Dear colleagues,


Please share this with any filmmakers, anthropologists, or artists you
think may be interested.


Thank you,

Emily Hong

Ethnocine Collective



*AAA 2017 ROUNDTABLE CFP: COLLABORATION AND FILMMAKING IN AN ERA OF
ALTERNATIVE REALITIES*



Co-Organizers: Elena Guzman and Natalie Nesvaderani (Cornell University)

Discussant: Ethiraj Gabriel Dattatreyan (Goldsmiths)

Chair/Discussant: Faye Ginsburg (NYU), t.b.c.



In her 1998 essay on the future of visual anthropology, Faye Ginsburg
argues that anthropologically informed film and video can offer their own
epistemologies while also providing “critical insights into how culture and
social relations are being mediated through cinema, television, and video”
(184).  By privileging the epistemological value of ethnographic film and
photography, this roundtable asks: How does a deeply sustained
collaboration, or as Jean Rouch terms, anthropologie partagée, challenge
problematics of ethnographic authority, blurring the line between
subjectivity and objectivity in processes of knowledge production? We also
consider the ways in which the line between ethnography and fiction can be
a productive space to push the boundaries of anthropological knowledge. For
Rouch, there is no observation without participation: the filmmaker
integrates himself/herself into the ritual, taking part in a “strange kind
of choreography, which if inspired, makes the cameraman and soundman no
longer invisible but participants in the ongoing event” (Rouch [1973]
2001:99). This roundtable interrogates the dyad of
“participant-observation” in collaborative filmmaking, bringing
anthropologie partagée into conversation with feminist, queer, and
indigenous epistemologies committed to collaboration as praxis.



Our roundtable will showcase visual work in conversation with approaches to
collaborative film and photography in the field. We welcome applications
from anthropologists, filmmakers, and artists whose collaborative
engagements may address, but are not limited to, one or more of the
following questions:

· How does film contribute to feminist and/or queer ethnographic praxis and
methods, and how does feminist praxis influence filmmaking?

· What is the role of anthropologists as producers, catalysts, and
activists in relation to “indigenous media” and how do they blur the line
between participant observation and cultural activism (Turner 1991;
Ginsburg et al 2002)?

· How do relationships among researchers, activists, interlocutors, and
filmmakers develop and d/evolve during the process of collaborative
image-production?

· What kind of methodological advancements and challenges, in terms of
“audiovisual reciprocity,” have the projection of footage and techniques of
anthropologie partagée (Rouch [1973]2001:44) brought about?

· What is revealed in the space between ethnography and fiction and what
potentialities might images hold in facilitating such revelations?

· How do researchers, activists, and makers navigate the politics of
image-production and distribution in different sociopolitical contexts?



This roundtable discussion is organized by Ethnocine, a collective composed
of visual anthropologists engaged in feminist and queer research combining
the cinematic techniques of verité and sensory ethnography with the
collaborative tools of ethno-fiction and anthropology partagée across a
range of landscapes including the United States, Burma, Chile, Palestine,
Iran, Turkey, Romania, India, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.



In order to expand our knowledge of and engagement with activist and social
justice issues at the site of this year’s AAA meeting, we are partnering
with the D.C.-based #FilmandFriends for a community screening of
ethnographic films at The Lookout DC, a co-working and screening space (15
minute walk from the Marriott Hotel) dedicated to filmmakers and creatives
in Washington D.C.



*Please send a link to your film sample (unfinished works are welcome)
along with a short explanation on how your visual work fits within this
roundtable’s line of inquiry to Natalie (**[log in to unmask]*
<[log in to unmask]>*) and to Elena (**[log in to unmask]* <[log in to unmask]>*)
by April 8th.  *



References:

Ginsburg, Faye.  1998. “Institutionalizing the Unruly: Charting a Future
for Visual Anthropology.” *Ethnos* 63 (2): 173–201.

Ginsburg, Faye D., Lila Abu-Lughod, and Brian Larkin, eds. 2002. *Media
Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain*. Berkeley: University of California
Press.

Rouch, Jean. c2003. *Ciné-Ethnography /*. Edited by Steven Feld.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Turner, Terence. 2006. “Anthropology as Reality Show and as Co-Production
Internal Relations between Theory and Activism.” *Critique of Anthropology* 26
(1): 15–25.

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