources and enhance their farm productivity. Productivity is central to the activities of the cooperative. Yet, its members emphasize other forms of wealth that farming sustains, including self-reliance, the maintenance of a Black agrarian lifestyle, the support and development of a local community, and the social valuation of Black farmers. From this perspective, the cooperative is more than a means to resist or compete within an exploitative system. The cooperative generates wealth-in-people as an alternative value system formed around farming, community, and the Black farmer.

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This paper provides a brief discussion on the implications and outcomes of ethnographic filmmaking as a means to understanding environmental perception among farming communities. I argue that the unique contribution of filmmaking as a research method lies in its epistemological ability to engage with diverse ways of knowing. In this paper, I provide a close examination of a vignette filmed during my research to demonstrate how this methodological and analytical approach can be used to reveal environmental perception and knowledge as processes, rather than as substances.