The long prehistory of ethnographic film

Henley, Paul

doi:10.7765/9781526147295.00009

Cited by 6 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 8 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“… 27. Lewis, David, Dennis Rodgers and Michael Woolcock (2014), “Introduction: popular representations of development”, in David Lewis, Dennis Rodgers and Michael Woolcock (editors), Popular Representations of Development , Routledge, London, pages 3–15, page 3; also Harman, Sophie (2016), “Film as research method in African politics and international relations: reading and writing HIV/AIDs in Tanzania”, African Affairs Vol 115, No 461, pages 733–756; and Henley, Paul (2020), Beyond Observation: A History of Authorship in Ethnographic Film , Manchester University Press, Manchester. …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Mothers, daughters, fathers and sons: intergenerational family social capital and inequalities in Guayaquil, Ecuador

Moser¹

2020

Environment and Urbanization

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper describes the role of intergenerational processes in increasing or reducing multidimensional inequality in Indio Guayas, a low-income peripheral settlement in Guayaquil, Ecuador. It also examines the importance of family social capital, irrespective of spatial location, as against household social capital in these processes. This longitudinal case study included a dataset on trends from 1978 through 1992 to 2004, in-depth studies over the decades, and further comparative research in 2018. The anthropological narrative is provided by the voices of three women and their families over 40 years. In 2018, interviews my son and I undertook for the documentary film Calle K demonstrated the importance of family social capital in the intergenerational reciprocity among mothers, daughters, fathers and sons, while illustrating different intergenerational trajectories addressing the challenges of inequality at this micro-level. The postscript points to the likely critical importance of family social capital in the context of the appalling COVID-19 pandemic.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Mothers, daughters, fathers and sons: intergenerational family social capital and inequalities in Guayaquil, Ecuador

Moser¹

2020

Environment and Urbanization

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In his history of the ethnographic film, Paul Henley (2020, p. 284) notes that ethnographic film-makers face a central dilemma while deciding how best to render cinematically intelligible any ‘subject that is culturally unfamiliar to [one or the other of their intended] audiences.’ For they must walk the tightrope between providing too much of extra-filmic explanation, which is bound to transform film into illustrated lecture, and too little of it, which might prime audiences unfamiliar with the subject to ‘fill [the] vacuum of incomprehension with their own, usually ethnocentric, interpretations’ (Henley, 2020, p. 284).…”

Section: Form Content and The Burden Of Intelligibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Now, the filmic enactment of social movements has displayed considerable variation—ranging from earnest portrayals of movement voices and faces to multilayered re/presentations of film-maker and filmed, of spaces and aims of political intervention, and of emotional and affective interactions between mobiliser and mobilised. To locate Sangharsh vis-à-vis established lineages of documentary and ethnographic cinema (as noted, say, in Henley, 2020; Waugh, 2011), let us examine the characterisation of the activists whose ensemble casting lends this film its three-act structure.…”

Section: Form Content and The Burden Of Intelligibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Views From an Anti-Caste Movement: Caste, Labour, and Religion in Sangharsh

Janarthanan

2024

Social Change

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

While the sociology and anthropology of India are replete with the thematic of caste and caste-based oppression and inequalities, the world of ethnographic film-making is largely silent on these issues. This article analyses an exception to this situation—Sangharsh: Times of Strife [Dir. Nicolas Jaoul, 2018], filmed in the late 1990s–early 2000s and revolving around activists of the Bhartiya Dalit Panthers, an anti-caste formation in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. I examine the film’s enactment of caste relations through its focus on this anti-caste movement and its activists. To this end, I attend to questions of cinematic form and structure, link the film’s representational strategies to film-making lineages, and analyse sequences in which some of the most contentious, topical issues are developed—namely, the connections between caste and labour as well as between caste, religion, and communalism. The article therein analyses the implications of these cinematic engagements to our understanding of caste relations.

show abstract

“…In his opinion, a laborious gestation would run from the mid-1890s up to the Second World War, "a period of tentative beginnings, sporadic activity and blurred genres". 68 Captions…”

Section: Figs 11-12mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Tricky Start

Pogliano

2021

Nuncius

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The earliest encounters between cinema and anthropology occurred while the former was taking its first steps and the latter was trying to better define its disciplinary profile. Among the first to be involved was the Frenchman Félix Regnault, an investigator of many topics and a lifelong supporter of the importance of ethnographic cinema. Racial differences were at the center of his interests, although attempts to highlight them yielded contradictory results. Some years later, the Britain Alfred C. Haddon brought a camera with him on the legendary Cambridge expedition to the Torres Strait (1898) and recorded a few films. The third example discussed here is that of Baldwin Spencer, who, together with Francis Gillen, included the filming of native ceremonies in his studies on the indigenous populations of Central Australia. Not only did technical and logistical problems trouble the start of ethnographic cinema. The theoretical framework of social evolutionism was weakening and anthropology was turning more and more to the study of language, kinship and belief systems. Here the contribution that cinema could make seemed temporarily to be in question.

show abstract

The long prehistory of ethnographic film

Cited by 6 publications

References 8 publications

Mothers, daughters, fathers and sons: intergenerational family social capital and inequalities in Guayaquil, Ecuador

Mothers, daughters, fathers and sons: intergenerational family social capital and inequalities in Guayaquil, Ecuador

Views From an Anti-Caste Movement: Caste, Labour, and Religion in Sangharsh

A Tricky Start

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About