Festival introduction
A comment on the contemporary relevance of ethnographic film in society
Sarah Pink
Loughborough University
At first glance the question ‘what is the contemporary relevance of ethnographic film?’ might not invoke a very optimistic response. Whereas in the latter part of the twentieth century one might have hoped that by now ethnographic films would have enabled further transcultural understanding, promoted public interest in social anthropology, and influenced mainstream anthropological practice, this has usually not been the case. On the one hand anthropological/ethnographic film has now largely become absent from our television screens (see Henley 2005: 171-5). On the other, ethnographic films are seldom cited in the writing of ‘non-visual’ anthropologists. Indeed some leading visual anthropologists are looking beyond ethnographic film to new practices and media. For instance: Jay Ruby’s multimedia hypermedia texts offer both a means of bridging the gap between visual practices and mainstream anthropology and a move towards a public visual anthropology (e.g. Ruby 2005-7); and Richard Chalfen and Michael Rich have situated their own applied visual anthropology practice as part of a ‘reinvigorated visual anthropology’ that is ‘considerably advanced beyond the myopic attention to and production of ethnographic film’ (2007: 55) that has dominated visual anthropology in the past. Anthropological/ethnographic film is still flourishing in that its international cycle of international film festival remains active, film can still play an important role in teaching and learning and innovative ethnographic filmmakers are developing practices and products that continually re-shape the field. However I believe that, in part, the contemporary relevance of ethnographic film in society lies in another direction: in an applied visual anthropology of social intervention.
The potential of visual anthropology methodologies for social intervention is not so apparent in their screening and evaluation at film festivals. Rather I want to stress the idea of ethnographic film as process, and thus consider how in this dimension it can become a form of social intervention. My own work as a visual anthropologist has involved developing visual ethnography methodologies for use in applied research, including using video as an exploratory collaborative research method, making a documentary and producing a series of multimedia texts (see Pink 2006). Having trained in observational anthropological documentary at the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology (in 1989-90) the methodologies I use are rooted in this particular approach to ethnographic filmmaking. They involve amongst other things my understanding ethnographic uses of video as collaborative, reflexive and representative of an encounter. On the basis of my own experiences and on the work of visual anthropologists involved in applied research I propose that by re-thinking the role of ethnographic film as applied (Pink 2006, 2007) and as public visual anthropology (see also Pink 2006)a renewed understanding of the contemporary relevance of ethnographic film in society - as film-product but also as film-process – is possible. Thus situating this applied and public visual anthropology practice as a key strand in The Future of Visual Anthropology (see Pink 2006: 81-101).
The practice of what might be called ‘applied visual anthropology’ has not always involved the making of ethnographic films. However it has often involved harnessing ethnographic film methodologies to further researchers’, clients’ (who may be the people filmed themselves as much as an organisation that has commissioned the work) and target audiences’ understandings of other people’s experiences. The edited volume Visual Interventions (Pink 2007) draws together existing work in this emergent field of practice, through a series of discussions and representations of how anthropologists have worked with audiovisual media in social intervention projects across public, corporate and NGO contexts. The contributors discuss applications of visual anthropology methodologies in interventions historically (Malcolm Collier), involving health and medicine (Richard Chalfen, Susan Levine, Christina Lammer), tourism and heritage (Vassilki Yiakoumaki, Diane Stadhams), conflict and disaster relief (Carlos Flores, Jayasinhji Jhala, Matthew Durington), community filmmaking and empowerment (Ana Martinez Perez, An van Dienderen), and industry (Tracey Lovejoy and Nelle Steele, Werner Sperschneider). Several of the contributors are experienced anthropological filmmakers. Yet the projects they discuss do not simply demonstrate how film products, as convincing representations, can invite increased intercultural understanding. Rather they also show how video-making processes, and the relationships and understandings that are produced through them can be generative of realisations and transformations (see Pink 2007: 5).
The hope that ethnographic films might be put to work to increase intercultural understanding is not new: it resonates with Jean Rouch’s understanding of the possible role of film as a kind of public anthropology that he saw in the potential of ethnographic film to inspire ‘the regard for cultural differences’ that was needed for the future (2000[1973]: 45) (see Pink 2007: 9 for a discussion of this). We are now living this future. Is this now the time when ethnographic film might realise its potential as part of an applied and public visual anthropology? The signs are good: visual methods and media are increasingly accepted and popular across the ‘ethnographic’ disciplines and the divide between written applied and academic anthropology is narrowing. Thus while I began this essay by suggesting a pessimistic outlook for the contemporary relevance of ethnographic film in society, I now want to be more optimistic. While there are other ways in which ethnographic film might be ‘relevant’ in contemporary society, in this essay I have interpreted the question’ to consider ‘relevance’ in an applied sense – to examine how ethnographic filmmaking might be engaged in social interventions. I suggest there is a need to re-think or expand our ambitions for ethnographic film(making), to encompass an applied ethnographic filmmaking intentionality. Outside the screening contexts of film festivals and lecture theatres the relevance of ethnographic film might be constituted through the making and screening back of the film with its subjects/participants, and/or in its screening to a target audience and subsequent discussion of its implications. These processes are already been developed in a number of projects which represent both continuities and departures from ethnographic film practice as it developed in the twentieth century. In doing so, they enable ethnographic film to take on increasing relevance in contemporary society.
References
Chalfen, R. and M. Rich (2007)
‘Combining the Applied, the Visual and the Medical: Patients Teaching
Physicians with Visual Narratives’ in S. Pink (ed) Visual Interventions, Oxford: Berghahn.
Henley, P. (2005) ‘Anthropologists in Television: a disappearing world?’ in S. Pink (ed) Applications of Anthropology, Oxford: Berghahn
Pink, S. (2006) The Future of Visual Anthropology, Oxford: Routledge
Pink, S. (ed) (2007) Visual Interventions, Oxford: Berghahn
Rouch, J. (2003[1973]) ‘The Camera and Man’, in S. Feld (ed.), Cine-Ethnography Jean Rouch. London: University of Minnesota Press.
Ruby, J. (2005-7) Oak Park Stories CD-ROM and DVD series, distributed by DER.