Film Festivals and Anthropology [1 ed.] 9781443874717, 9781443816830

Citation preview

Film Festivals and Anthropology

Film Festivals and Anthropology Edited by

Aida Vallejo and María Paz Peirano

Film Festivals and Anthropology Edited by Aida Vallejo and María Paz Peirano This book first published 2017 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2017 by Aida Vallejo, María Paz Peirano and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-1683-3 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-1683-0

TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Illustrations ..................................................................................... ix List of Tables .............................................................................................. xi Preface ...................................................................................................... xiii Screening Anthropology across the Planet Faye Ginsburg Acknowledgements ................................................................................. xvii Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Film Festivals and Anthropology María Paz Peirano and Aida Vallejo Part I: Mapping Ethnographic Film Festivals Part I. Introduction..................................................................................... 21 Mapping Ethnographic Film Festivals: a World Overview María Paz Peirano I.I. Curating Anthropology Chapter 1 ................................................................................................... 39 Festivals, Conferences, Seminars and Networks in Visual Anthropology in Europe Colette Piault Chapter 2 ................................................................................................... 73 Ethnographic and Indigenous Film Festivals in Latin America: Constructing Networks of Film Circulation María Paz Peirano Chapter 3 ................................................................................................... 89 Visual Anthropology in the USSR and Post-Soviet Russia: a History of Festival Practices Victoria Vasileva (Chistyakova) and Ekaterina Trushkina

vi

Table of Contents

Chapter 4 ................................................................................................. 111 The Artful Narrative of Anthropological Festivals: View from the Baltics Carlo A. Cubero I.II. Case Studies Chapter 5 ................................................................................................. 127 Between Familiar and Unfamiliar. Ethnographic Films in the Festival dei Popoli Vittorio Iervese Chapter 6 ................................................................................................. 143 Temple University’s Conferences on Visual Anthropology. A First Person, Clearly Biased Report on an Experiment Jay Ruby Chapter 7 ................................................................................................. 165 Margaret Mead Film Festival: Four Decades of World Picture(s) Neta Alexander Chapter 8 ................................................................................................. 179 The Nordic Eye Revisited. NAFA, 1975 to 2015 Peter I. Crawford Chapter 9 ................................................................................................. 193 Les Regards Comparés and Le Bilan du Film Ethnographique: Jean Rouch’s initiatives Nadine Wanono Chapter 10 ............................................................................................... 207 The Film Festival of the Royal Anthropological Institute: A Personal Memoir on its Thirtieth Anniversary Paul Henley Chapter 11 ............................................................................................... 223 25 Years of Beeld voor Beeld Festival and Visual Anthropology in the Netherlands Eddy Appels

Film Festivals and Anthropology

vii

Chapter 12 ............................................................................................... 235 Organisational Challenges when Programming an Ethnographic Film Festival: Lessons from Göttingen Beate Engelbrecht Part II: Ethnographies of Film Festivals Part II. Introduction ................................................................................. 251 Ethnographies of Film Festivals: Reflections on Methodology Aida Vallejo Chapter 13 ............................................................................................... 261 Insider/outsider Positions at Glasgow Film Festival: Challenges, Issues and Opportunities in Industry-Partnered Ethnographic Research Lesley-Ann Dickson Chapter 14 ............................................................................................... 277 Travelling the Circuit: A Multi-sited Ethnography of Documentary Film Festivals in Europe Aida Vallejo Chapter 15 ............................................................................................... 293 A Community at the Margins: An Ethnography of Chinese Independent Film Festivals Flora Lichaa Chapter 16 ............................................................................................... 305 Programmer as Festival Spokesperson: Information Management Strategies at the Toronto International Film Festival SED Mitchell Contributors ............................................................................................. 323 Index of Festivals .................................................................................... 329 Index of Films.......................................................................................... 335 Index of Names........................................................................................ 341 Index of Subjects ..................................................................................... 347

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Fig. 1–1. Audience at "Origins of Visual Anthropology" Conference. MaxPlanck Institute, Göttingen 2001 ................................................. 46 Fig. 1–2. John Marshall (on the left) and Richard Leacock (on the right) at the "Origins of Visual Anthropology" Conference, Göttingen 2001 . 55 Fig. 1–3. Conference participants taking pictures of each other. .............. 58 Fig. 2–1. Posters of various editions of the CLACPI Festival (Festival Internacional de Cine y Video de los Pueblos Indígenas) .................. 76 Fig. 2–2. Awards ceremnony at the XI International Film and Video Festival of Indigenous Peoples, 2012.................................................. 81 Fig. 3–1. Informational Letter of the Union of Composers of the USSR, 1976, No. 6-7. ..................................................................................... 92 Fig. 3–2. Poster of the first International Visual Anthropology Film Festival in Pärnu. .............................................................................. 101 Fig. 4–1. Poster of the 2014 edition of the EASA conference. ............... 114 Fig. 4–2. Poster of the 2015 edition of the Riga World Film Festival. ... 118 Fig. 5–1. Poster of the 1962 edition of the Festival dei Popoli .............. 130 Fig. 5–2. Audience at the Festival dei Popoli......................................... 134 Fig. 5–3. Film screening at the 56 edition of the Festival dei Popoli ..... 137 Fig. 6–1. Poster of the first edition of the Anthropological Film Festival at Temple University (1968). ................................................................ 146 Fig. 6–2. During a coffee break at the 1968 COVA Conference. Denise O’Brien and Jay Ruby on the left and Karl Heider on the right. ....... 150 Fig. 6–3. Larry Gross and Jay Ruby leading a discussion during COVA, 1974. “Exposing Yourself: Reflexive Films” session. ...................... 154 Fig. 6–4. 1980 Human Condition Catalog. The book complemented the photo exhibit at COVA ..................................................................... 158 Fig. 7–1. 2013 Margaret Mead Film Festival Opening Night screening of Miss Nikki and the Tiger Girls .......................................................... 167 Fig. 7–2. All-female mariachi band playing on the closing night of the MMFF festival on October 2013. ..................................................... 174 Fig. 8–1. NAFA networking at the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI) Film Festival in Manchester in 1990................................................. 182 Fig. 8–2. NAFA’s Film selection. .......................................................... 186 Fig. 9–1. First page of the program of Les Regards Comparés, 1981. ... 198 Fig. 9–2. Cover of the program of Les Regards Comparés, 2000. ......... 200 Fig. 9–3. Poster of the Festival International Jean Rouch in 2011. ........ 203

x

List of Illustrations

Fig. 10–1. Leading ethnographic filmmakers at the 2nd RAI festival in Manchester, September 1990. ........................................................... 210 Fig. 10–2. 6th RAI Festival at Goldsmith’s College, University of London, September 1998. ............................................................................... 214 Fig. 10–3. The Nepalese filmmaker, Dipesh Kharel at the 10th RAI Festival at Manchester in June 2007. ................................................ 219 Fig. 11–1. Musician Joep Pelt improvising on silent movies during the 25th edition of the Beeld voor Beeld Festival. .................................. 227 Fig. 11–2. Director Eddy Appels opens the 24th edition of the Beeld voor Beeld Festival at the EYE museum cinema ...................................... 230 Fig. 12–1. Göttingen International Ethnographic Film Festival 2014– Award ceremony in Paulinerkirche................................................... 238 Fig. 12–2. Göttingen International Ethnographic Film Festival 2016– Selection Committee Meeting........................................................... 241 Fig. 13–1. Glasgow Film Festival closing gala, 2013............................. 265 Fig. 13–2. Diagram of insider/outsider positioning ................................ 268 Fig. 13–3. Audience Insider: Extract from fieldwork journal................. 271 Fig. 14–1. East European Forum pitching session during Jihlava IDFF 2008. ................................................................................................. 280 Fig. 14–2. “Documentary Filmmakers in the Balkans” roundtable during the 2010 Documentarist IDFF........................................................... 285 Fig. 14–3. Balkan Documentary Workshop participants gather during the 2010 edition of Dokufest Kosovo. .................................................... 286 Fig. 15–1. Q&A at the 9th edition of the Beijing Independent Film Festival (2012). ................................................................................. 298 Fig. 16–1. Midnight Madness programmer, Colin Geddes, at the 2012 Toronto IFF. ...................................................................................... 308 Fig. 16–2. Diagram: Toronto IFF as an intermediary between filmmakers and audiences. ................................................................................... 310 Fig. 16–3. Diagram: Toronto IFF Organisation and staff management .. 311 Fig. 16–4. Presentation of the film Hardcore at the 2015 Toronto IFF .. 315

LIST OF TABLES

Table I-1. Ethnographic and Anthropological Film Festivals 1970s-1980s ........................................................................................ 23 Table I-2. Ethnographic and Anthropological Film Festivals 1990s (currently active) ................................................................................. 24 Table I-3. Ethnographic and Anthropological Film Festivals 2000s-2010s (currently active or expected to continue) ........................................... 25 Table 6-1. List of COVA conferences .................................................... 144 Table 8-1. List of annual NAFA festivals............................................... 190 Table 15-1. The main Independent Film Festivals in mainland China ... 295

PREFACE SCREENING ANTHROPOLOGY ACROSS THE PLANET FAYE GINSBURG

It seems fitting to be writing the preface for this rich and timely collection as I prepare for a meeting of the curatorial committee planning the Margaret Mead International Film Festival, scheduled for October 2016 at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. We are in the midst of organising preliminary lists of possible films to screen, no easy matter as we can show only around 50 films from the 700 submissions we have received from across the globe, an indication of how much the field of ethnographic film has grown over the years, along with the festivals that showcase these works. While most are premieres, we also relish the opportunity to show important paradigm-shifting work from the archive of remarkable films and filmmakers that were first showcased at this festival over the last four decades. Sadly, many of these events have also become memorials for important inaugural figures in the field: Jean Rouch, Dennis O’Rourke, George Stoney, Albert Maysles, and Robert Gardner are among those whose work we have featured over the last few years, reminding audiences of the longevity of this film festival that is heading toward its half century birthday. Since my initiation into the Mead Festival, I have been involved with many others that are included in this volume, each with their own characteristic social location and ambience. These include the RAI Festival in England (see Henley, this volume); France’s Bilan du Film Ethnographique (now the Festival Jean Rouch) (see Wanono, this volume); Beeld voor Beeld (see Appels, this volume); the Taiwan International Ethnographic Film Festival founded by the dedicated anthropologist and filmmaker Hu Tai Li, and the many Indigenous film festivals that I have attended and helped organise–some of the most lively gatherings I have been part of–including First Nations/First Features, held

xiv

Preface

in 2005 at both the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the Indian in Washington D.C.1 I start with the Margaret Mead Festival not only because it’s where I first learned about ethnographic film’s expansive range; it also made me aware of the complex role that film festivals play as events, many years before film festival studies officially launched as a field. With the exception of years when I was off doing fieldwork, I have been involved in every one of the four-day Margaret Mead festivals, beginning with the very first, when Margaret Mead presided over the affair and introduced the groundbreaking work of Jean Rouch to the assembled cognoscenti who gathered from New York City and beyond. The Mead is now the longestrunning ethnographic film festival in the Anglophone world–the Conference of Visual Anthropology at Temple University preceded it, but that festival has not continued into the present (see Ruby, this volume)– and continues to be one of the most important. Back in 1977, as a student at Barnard College, I worked as a festival intern, handing out brochures and guiding attendees into theatres, while also keeping an eye on the small bubble-backed TV monitors playing the recently completed In the Land of the War Canoes (1972), the famous decolonized Kwakwaka’wakw remake of Edward Curtis’ 1914 film In the Land of the Head Hunters, appropriately situated in the Hall of Northwest Coast Indians, an early version of ethnographic installation (lest readers think installation work is a recent innovation). Many of the people I showed to their seats at that first festival were figures I had only read about in the emerging literature on ethnographic film and Visual Anthropology: David and Judith MacDougall, Tim Asch, John Marshall, Jay Ruby, and of course Rouch himself–with whom I eventually studied–were among them. Eventually, they became valued senior colleagues who treated me with welcoming generosity as I made my way into the field of ethnographic film as an aspiring anthropologist, documentary filmmaker, and curator/programmer and eventually, an anthropologist studying “media worlds” (Ginsburg et al. 2002), including film festivals of various kinds, what I have referred to as “fieldwork at the movies” (2002). The opportunity to be part of the ethnographic film festival universe, especially in those early days, offered the chance then as it does now not just to see films, but also to meet all kinds of people in the “corridor egalitarianism” that still characterizes such events, with conversations continuing beyond the festival on into the night at the nearest bar. As any good ethnographer knows, the formal part of the event is only part of the story of what’s happening, as the contributions to this collection that use 1

http://www.moma.org/calendar/film/724?locale=en

Screening Anthropology across the Planet

xv

the tools of anthropology to analyze various film festivals make clear. Indeed, I met my husband, the anthropologist Fred Myers, when we were the last two people in the theatre after a late night screening of David MacDougall’s Link-Up Diary (1987). And unlike other sub-specialties of anthropology, this aspect of Visual Anthropology has been (and remains) only marginally part of the academy in a way that I would argue is salutary. Spaces such as ethnographic film festivals offer a location and a frame for what are often wonderfully experimental projects that might not readily find a home in university departments. The whole field of ethnographic film is, to some extent, an effort at “institutionalizing the unruly” in ways that are not necessarily disciplined by the more formal structures of academic life (Ginsburg 1998). Editors Vallejo and Peirano have put together a truly valuable collection, adding an important counter-current to the recent and burgeoning film festival literature, offering an overdue history and mapping of how anthropology has taken shape on screens across the world, while also using the tools of ethnography to help us understand film festivals as social gatherings that constitute particular communities, create regimes of value, and stand in complex relationship to other authoritative representational systems. Overall, to use a cinematic metaphor, the articles in the book move between establishing shots, medium shots, and extremeclose ups. It is exciting to be reading this in 2016 and to take account of a foundational era that has received all too little attention. What will happen as we move forward into a future as new technologies take root such as Virtual Reality-based media, which raise their own intellectual, ethical and practical challenges, as we are discovering as we programme such work at the Mead festival? What happens to the group experience of viewing and talking together that we so value as part of the distinctive sensibility of film festivals–and the social worlds they create–when viewers are sitting individually immersed in a 3D version of life on another part of the planet, wearing Oculus Rift headsets that isolate each audience member in his or her own experience? But perhaps that is a question for the next volume. As this collection makes clear, there is more than enough to discuss in the present.

xvi

Preface

Works Cited Ginsburg, Faye. 2002. “Fieldwork at the Movies: Anthropology and Media.” In Exotic No More: Anthropology on the Front Lines, edited by Jeremy MacClancy, 359–376. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ginsburg, Faye. 1998. “Institutionalizing the Unruly: Charting a Future for Visual Anthropology.” Ethnos 63(2):173–196. Ginsburg, Faye, Lila Abu-Lughod, and Brian Larkin, eds. 2002. Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain. Berkeley: University of California Press.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank the public institutions and research projects that supported this project (and especially all the people whose taxes help to develop independent research, the output of which will hopefully help to improve the social and cultural awareness of the communities to which they belong). Our thanks go to the following institutions for their support of this project: the Training Programme for Researchers of the Department of Education, Universities and Research of the Government of the Basque Country; the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science; and the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.1 Thanks also to the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU and the Hautaldea research project2 that organised the 2013 edition of the NAFA film festival,3 where the idea for this book was born. Thanks to Olatz González-Abrisketa and the festival organisers for bringing us together and extending the Visual Anthropology networks in new directions. Our sincere gratitude also goes to everyone involved in this project, without whom this book would not have become a reality. We would like to thank the Cambridge Scholars Publishing team, who encouraged this project from its early stages, Faye Ginsburg for her support, and each of the chapters’ authors, who contributed their time, hard work and expertise to this book. We also wish to acknowledge the valuable contributions of Caroline Bennett, Emma O’Driscoll and Dominic Topp regarding the improvement of quality, coherence, and content presentation of chapters. We are especially grateful to Peter Lang publishers, Beate Engelbrecht, and Asen Balikci, who granted us permission to reprint the original texts written by Colette Piault in this book, as well as the photographers and institutions that granted us permission to use their images. Special thanks go to Festival dei Popoli for the wonderful photograph used on the cover. We would also like to thank the colleagues who helped us get through this long project, particularly Andrés Carvajal, Ricardo Greene, Skadi Loist and Mark Westmoreland, who shared their experience and knowledge and helped us with their generous advice. A number of visual 1

Grant number CSO2014-52750-P. “Transnational relations in Spanish American digital cinema: the cases of Spain, Mexico, and Argentina”. 2 Grant number EHU11/26. 3 See http://www.ehu.eus/ehusfera/hautaldea/nafa-film-festival-2013/

xviii

Acknowledgements

anthropologists, festival organisers and other scholars and practitioners also helped us document the current state of ethnographic and anthropological film festivals worldwide. We are extremely grateful for the enthusiasm of Elisenda Ardèvol, Sanja Bježanþeviü, Jenny Chio, Michèle Dick, Esther Fernández de Paz, David McDougall, Pedram Khosronejad, Ana Estévez Lavandeira, Stefan Eisenhofer, Luis Pérez Tolón, Helena Patzer, Johannes Rühl, Carmen Sílvia de Moraes, Stephanie Takaragawa, Nguyen Thi Thu Ha, Keyan Tomaselli, and Selda Vale da Costa, and the CLACPI organising team, whose willingness to contribute to this research made this work possible. Finally, thanks to our families, friends and partners for their support, patience and help.

INTRODUCTION FILM FESTIVALS AND ANTHROPOLOGY MARÍA PAZ PEIRANO AND AIDA VALLEJO

On November 13, 2015, the directors of world-acclaimed Leviathan (2012), Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel, were invited by the CPH:DOX International Documentary Film Festival in Copenhagen (Denmark) to take part in the ART:FILM seminar. Launched in 2003, the Copenhagen festival had built a reputation for programming films on the boundaries of the documentary genre, with works navigating between reality, art, experimental film and fictional narratives. The festival’s official website promised the opportunity to “meet the brains behind Harvard’s revolutionary Sensory Ethnography Lab for an interview about the field between film, art and research”.1 Conducted by film academic Jeppe Carstensen, the seminar, which took advantage of Castaing-Taylor and Paravel’s high profile to attract a wider audience, nevertheless felt like a failed attempt to bring together opposed discourses about ethnographic film. The thorough filmic analysis used by Carstensen to guide the interview (based on the classic Film Studies approach that searches for recurrent motifs across the authors’ films) did not seem to please the interviewees, who looked bored by the questions, and the conversation did not go much further. The problem lay in the conflict between the opposing discourses developed in film, anthropology and the arts, the latter being the one in which Castaing-Taylor, and especially Paravel, seemed to find themselves more comfortable. Since the Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab’s (SEL) origin in 2006, ethnographic film has attained an unprecedented visibility, mainly due to its performance at international film festivals. Premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2009, Sweetgrass (Ilisa Barbash and Castaing-Taylor) was the first critical success of the SEL that travelled to other major and specialised festivals, including the New York Film Festival and the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). 1

See: http://cphdox.dk/en/programme/film/?id=3235

2

Introduction

Foreign Parts (Véréna Paravel and J.P. Sniadecki) was presented in Locarno in 2010, and then travelled to the New York Film Festival, Festival dei Popoli, Cinéma du Réel and the San Francisco International Film Festival. Leviathan premiered at the Locarno International Film Festival in 2012, and had an outstanding performance on the festival circuit, being projected at film festivals with different profiles, both general (New York, Berlin, San Francisco, Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema, Edinburgh, Ann Arbor) and specialising in documentary (IDFA, CPH:DOX). Manakamana (Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez) followed a similar trajectory, starting its tour at Locarno in 2013, and then travelling to the Toronto International Film Festival, New York, AFIDOCS, San Francisco and the Sydney Film Festival. Although focused on ethnographic film, SEL filmmakers have been trained in film production and experimental film. This influence can be noticed in both their films and their discourses. Their cinematic language differs from classic Visual Anthropology works, and their public discourses about their work tend to prioritise aesthetic, philosophical or technical issues, rather than anthropological knowledge about the realities they portray. Within the anthropological context information tends to be prioritised over aesthetics or art, which can conflict with the decisions of SEL filmmakers. Sweetgrass co-director Ilisa Barbash notes that “at the very beginning, we could have explained that this was the last sheep drive, but we decided not to impart information in what felt like an artificial or extraneous way. If we end up showing Sweetgrass to anthropologists who are disgruntled that we don’t give them enough information, we’ll have to defend ourselves. But we’re happy with the choices we made” (in MacDonald 2015, 392).2 Depending on the festival’s profile, the debates and discourses on film can differ widely. Thus, it is not by chance that SEL’s films and filmmakers have been embraced by festivals devoted to independent film and creative documentary, while other visual anthropologists find it difficult to get into their programmes. By travelling the festival circuit, SEL filmmakers have learned to adopt the festival discourse, and to respond to different expectations, be they aesthetic, thematic or even behavioural. The importance of festival sites as a place for negotiation is one of the driving forces behind this book. Film festivals are certainly major players in the articulation of film canons, spaces for public debate, and places where different discourses about cinema are articulated. With the 2

SEL films have nevertheless been widely studied and recently acclaimed by anthropologists. See the special issue of Visual Anthropology Review (Volume 31, Issue 1, 2015).

Film Festivals and Anthropology

3

proliferation of specialised film festivals, including those devoted to ethnographic film worldwide and the hybridisation of genres between documentary, fiction and experimental cinema, Visual Anthropology finds itself at the very heart of the debate. We argue that to understand past and recent changes within Visual Anthropology, it is necessary to study the festivals’ influence as both film showcases and social encounters. With that purpose, this book explores intersections between film festivals and anthropology. It focuses on those festivals devoted to ethnographic film, and on the analysis of the festival as a social and cultural space within which discourses about film (ethnographic or otherwise) are negotiated. The book is also thought of as a site for the encounter of anthropologists and film scholars, two readerships that have not yet met around this topic. The debates around hybrid discourses developed around SEL’s films have served to energise Visual Anthropology, and to rethink the ethics and aesthetics of using a camera for ethnographic and anthropological purposes. Although this can lead to a clash of discourses and practices, the development of this debate at a particular time and in a particular place is in itself an object of study worth critical attention. We argue that festivals are key hubs where this new turn in the history of the discipline can be examined so as to understand its developments, and are productive sites for thinking film as a sociocultural practice, which should be read through the lenses of anthropology.

The Rise of Film Festival Studies The international film festival circuit plays a fundamental role in the production, circulation and consumption of contemporary peripheral cinema. Film festivals originated in Europe, and have proliferated in the last twenty years, functioning as key hubs in a global film network. Research on film festivals has risen exponentially since the mid-2000s, mainly inspired by the seminal work of Bill Nichols (1994) regarding the importance of the contemporary film festival experience and festivals’ role as a place for cultural translation. The increasingly interconnected festival phenomenon has been recognised as an autonomous circuit of film circulation (Elsaesser 2005). As a relatively new stable channel of exhibition, film festivals permit the circulation of certain types of nonmainstream cinema products. Thus, they are seen as a possibility to establish an alternative circuit that allows the recognition of independent “foreign language” films and filmmakers (Turan 2002, 8), especially those from the underrepresented “Third World” (Triana-Toribio 2007; Diawara 1994).

4

Introduction

Festivals are the main spaces for encounters between international film agents, and for the establishment of transnational connections that determine the further international circulation of alternative (nonHollywood) and peripheral film, including documentary or ethnographic film and other forms of non-mainstream cinema. Each festival enables encounters between a more or less stable group of professionalised subjects, such as festival programmers, filmmakers and critics, who gather together, watch and review new films, and decide what will be seen by audiences. Festivals also establish vital links with various other entities, such as states, avant-garde intellectuals and city marketers (De Valck 2007). The “elites” in the film world (Porton 2009) have created nodes where film professionals meet in personal micro-networks, reconstructing a certain “global film culture” in these settings (Wong 2011). Festivals are also involved in the process of value-addition to peripheral cinema. By travelling around the circuit, a film can accumulate symbolic value: the more praise, awards and buzz a film attracts, the more attention it is likely to receive at other festivals. Consequently, filmmakers gain increasing prestige due to the circulation of their products, which in turn become more valuable with the signature of a prestigious “author” of contemporary world cinema (Wong 2011; De Valck 2007; Elsaesser 2005). The growing importance of film festivals for non-Hollywood cinema has been increasingly recognised by scholars from diverse disciplines, particularly Film Studies. In addition to Skadi Loist and Marijke De Valck’s efforts to promote this research line in a multidisciplinary environment (through the creation of the Film Festival Research Network), 3 Dina Iordanova’s initiatives have been crucial in promoting film festival studies, including the annual publication of the Film Festival Yearbook between 2009 and 2014. While previous studies had focused on major film festivals, mostly European pioneers such as Cannes or Venice, the FFY series and other recent studies have focused on more peripheral geographical or linguistic areas, including Africa (Diawara 1994; Dovey 2015), the Middle East (Iordanova and Van de Peer 2014), Asia (Kim 1998; Ahn 2011; Iordanova and Cheung 2011) and Iberoamerica (TrianaToribio 2007; Lauer 2013; Gutiérrez and Wagenberg 2013). Other scholars have focused on film festivals specialising in documentary cinema (Vallejo and Winton, forthcoming), and also on thematically oriented festivals (on indigenous festivals see, for example, Córdova 2012,

3

Their official website offers a comprehensive online bibliography on the topic that is regularly updated: http://www.filmfestivalresearch.org/index.php/ffrnbibliography/ (Loist and De Valck 2015).

Film Festivals and Anthropology

5

and Peirano, this volume; on human rights festivals see Iordanova and Torchin 2012 and Tascon 2015). Despite the importance of ethnographic film festivals for Visual Anthropology, there has not yet been a clear systematisation of the development of these events, with the exception of Colette Piault’s key contribution to a history of ethnographic film festivals in Europe (2007, updated version published in this volume). Looking at anthropological literature, we mostly find some short publications related to ethnographic film festival reports, published in Visual Anthropology journals and newsletters (see Hazen 2014; Zoanni 2013; Yates-Doerr 2005; Lutkehaus 1996b; Balicki 1994; Harvey 1993; Heider et al. 1990; Van Brabant 1985; Grove, Tomaselli and Hayman 1981), plus some brief mention of the role of film festivals in the institutionalisation and expansion of Visual Anthropology (Jørgensen and Madsen 2007; El Guindi 2004; Ruby 2001). 4 Only recently do we find some research on the networks of circulation of ethnographic film through specialised, general or documentary film festivals (González-Abrisketa and Vallejo 2014). Some of this research clearly addresses the particularities and implications of the exhibition of anthropological films in these settings, but the topic has not been developed further. The role of film festivals for Visual Anthropology has been discussed by academics, filmmakers and festival practitioners in the past, even in the early stages of ethnographic film exhibition (Taszman 1967), but it has often been part of more or less informal conversations at meetings and seminars, documentation of which remains scattered.5 Until now, historical accounts, self-reflective academic pieces and in-depth discussions on the nature and challenges of festival practices within Visual Anthropology have remained unwritten, as part of the oral memory of scholars and practitioners. The first part of this book aims to collect these memories, in many cases written by their own protagonists, and to reconstruct these histories in order to set a common ground for the further development of the field. 4

For a full list of reports of ethnographic festivals up to the 1990s, see Husmann et al. (1992). 5 For example, in a meeting taking place in 1994, Anne Connan, David MacDougall, Colette Piault, Marc H. Piault, Martin Taureg and Hugo Zemp met to discuss the pertinence of appointing juries and issuing awards for anthropological film festivals, considering the particular aims of anthropological films. The text, however, did not lead to a formal academic discussion and it is hardly available to the public readership. For the same reason, we have included an English translation of Colette Piault’s account of the event, originally published in the CVA Newsletter in 1994, as an appendix to her chapter in the first part of this volume.

6

Introduction

Anthropology and the Study of Film Festivals Although film scholars have relied on anthropological conceptual frameworks to analyse film festivals, they have not yet been studied in much detail within the discipline. Similar to what happens with ethnographic film festivals, anthropological scholarship on non-specialised film festivals is scarce, and often reduced to brief observations of the events, without much ethnographic immersion (see Dirks 1995). Exceptionally, Nancy Lutkehaus’ long-term observation of the Sundance Film Festival, which produced several reports (1995, 1996a, 1997), is a more systematic approach that addresses the multicultural dimension of film festivals. Nevertheless, although Lutkehaus claims to make the first ethnographic approach to a film festival and to consider the transnational practices involved, she almost immediately dismisses the analysis of the complex social interactions involved in the event (1995, 121). In order to understand the festival as a “modern-day world fair” (1995, 122), she is more interested in a thorough analysis of what type of film is exhibited, focusing on the representational practices from a cross-cultural perspective, while excluding other festival structures. The fundamentally social dimension of film festivals was not really discussed within anthropology until the ethnographic account of the 1997 Sundance Film Festival by Daniel Dayan (2000), which is one of the few examples of ethnographic research made by an anthropologist in nonethnographic festivals until now. Although fairly brief, Dayan’s study could be considered a “classic” starting point for scholars working in the field. The author considers film festivals as media events of collective performance, in which norms settle into behavioural sequences about selfdefinition and identity formation. The film festival is seen as an encounter between the competing definitions of different social parties, such as organisers, jury members, candidates, audiences, buyers, and those who write catalogues and reviews. Dayan is interested in the audience as dispersed media spectators, along with the special rules of a temporary event with a short duration. These aspects are essential to understanding film festivals as events for social and cultural encounter, and Dayan shows a stimulating anthropological approach to this multifaceted phenomenon, which could be explored by anthropologists in other festival contexts. 6 However, 6

Brian Moeran, for example, has suggested understanding festival events and trade fairs as “tournaments of value” (2010) determining the circulation and exchange of “creative” products. This form of analysis is in line with research from organisational sociological perspectives, which deem film festivals as “field

Film Festivals and Anthropology

7

although suggestive, his work does not provide a fully developed analysis of Sundance, the film festival phenomenon, or broader cinema practices, including, of course, those involved specifically in ethnographic filmmaking. His work has not been discussed much within the anthropological discipline either, and for the most part the social life of film festivals has lacked anthropological analysis. Exceptionally, anthropologists looking at broader film worlds and filmmakers’ communities have acknowledged the importance of festivals for the construction of the fields of film production, among avant-garde filmmakers in New York (Ramey 2002), Indigenous filmmakers (Dowell 2006), and also for Indian (Ganti 2012), American independent (Ortner 2013), Korean (Park 2014) and Chilean cinema (Peirano 2016a). Notably, film scholar Marijke de Valck (2007) provides a complex analysis of these events using anthropology’s conceptual frameworks. De Valck draws on Arnold Van Gennep and Victor Turner to explain film festivals as sites of passage and forms of cultural performance, considering each festival as an extended cultural performance during which “other” rules of engagement count and the commercial market rules of the film world outside are suspended (2007, 37). This isolated character of the festival, understood as a site for communal encounter in which critics, filmmakers and programmers share a social space, had already been noted by film critic André Bazin (1955), who highlighted the ritualistic nature of these events (particularly Cannes), which he compares to a “religious order”.7 For De Valck, this ritual conveys the creation of a “film festival zone”: a liminal state in Turner’s terms, where cinematic products can bask in the attention they receive and acquire symbolic value. From this perspective, festivals mark transitions in the order of film culture and allow for its development. Festivals change external parameters of evaluation from economic to cultural (aesthetic and political), turning these events into the “obligatory points of passage” (2007, 38) for critical praise, and thus into hubs of value-addition for contemporary world cinema. To explain this role, De Valck refers to the work of both Bruno Latour and Pierre Bourdieu. From an actor-network perspective, she observes the spatial and temporal organisation of film festivals, emphasising the relational interdependence in these sites of participant agents, including configuring events” (Mathieu & Bertelsen 2013; Moeran & Strandgaard Pedersen 2012), meaning temporary social organisations that encapsulate and shape the development of professions, market and industries. 7 More recently, sociologist Emmanuel Ethis has studied the publics of Cannes, based on a fieldwork survey focused on cinephile spectators (2001).

8

Introduction

both humans and non-human actors such as funds, legal frameworks and other institutions. She argues that film festivals are obligatory points of passage for the flows in the network, because they are events that have become such important actors that, without them, an entire network of film practices, places and people would fall apart. De Valck combines this Actor-Network Theory approach with Van Gennep’s classic concept of “rites of passage” in order to explain the successful maintenance of the film festival circuit thanks to festivals’ liminal character, which turns them into “sites of passage” (2007, 38), that is to say, gateways to cultural legitimisation. In addition, using Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital, De Valck explains festivals’ traditional work as that of gatekeepers for alternative cinema, which offer opportunities for the translation of symbolic value into economic value. This role has extended in recent years in order to exert economic influence over film production, and festivals can also be understood as sites of struggle between autonomous and heteronomous modes of organisation, interested in sustaining their own position in the field, between art and commerce (De Valck 2013 and 2014). The work of Cindy Wong (2011) on film festivals as a global phenomenon–understood as nodes for global film industries and film culture–also presents an analysis that combines Anthropology and Cultural Studies. She sees festivals as a dynamic system where cinema, understood as a specific cultural artefact, circulates and multiple actors continuously strive to negotiate their meaning and position in the broader film world and socio-economic and political contexts. Wong was trained as an anthropologist, and her detailed analysis of festival spaces is strongly based on ethnographic research among other techniques, but she considers her research overall as an interdisciplinary project more than Anthropology. More comprehensive ethnographic accounts of film festivals have only recently started to develop, often combining insider/outsider perspectives from professionals involved in festivals’ production (see Dickson, this volume). Some film scholars and anthropologists have started to study film festivals using ethnographic methods (Vallejo 2014 and 2015; Peirano 2017; Lee 2016), although this is still an emergent field. The selection of ethnographically based research in the second part of this book, which includes ethnographic accounts of general and specialised film festivals, aims to reflect this approach, and to suggest some lines for further research in the field.

Film Festivals and Anthropology

9

Structure and Contents This collection explores the intersections between film festivals and anthropology from two different angles. Firstly, it looks at ethnographic film festivals worldwide, aiming to chart these events. Through a historical reconstruction of the festivals’ development, contributors reflect on the parallel evolution of programming and organisational practices, and the implications for Visual Anthropology and ethnographic filmmaking. Secondly, the book focuses on ethnographic methods for the study of film festivals, underlining the social aspect of these events. In doing so, film and anthropology scholars examine the limitations and possibilities of ethnographic research tools, which have proved of great value for this interdisciplinary field. Part I, “Mapping Ethnographic Film Festivals”, addresses ethnographic film festivals from a historical perspective, and aims to delineate a preliminary cartography of this specialised festival network, which has developed parallel to the evolution of Visual Anthropology as an academic field. This section is prefaced by a short introduction by María Paz Peirano, who offers an overview of ethnographic film festivals worldwide, accompanied by a comprehensive listing of current events. Peirano focuses on the historical development of these events and their international connections, reflecting on their cultural dynamics, and paying special attention to those peripheral events that, because of their short trajectory, are underrepresented in this volume. This part is divided into two main subsections. The first, “Curating Anthropology”, focuses on specific geopolitical areas and academic traditions. Essays in this section reflect on diverse ways in which festivals in Europe, Russia and Latin America understand ethnographic film. The second subsection, “Case Studies”, includes analyses of some of the oldest festivals specialising in ethnographic film, mostly taking place in Europe and the US. Contributors, including some of the founders of these events (who are also pioneers of contemporary Visual Anthropology), look at the past and future of ethnographic film exhibition. The first subsection, “Curating Anthropology”, opens with an updated version of Colette Piault’s seminal work published in 2007. This piece can be considered as the first attempt to go beyond the classic festival review to a more inclusive overview of festivals and conferences of Visual Anthropology in Europe. This chapter evidences the academic nature of ethnographic film festivals, corroborated by the other contributions in this section. The chapter includes as an annex a record of a meeting between scholars and practitioners discussing the pertinence of awarding films and

10

Introduction

appointing juries at ethnographic film festivals. The text, edited by Piault, was originally published in the CVA Newsletter in 1994. The original goal of vindicating Visual Anthropology as a subfield also explains the different traditions developed by these festivals in different geographical regions. The next chapter, by María Paz Peirano, looks at ethnographic and indigenous film festivals in Latin America, raising questions at the very heart of postcolonial debates in Visual Anthropology, particularly about the exhibition of films made by and about indigenous communities. Chapter 3, by Victoria Vasileva (Chistyakova) and Ekaterina Trushkina, looks at the Russian context, where folklore and musical traditions have shaped the understanding of ethnographic film. Carlo A. Cubero’s chapter closes this section, opening up wider debates about film festivals’ contribution to the definition of ethnographic film. Seen from the Baltic tradition of Northern European festivals, this chapter works as a bridge between this subsection and the next one. Cubero’s piece deconstructs the process behind festival programming, and reflects on the active role of curators in the continuous (re)definition of Visual Anthropology. The following subsection, devoted to case studies, looks at the history of some of the oldest leading ethnographic film festivals worldwide. In each case, the authors study the festival’s origins, and outline and scrutinise shifts in its practices. From Italy to the US, from France to the Netherlands, festival founders and anthropologists look at films and filmmakers attending year after year, and reflect on how festival programming and organisation has contributed to defining festival identities. Following a chronological order, this section starts with a piece on the Festival dei Popoli in Florence (Italy) by festival programmer Vittorio Iervese. Using the map and the territory as metaphors, he analyses the role of the festival, created in 1959, as a mediator between documentary films and ethnography. The next chapter focuses on COVA, the Visual Anthropology conferences held at Temple University in Philadelphia (US) since 1968. Conference founder Jay Ruby recounts classic films and filmmakers attending this pioneering event. The Margaret Mead Film Festival, which has taken place in New York (US) since 1977, is the subject of the next chapter. Neta Alexander looks at past and future tendencies of the festival, from classic ethnographic works to contemporary video installations. This is followed by a chapter on the Nordic Anthropological Film Association (NAFA) film festival by Peter I. Crawford, longstanding member of the NAFA Board. The festival has taken place in different (mostly) Northern European countries since 1979, and Crawford focuses on its international networks of collaboration with other festivals and schools of Visual Anthropology. The next chapter, by

Film Festivals and Anthropology

11

Nadine Wanono, recounts Jean Rouch’s initiatives to exhibit and discuss ethnographic film in France. Through a review of the history of Les Regards Comparés (started in 1978) and Le Bilan du Film Ethnographique (1982), Wanono recalls the atmosphere of exchange and debate created at these Parisian encounters, in which she participated. Paul Henley writes the next chapter, about the Royal Anthropological Institute Film Festival, created in 1985. Including his personal memories as organiser and former director of the event, he retraces the origins of the festival and its relationship with institutions in the UK, and reflects on the challenges of using a definition of ethnographic film that can open the festival to a wide range of competing films. The next chapter offers a close look at the Beeld voor Beeld Festival, which has taken place in the Netherlands since 1990. The current festival director Eddy Appels analyses the festival’s programming trends in the shadow of the Leiden and Amsterdam schools of Visual Anthropology, which present opposing ways of understanding the discipline. Finally, Beate Engelbrecht, the director of Göttingen International Ethnographic Film Festival, gives a general overview of the festival’s operation. She reflects on how the German festival has had to adapt to various organisational changes since its inception in 1993, having to continuously negotiate its identity and purpose. Part II, “Ethnographies of Film Festivals,” takes the festival as the central object of anthropological analysis. Authors in this section adopt ethnography as a methodology that allows for unfolding social and cultural dynamics developed within film festivals. This section is prefaced by Aida Vallejo’s brief introduction to anthropological concepts and ethnographic methods, mostly aimed at film festival scholars who are new to this discipline. Chapter 13, by Lesley-Ann Dickson, reflects on some of the challenges and opportunities involved in collaborative research with film festivals. Through a study of the Glasgow International Film Festival, Dickson calls for a flexible position for ethnographers, who must shift between insider and outsider positions depending on the aspects of these events that they aim to analyse. In chapter 14, Aida Vallejo offers a multi-sited ethnography of the documentary film festival circuit in Europe, focusing on the social relationships established among professional filmmakers, programmers and industry representatives. While tracing these networks, Vallejo underlines the importance of reciprocity practices for film festival operation. Chapter 15, by Flora Lichaa, focuses on the Chinese independent film festival sphere. After identifying the main institutions and festivals that sustain this community, Lichaa reflects on the

12

Introduction

relationships between the social ties that unite film practitioners and the political context that constrains–or even threatens–their practices. Finally, SED Mitchell looks at the internationally renowned Toronto International Film Festival. Focusing on the rather complex organisational structure of this large event, she studies the information management strategies developed by festival staff in order to control and improve channels of communication.

Conclusions: The Coming Together of Film Festivals and Anthropology Although trained in ethnographic methods to look at “other” cultural practices, anthropologists have rarely relied on their own research tools to look at their own practices of film exhibition. Similarly, film scholars have found difficulties in addressing contemporary social practices. Coming from a discipline where archival and textual analysis predominates, Film Studies is starting to discover the possibilities of ethnography to research contemporary film communities.8 It is interesting to see how, in this book, many anthropologists focus on the past, adopting the position of film historians, while film scholars focus on the present, relying on fieldwork and participatory observation. We consider that this exchange helps to illuminate both Anthropology and Film Studies, and can offer an initial approach to the study of ethnographic film exhibition within its cultural and social contexts. Taking into account the fundamental role of film festivals for contemporary cinema and “global” film cultures, we strongly believe that they would benefit from much more attention from anthropology, especially considering how much they resemble “classic” ethnographic sites: small and formed of an overlapping set of economic, social, political and symbolic elements. Each individual festival would be suitable for an ethnographic work in itself, given that each of them is to an extent a unique world with a specific history and challenges. An ethnographic approach is particularly suitable to observe the connections between the elements coming together in these spaces, and the complex interactions between different agents in the field. Moreover, further studies of festivals’ transnational connections and geopolitical implications would help us to understand not only their impact on peripheral cinemas but also the social

8

Seminal works, such as Powdermaker’s study of Hollywood society (1950), have for a long time been overlooked by film festival studies.

Film Festivals and Anthropology

13

construction of the international scene of contemporary global cinema, contributing to the discussion on the building of transnational images. For anthropologists working in the field of Visual Anthropology in particular, further discussion about the circulation, distribution and exhibition of visual ethnography and films of anthropological interest in film festivals is an open ground. Research on ethnographic film festivals leads to the ever important self-reflection on ethnographic practices and the construction of images within the discipline, allowing for the further exploration of current and future anthropological imaginations. In this respect, we should add a brief note about the predominance of Northern European and Northern American events in this book. This character of our festival selection has to do with the long history of these events, their main positioning, and the current reach of Visual Anthropology scholarship worldwide. This reveals some of the international hierarchies that tend to govern both academia and film practice, as well as the historical roots of anthropology as a discipline tending to look at exotic “others” in a colonial (and postcolonial) context. While recent decades have witnessed the appearance of an increasing number of ethnographic festivals worldwide, their cultural diversity is still not sufficiently discussed, and is worthy of critical attention. The process of defining an “ethnographic” film in festival contexts, as seen from the point of view of different societies, with different cultural and historical experiences, should be a very stimulating (and hopefully rich) line of inquiry for further research, which would add to future understandings of cinema from a critical anthropological perspective.

Works Cited Ahn, Soo Jeong. 2011. The Pusan International Film Festival, South Korean Cinema and Globalization. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Balikci, Asen. 1995. “The Sibiu Documentary Film Festival, October 20– 22, 1994.” Visual Anthropology Review 11:139–140. Accessed June 15, 2016. doi:10.1525/var.1995.11.1.139. Bazin, André. [1955] 2009. “The Festival Viewed as a Religious Order.” In Dekalog 3: On Film Festivals, edited by Richard Porton, 13–19. London: Wallflower. Córdova, Amalia. 2012. “Towards an Indigenous Film Festival Circuit.” In Film Festival Yearbook 4: Film Festivals and Activism, edited by Dina Iordanova, and Leshu Torchin, 63–80. St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies.

14

Introduction

Dayan, Daniel. 2000. “Looking for Sundance: The Social Construction of a Film Festival.” In Moving Images, Cultures and the Mind, edited by Ib Bondebjerg, 43–52. Luton: University of Luton Press. De Valck, Marijke. 2007. Film Festivals. From European Geopolitics to Global Cinephilia. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. De Valck, Marijke. 2014. “Supporting Art Cinema at a Time of Commercialization: Principles and Practices, the Case of the International Film Festival Rotterdam.” Poetics 42:40–59. De Valck, Marijke. 2014. “Film Festivals, Bourdieu, and the Economization of Culture.” Canadian Journal of Film Studies/Revue Canadienne d’Études cinématographiques 23(1):74–89. Diawara, Manthia. 1994. “On Tracking World Cinema: African Cinema at Film Festivals.” Public Culture 6(2):385–396. Dirks, N.B. 1995. “Bombay: The 26th International Film Festival of India: January 10-20, 1995.” Visual Anthropology Review 11:51–53. Accessed June 15, 2016. doi:10.1525/var.1995.11.2.51. Dovey, Lindiwe. 2015. Curating Africa in the Age of Film Festivals: Film Festivals, Time, Resistance. London, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Dowell, Kristin. 2006. “Indigenous Media Gone Global: Strengthening Indigenous Identity On and Offscreen at the First Nations/First Features Film Showcase.” American Anthropologist 108(2):376–384. El Guindi, Fadwa. 2004. Visual Anthropology: Essential Method and Theory. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Elsaesser, Thomas. 2005. European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Ethis, Emmanuel, ed. 2001. Aux marches du palais, le festival de Cannes sous le regard des sciences sociales. Paris: La Documentation française. Ganti, Tejaswini. 2012. Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry. London: Duke University Press. González-Abrisketa, Olatz, and Aida Vallejo. 2014. “Circuitos de distribución y espacios para la difusión del cine etnográfico contemporáneo: una guía práctica.” Anales del Museo de Antropología 16:60–82. Accessed June 15, 2016. https://sede.educacion.gob.es/publiventa/circuitos-de-distribucion-yespacios-para-la-difusion-del-cine-etnografico-temporaneo-una-guiapractica/antropologia/20098C Grove, Johann, Keyan G. Tomaselli, and Graham Hayman. 1981. “Conference Report: First National Student Film and Video Festival: Two Views.” Critical Arts 2(2):77–87. Gutiérrez, Carlos A., and Monika Wagenberg. 2013. “Meeting Points: A

Film Festivals and Anthropology

15

Survey of Film Festivals in Latin America.” Transnational Cinemas 4(2):295–305. Harvey, Penny. 1993. “Ethnographic Film and the Politics of Difference: A Review of Film Festivals.” Visual Anthropology Review 9:164–176. Accessed June 15, 2016. doi:10.1525/var.1993.9.1.164. Hazen, Jacqueline. 2014. “Review of the 37th Annual Margaret Mead Film Festival, October 17-20, 2013.” Visual Anthropology Review, 30:92–95. Accessed June 15, 2016. doi:10.1111/var.12040 Husmann, Rolf, Ingrid Wellinger, Johannes Rühl, and Martin Taureg. 1992. A Bibliography of Ethnographic Films. Hamburg: Lit. Heider, Karl G., Jonathan Stack, and Alvaro Perez Betancourt. 1990. “Moving Images of the Pacific Islands/Festival Latinoamerican De Cine de Pueblos Indigenas/Further Report.” SVA Review 6(1):82 –87. Iordanova, Dina, and Ruby Cheung, eds. 2011. Film Festival Yearbook 3: Film Festivals and East Asia. St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies. Iordanova, Dina, and Leshu Torchin, eds. 2012. Film Festival Yearbook 4: Film Festivals and Activism. St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies. Iordanova, Dina, and Stefanie Van de Peer, eds. 2014 Film Festival Yearbook 6: Film Festivals and the Middle East. St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies. Jørgensen, Anne Mette, and Berit Madsen. 2007. “The Nordic Anthropological Film Association (NAFA): In Brief.” Visual Anthropology Review 23:107–110. Accessed June 15, 2016. doi:10.1525/var.2007.23.1.107. Kim, Soyoung. 1998. “‘Cine-Mania’ or Cinephilia: Film Festivals and the Identity Question.” UTS Review: Cultural Studies and New Writing 4(2):174 –187. Lauer, Jean Anne. 2013. “From ‘Expresión en Corto’ to Guanajuato International Film Festival: The Rise of Regional Support for Mexican Cinema in National and International Contexts.” Transnational Cinemas 4(2):273–293. Lee, Toby. 2016. “Being There, Taking Place: Ethnography at the Film Festival.” In Film Festivals: History, Theory, Method, Practice, edited by Marijke de Valck, Brendan Kredell, and Skadi Loist, 122–137. London, New York: Routledge. Loist, Skadi, and Marijke De Valck. 2015. “Film Festivals/Film Festival Research: Thematic, Annotated Bibliography.” Filmfestivalresearch.org. Accessed June 15, 2016. http://www.filmfestivalresearch.org/index.php/ffrn-bibliography/ Lutkehaus, Nancy. 1995. “The Sundance Film Festival: Preliminary Notes towards an Ethnography of a Film Festival.” Visual Anthropology

16

Introduction

Review 11(2):121–129. —. 1996a. “The Sundance Film Festival.” Visual Anthropology Review 12(2):121–129. —. 1996b. “Nordic Anthropological Film Association (NAFA) Festival.” Visual Anthropology Review 12:86–94. Accessed June 15, 2016. doi:10.1525/var.1996.12.1.86 —. 1997. “Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control: Errol Morris (and others) at Sundance 1997.” Visual Anthropology Review 13:77–86. Accessed June 15, 2016. doi:10.1525/var.1997.13.1.77 Macdonald, Scott. 2014. Avant-Doc: Intersections of Documentary and Avant-Garde Cinema. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mathieu, Chris, and Marianne Bertelsen. 2013. “Evaluation in Film Festival Prize Juries.” In Exploring Creativity: Evaluative Practices in Innovation, Design, and the Arts, edited by Brian Moeran and Bo T. Christensen, 211–234. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moeran, Brian, and Jesper Strandgaard Pedersen, eds. 2012. Negotiating Values in the Creative Industries: Fairs, Festivals and Competitive Events. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moeran, Brian. 2010. “The Book Fair as a Tournament of Values.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 16(1):138–154. Nichols, Bill. 1994. “Discovering Form, Inferring Meaning: New Cinemas and the Film Festival Circuit.” Film Quarterly 47(3):16–30. Ortner, Sherry B. 2013. Not Hollywood: Independent Film and the Twilight of the American Dream. London: Duke University Press. Park, Young-a. 2014. Unexpected Alliance: Independent Filmmakers, the State and the Film Industry in Postauthoritarian South Korea. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Peirano, María Paz. 2016a. “Pursuing, Resembling, and Contesting the Global: The Emergence of Chilean Film Festivals”, New Review of Film and Television Studies 14(1):112–131. —. 2017. “Film Mobilities: Circulation Practices, Local Policies, and the Construction of a ‘Newest Chilean Cinema’ in transnational Settings.” In Envisioning Networked Urban Mobilities: Mobility in the Arts. Towards a Dialogue between Art Studies, Cultural Policy, and Mobilities Research, edited by Aslak Kjaerulff, Sven Kesselring, Peter Peters, and Kevin Hannam. New York: Routledge. In press. Piault, Colette. 2007. “Festivals, Conferences, Seminars and Networks in Visual Anthropology in Europe.” In Memories of the Origins of Ethnographic Film, edited by Beate Engelbrecht, 343–361. Oxford: Peter Lang. Porton, Richard, ed. 2009. Dekalog 3: On Film Festivals. London: Wallflower.

Film Festivals and Anthropology

17

Powdermaker, Hortense. 1950. Hollywood, the Dream Factory: An Anthropologist Looks at the Movie-Makers. Boston: Little, Brown. Ramey, Kathryn. 2002 “Between Art, Industry and Academia: The Fragile Balancing Act of the Avant-Garde Film Community.” Visual Anthropology Review 18(1/2):22–36. Ruby, Jay. 2001. “The Professionalization of Visual Anthropology in the United States: The 1960s and 1970s.” Visual Anthropology Review 17(2):5–12. Tascon, Sonia M. 2015. Human Rights Film Festivals: Activism in Context. London, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Taszman, Maurice. 1967. “Petite sociologie d’un festival du film sociologique.” L’Homme et la société 6:185–187. Triana-Toribio, Núria. 2007. “El festival de los cinéfilos transnacionales: Festival Cinematográfico Internacional de la República Argentina en Mar del Plata, 1959-1970.” Secuencias: Revista de Historia del Cine 25:25–45. Vallejo, Aida. 2014. “Etnografías del cine: nuevas aproximaciones al estudio de festivales.” In Espacios de comunicación, edited by Itxaso Fernández-Astobiza, 1751–1763. Bilbao: Asociación Española de Investigación de la Comunicación. —. 2015. “Documentary Filmmakers on the Circuit. A Festival Career from Czech Dream to Czech Peace.” In Post-1990 Documentary. Reconfiguring Independence, edited by Camille Deprez, and Judith Pernin, 171–187. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Vallejo, Aida, and Ezra Winton, eds. Forthcoming. Documentary Film Festivals. Van Brabant, Koen. 1985. “Film and Cross-Cultural Communication: The Film Festival in Retrospect.” Anthropology Today 1(6):22–25. Westmoreland, Mark R., and Brent Luvaas, eds. 2015. Visual Anthropology Review (Special issue on Leviathan) 31(1). Wong, Cindy Hing-Yuk. 2011. Film Festivals. Culture, People, and Power on the Global Screen. London: Rutgers University Press. Yates-Doerr, Emily. 2005. “No Story Is Ever Just a Story.” American Anthropologist 107:247–251. Accessed June 15, 2016. doi: 10.1525/aa.2005.107.2.247. Zoanni, Tylor. 2013. “Review of the 36th Annual Margaret Mead Film Festival (November 29-December 2, 2012).” Visual Anthropology Review 29:72–75. Accessed June 15, 2016. doi: 10.1111/var.12005.

PART I: MAPPING ETHNOGRAPHIC FILM FESTIVALS

PART I. INTRODUCTION MAPPING ETHNOGRAPHIC FILM FESTIVALS: A WORLD OVERVIEW MARÍA PAZ PEIRANO

Recent decades have seen an explosion in the number and diversity of film festivals worldwide. Ethnographic film festivals are no exception: more and more festivals have appeared on the global scene, positioning the term “ethnographic” as a signpost for many documentary film exhibitions engaging with social and cultural diversity around the world. In this brief introduction, I map the main ethnographic and anthropological festivals taking place today, in order to provide an overview of the geographical distribution and historical positioning of these events on the ethnographic film festival circuit. This mapping addresses some of the common trends of these film festivals’ trajectories and the challenges that arise while observing their global mediascape. I suggest that the current growth and distribution of ethnographic festivals show their strong connection to both the institutionalisation of Visual Anthropology and the recent expansion of film festivals in different parts of the globe.

An Ethnographic Film Festival Circuit Ethnographic and anthropological festivals constitute a very particular case on the global festival circuit. They are taking a new position in the field, by establishing closer links with broader documentary filmmaking and forming exhibition platforms that are more present in the public sphere and open to non-specialised audiences. We can see, however, that they still form a somewhat parallel circuit within the mainstream film festival network. As detailed by the contributors to this section of this book, these specialised festivals have developed their own relationships, dynamics and challenges that set them apart from the rest of the circuit. This is not to say that they are isolated from other festivals, for ethnographic films can circulate in overlapping festival networks, and anthropologist filmmakers also

22

Part I. Introduction

participate in and establish relationships with non-specialised documentary festivals. But ethnographic film festivals still retain their distinction from other film events. They are marked by their relationship with Visual Anthropology, positioned between academic circles and general audiences, and their configuration and aesthetics, as well as their political and cultural aims, do not always follow the patterns of the rest of the “festival world”. The historical developments of ethnographic festivals–the changes, strengths, difficulties and long-standing debates detailed throughout this book–have a lot to do with the position of this sub-field within anthropology, and the main transformations and challenges experienced since its formation. Their histories are often intertwined with the history of personalities and institutions, key agents struggling to configure a rather heterodox field–in both anthropology and cinema. Thus, the formation of festivals sheds some light on debates within anthropology as well as the relationships between academia and the wider society, marked by the changes in local political institutions, the formation of scientific associations, the search to secure funding, and technological transformations in documentary filmmaking. To date, we can find at least 71 specialised festivals in ethnographic and anthropological cinema that have recently taken place around the world, mostly in Europe. Based on published documents, reviews and the databases of ethnographic and anthropological film festivals currently available, in addition to independent research conducted for this publication,1 I have traced the expansion of ethnographic festivals by decade and place, as shown in the tables below. The festivals counted in these listings are only specialised events for the exhibition of ethnographic and anthropological films, excluding other events that may also regularly include this type of film in their programmes, such as documentary film festivals, human rights, environmental and activism film festivals, or other thematic festivals (scientific, rural, regional, minority language) where ethnographic films circulate.2 I have not considered other film screenings, 1

Databases have been extracted from the following sources: CAFFE network, available at http://www.anthropological-filmfestivals.eu/festivals.html; NAFA Network (Newsletter of the Nordic Anthropological Film Association incorporating the Commission of Visual Anthropology CVA Circular), available at http://nafa.uib.no/; La Société Française d’Anthropologie Visuelle (SFAV), available at http://www.sfav.fr/liens-1.php; the Russian Anthropological Film Festival (RAFF), available at http://rfaf.ru/eng/246/; and Ethnodoc, available at http://www.visualanthropology.net/. The data collection has been complemented by the author’s independent research. 2 For an account of minority language festivals, see López-Gómez et al. (forthcoming). On the circulation of ethnographic film, see González-Abrisketa and Vallejo (2014).

Mapping Ethnographic Film Festivals

23

taking place more or less regularly at academic conferences (except for those that operate under “festival” logics, such as the SVA festival), nor specialised film programmes that do not attempt to become regular events. Table I-1. Ethnographic and Anthropological Film Festivals 1970s-1980s Festival

Location

Festival dei Popoli - International Florence, Italy Documentary Film Festival (*) Conference on Visual Anthropology Philadelphia, US Temple University (formerly Festival of Anthropological Film) (**) Ethno Film Festival - The Heart of Slavonia Djakovo, Croatia

Year 1959 1968-1980

Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival

New York, US

1976 (relaunched 2010) 1977

Cinéma du Réel (*)

París, France

1978

NAFA (Nordic Anthropological Film Association) Film Festival Etnofilm ýadca

Europe (itinerant)

1979

ýadca, Slovakia

1980

Bilan du Film Ethnographique - Festival International Jean Rouch SIEFF - Sardinia International Ethnographic Film Festival Certamen de Cine y Vídeo Etnológico de las Comunidades Autónomas (**) RAI International Festival of Ethnographic Film Freiburger Film Forum

París, France

1982

Nuoro, Italy

1982

Huesca, España

1984-1989

United Kingdom (itinerant) Freiburg, Germany

1985

MAV - Convegno-Rassegna Materiali di Antropologia Visiva

Roma, Italy

SVA Film and Video Festival

US (Itinerant, AAA annual conference) Pärnu, Estonia

1985 (relaunched 2010) 1986

1985

Pärnu International Documentary and 1987 Anthropology Film Festival Compilation by María Paz Peirano. List is representative, but might not be exhaustive. Sources: See Note 1 (*) Currently documentary film festivals in a broader sense. (**) Not currently active

24

Part I. Introduction

Table I-2. Ethnographic and Anthropological Film Festivals 1990s (currently active) Festival

Location

Year

Beeld voor Beeld

Amsterdam, Netherlands Argentina (Itinerant) Belgrade, Serbia

1990

Göttingen, Germany Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Caen, France

1993

DocAnt - Muestra Nacional de Cine y Video Documental Antropológico y Social International Festival of Ethnological Film GIEFF - Göttingen International Ethnographic Film Festival Mostra Internacional do Filme Etnográfico La Semaine du Cinéma ethnographique JFE - Journées du Film Ethnographique Festival do Filme Documentário e Etnográfico Fórum de Antropologia e Cinema (Forumdoc.bh) Ethnologie et Cinéma: Rencontres autour du film ethnographique RAFF - Russian Anthropological Film Festival

Astra Film Festival

1991 1992

1993 1995

Bourdeaux, France Belo Horizonte, Brazil Grenoble, France

1995

Ekaterimburgo, Russia (prev. Salekhard) Sibiu, Romania

1998

1997 1997

1998

Compilation by María Paz Peirano. List is representative, but might not be exhaustive. Sources: See Note 1

From this account, it becomes evident that the contemporary festival landscape has a historical Euro-American “centre”. The oldest events taking place today, with the exception of those in Eastern Europe (Etnofilm ýadca and Ethno Film Festival) and Estonia (Pärnu Film Festival), began in Western Europe and the US. They remained the only events of their kind until the 1990s, when festivals in Russia (RAFF), Brazil (Mostra Internacional do Filme Etnográfico and Forumdoc.bh) and Argentina (DocAnt) entered the scene, and other festivals started to take place in Serbia (International Festival of Ethnological Film) and Romania (Astra Film Festival). It is only in the 2000s that we see the first ethnographic film festival established in Asia (TIEFF) and the Pacific (APERTURE) (see table I-3), and we still cannot find any regular ethnographic film festivals in Africa.

Mapping Ethnographic Film Festivals

25

Table I-3. Ethnographic and Anthropological Film Festivals 2000s-2010s (currently active or expected to continue) Festival

Location

Year

TIEFF - Taiwan International Ethnographic Film Festival Viscult - Festival of Visual Culture

Taipei, Taiwan

2001

Joensuu, Finland

2001

Regard Blue - Festival of Student Film and Media

Zurich, Switzerland 2001

Espiello, Festival Internacional de Documental Etnográfico de Sobrarbe MIVAF - Moscow International Visual Anthropology Festival Dialëktus- European Documentary and Anthropological Film Festival Münchner EthnoFilmFest - Munich Ethnographic Film Festival (formerly Tage des Ethnologischen Films). FIFEQ - International Ethnographic Film Festival of Quebec YUNFEST, Yunnan Multi Cultures Visual Festival

Huesca, Spain

2002

Moscow, Russia

2002

Budapest, Hungry

2002

Munich, Germany

2003

Quebec, Canada

2004

Yunnan, China

Eyes and Lenses: Ethnographic Film Festival

Warsaw Poland

20032013 2004

Maailmafilmist - Tartu World Film Festival

Tartu, Estonia

2004

Mostra de cine etnográfico

Santiago de Compostela, Spain Manaus, Brazil

2006 2006

DF, México

2006

Trento, Italy

2007

Munich, Germany

2007

Mostra amazônica do filme etnográfico Cine entre culturas. Sección etnográfica del DocsDF (with Jornadas de Antropología Visual) EURORAMA - One Europe of peoples in ethnographic film festivals Tage des Ethnologischen Films (formerly one with Münchner EthnoFilmFest) Annual International Festival of Anthropology Film at UBC DEF - Days of Ethnographic Film Ethnocineca - International Documentary Film Festival Vienna ETNOFILMfest - Mostra del Cinema Documentario Etnografico Aspekty - Festival of Visual Anthropology (**) DIEFF - Delhi International Ethnographic Film Festival (**)

Vancouver, Canada 2007 Ljubljana, Eslovenia Vienna, Austria

2007 2007

Monselice, Italy

2007

Torun, Poland

2007

Delhi, India

2008

26

Part I. Introduction

Contro-Sguardi - Festival internazionale di cinema antropologico Fifer - Festival do Cine Etnografico de Recife

Perugia, Italy Recife, Brazil

2008

ETNOFILM Festival

Rovinj, Croatia

2009

Festicine San Agustín (Former FCVSA - Festival de Cine y Video de San Agustín) Antropofest - International Festival of Movies with Anthropological interest IFEF - International Festival of Ethnographic Film Sofia Ethnofest - Athens Ethnographic Film Festival

San Agustín (Huila), Colombia Prague, Czech Republic Sofía, Bulgary

2009

2010

Athens, Greece

2010

Anthropological Film Festival of The Jerusalem Cinematheque Festival du Film Humains en sociétés

Jerusalem, Israel

2011

Louvain, Belgium

2011

Ethnografisches Filmfestival Trier (**)

Trier, Germany

2012

International Anthropological Film Festival (**)

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Calvi and Caserta, Italy Nanning, China

2012

IntimaLente/ IntimateLens - Festival of Visual Ethnography Guangxi International Ethnographic Film Festival Kratovo Ethnographic Film Festival

2008

2010

2012 2012 2012

Kratovo, Macedonia Koblenz, Germany

2013

Lisbon, Portugal

2013

Weitwinkel - Ethnographisches Filme und Dokumentationen Filmfestival CinANTROP - Festival Internacional de Cinema Etnográfico e documental de Portugal APERTURE - Asia Pacific International Ethnographic Documentary Festival One with a movie camera - International Ethnografic Film Festival in Marburg Riga World Film Festival

Riga, Letonia

2013

Ethnografilm Festival

Paris, France

2014

Melbourne, 2013 Australia Marburg, Germany 2013

Ethnographic Film and Media Program of the Middle Europe (Itinerant) East and Central Eurasia of EASA Apricot Tree International Ethno Film Festival Yerevan, Armenia

2014

Festival du film ethnographique de Loudun

2015

Loudun, France

2014

Compilation by María Paz Peirano. List is representative, but might not be exhaustive (**) Festival does not happen regularly Sources: See Note 1

Mapping Ethnographic Film Festivals

27

Festivals and the Institutionalisation of Visual Anthropology Given the close relationship between ethnographic film festivals and the academic world, it comes as no surprise that the older main events today have their origins in the areas where Visual Anthropology first started to be institutionalised, such as the US, France and the rest of Europe, the same regions where most of the canonical international pioneers of Visual Anthropology come from (El Guindi 2004, 23). It was the organisation of academics and filmmakers in these regions thinking “outside the box” that led to the gradual professionalisation and institutionalisation of the field from the 1950s onwards, allowing for further developments in terms of the production, circulation and exhibition of ethnographic cinema. The struggle for legitimate spaces for Visual Anthropology as a field of practice came together with the expansion of new exhibition platforms in both in Europe and the US. For example, the struggle for academic recognition led to the early formation of the Comité du film ethnographique (CFE, Committee of Ethnographic Film) (Gallois 2009), with its consequent impact on the creation of film encounters during the 1950s, and later on ethnographic film festivals in France (Piault, this volume). Similarly, academic developments in the field in the US during the 1960s led to the creation of the Program in Ethnographic Film (PIEF), which became a committee of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and pushed for the first series of film screenings to be part of the regular programme of AAA meetings in 1968, laying the ground for future regular exhibitions (Ruby 2001, 6–9). As a result, some of the currently best-established international ethnographic film festivals emerged during the 1970s, when the sub-field positioned itself within the discipline in both Europe and the US, and when there was a first momentum for visual methods and representation, at a time when “these were still highly contested and often marginalised ways of working” (Pink 2012, 8). Visual work began to disseminate more systematically, not only by means of seminars, debates and academic articles, but noticeably by regular showcases (see Ruby, this volume). Visual Anthropology started to have a consistent place at academic conferences,3 and from the 1980s onwards, events continued to emerge as a result of the acceptance of Visual Anthropology in broader academic contexts and the further development of scholarly organisations. The 3

For example, the 9th International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (ICAES), held in Chicago, had a specific section devoted to “Visual Anthropology” for the first time in 1973 (Hockings 1975).

28

Part I. Introduction

Society of Visual Anthropology (SVA) Film Festival, for example, was established after some SVA members formed a first selection committee in 1985, leading to the SVA Film and Video Festival and Award Ceremony at the AAA annual meeting in 1986, with Joan Williams as organiser.4 This gradual institutionalisation led to, in the long term, the creation of particular models for ethnographic film exhibition at festivals, which for the most part aimed to integrate film exhibition with academic debates and professional networking. The Nordic Anthropological Film Association (NAFA) is a good example of this strategy, where the association of scholars, museum professionals and filmmakers has aimed, since its creation in 1975, to facilitate visual work and promote anthropological cinema, and since 1979 in the form of a festival that combines archiving and exchanging films (see Crawford, this volume). A similar approach was taken by Jean Rouch at Les Regardes Comparés (1978) and later on, the Bilan du Film Ethnographique (1982; see Wanono, this volume), making festivals key hubs for the circulation works of Visual Anthropology by means of both film exhibition and academic discussion. This combined model also reaffirmed the position of Visual Anthropology showcases as an educational tool for general audiences, with an impact outside academia–noticeably in the case of the Margaret Mead Film Festival (see Alexander, this volume). The emergence of ethnographic festivals can be seen not only as a result of their singular developments, but also as a consequence of active interactions between the “Western” centres for Visual Anthropology. As detailed in this book’s contributions, festivals have developed through contacts and exchanges between visual anthropologists and other ethnographic filmmakers from both Europe and the US, followed by international collaborations throughout the years.5 During this development, their impact has also extended to other peripheral regions, by establishing 4

As mentioned above, the AAA started to show films at its meetings in the late 1960s, but the idea of a stable SVA film festival, proposed by then outgoing SVA president Jack Rollwagen, did not emerge until 1985. In this same year the first selection committee composed of SVA board members met at the Anthropology Film Center in Santa Fe, where they reviewed the first set of films submitted (Joanna Scherer, cited in a personal communication with Stephanie Takaragawa, 29 March 2016). 5 These collaborations entail, for example, the exchanges of films and the formation of international juries and selection committees. Cooperative practices continue to exist and grow. The RAI Film Festival, for example, has recently (2013) returned to its partnership with the Center for Visual Anthropology, University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and presents a selection of its programme there (Henley, this volume).

Mapping Ethnographic Film Festivals

29

relationships of exchange and support. Collaborative connections have taken the form of master classes, seminars, academic encounters, special film screenings, and even mirror versions in other parts of the globe, such as the Beeld voor Beeld festival in Bogotá (Colombia), which existed for eight years (2008-2015) (see Appels, this volume). The configuration of the field is still marked by these relationships, which make festivals into ideal spaces for international connections and cooperation, while also reinforcing existing centres of knowledge. I address some of the repercussions resulting from this configuration below.

Networks and Challenges The developments of anthropology and ethnographic film festivals show to what extent these events are networked spaces. As seen above, the connections between festival events have relied on enduring linkages among visual anthropologists and filmmakers. Festivals have benefited historically from these ever-growing networks, and the increasing number of ethnographic film festivals since the mid-2000s (see Table I-3) has led to the creation of further academic and professional networks. A good example of this is the Coordinating Anthropological Film Festivals in Europe (CAFFE) initiative, which emerged in response to the increase in the number of festivals in the region. This network does not have a formal organisation, but is linked to the Visual Anthropology Network of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (VANEASA), the NAFA and the Commission of Visual Anthropology (CVA). CAFFE is based on pre-existing professional networks among European festival organisers who knew each other personally and met on various occasions, but until the mid-2000s had not yet organised (Husmann 2006).6 The network sought to coordinate the calendar of ethnographic festivals and to foster new forms of cooperation in terms of films’ exchange, promotion, diffusion and funding (Engelbrecht and Hammacher 2006 and 2007). CAFFE aims to facilitate communication between the most well-known existing anthropological film festivals in Europe, and gathers and spreads information about festival events in the region. Since 2006, it has also 6

According to Husmann (2006), the festivals represented at the first meeting in 2006 were: Bilan du film ethnographique, Paris (Françoise Foucault), Beeld voor Beeld, Amsterdam (Eddy Appels), Viscult, Joensuu/Finland (Pekka Silvennoinen), NAFA (Peter Crawford), SIEFF - Sardinia International Film Festival, Nuoro (Paolo Piquereddu), and GIEFF - Göttingen International Film Festival (Beate Engelbecht). CVA, represented by Rolf Husmann, functioned as an umbrella organisation.

30

Part I. Introduction

promoted encounters between anthropological film festivals’ organisers at festivals in Europe, as well as in meetings of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA). Ongoing cooperative networks between festivals are deemed to be quite significant for their future development, which for the most part is marked by rather difficult (and sometimes even precarious) conditions of existence. Many events have rather complicated histories that reflect these conditions, changing names, places and organisation as they switch sponsors and institutional support. Some festivals have even closed until further notice due to economic and/or political reasons, such as the Brazilian Mostra Amazônica do Filme Etnografico, which took place between 2006 and 2011, and the Chinese Yunnan Multi Cultures Visual Festival, Yunfest, which closed after a decade in 2013. Other festivals have ceased functioning for a long time before being relaunched, such as the Ethno Film Festival of former Yugoslavia. Created in 1976, this festival was one of the oldest in the world, but closed after six biannual editions, only to be relaunched in 2010 as part of Ĉakovaþki Rezovi in Djakovo (Croatia), under the name The Heart of Slavonia Film Festival.7 These difficult conditions have even affected the most well established festivals, particularly after the economic crisis of 2008 (see Piault, this volume), which have come up with different strategies to face the changes in contemporary ethnographic film production and exhibition. In the past, some important events moved away from their specialised “ethnographic” identity and somehow blurred their original links to Visual Anthropology, looking for wider documentary contents and audiences. Historical festivals such as the Festival dei Popoli (Iervese, this volume) and Cinéma du Réel, International Documentary Film Festival (previously known as Festival International de Films Ethnographiques et Sociologiques) diverged from their origins. Even when they retained their social interest and some anthropological vocation–particularly in the case of the Festival dei Popoli–they repositioned themselves in the broader scene of documentary film (see Pilard 1994). We can see that other important ethnographic film festivals, which are still more strongly linked to academic circles, are also reviewing their position, considering the challenges of contemporary film exhibition. These festivals are reassessing the possibilities of future 7

For this same reason, the histories of many ethnographic and anthropological film festivals have not enough public records and are difficult to follow for outsiders. The information provided in this book has benefited from various collaborators who have shared their knowledge in this respect. Special thanks to Selda Vale da Costa, Jenny Chio, Sanja Bježanþeviü, Keyan Tomaselli and David MacDougall for the information provided in this section. Any mistakes are my own.

Mapping Ethnographic Film Festivals

31

developments without losing their identity and original purpose (see Appels, and Engelbrecht, this volume). Facing these conditions, the creation of new forms of collaboration and exchange continues to be one of the most promising strategies (see Henley, this volume). The difficulties experienced by specialised festivals could seem contradictory with the noticeable expansion of ethnographic and anthropology festivals during the last decade. I suggest that this growth, however, corresponds to new conditions that, while facilitating the increase of film festivals, do not ensure these events’ continuity. Similar to non-specialised film festivals worldwide, recently created anthropology festivals seem to benefit from favourable cultural policies and new sources of external funding, often from stakeholders outside academia. And while it is true that this has meant an increasing number of events, it is also true that their institutional support is not secure, regardless of their presumed “impact” on broader social spaces. Festivals are more often than not unstable events, for many of them still struggle to get steady funds and both academic and extra-academic backup. Their futures remain uncertain.

Peripheral Film Festivals This lack of funding and institutional sponsorship is arguably one of the reasons that festivals have not developed smoothly in regions with less historically stable academic support for Visual Anthropology so far. As seen above, most festivals from the 1970s until the 1990s belonged to the Euro-American “Western world” whereas non-Western festivals have only started to appear since the 2000s. Thus, most film festivals today are still held in Europe, and ethnographic and anthropological festivals from nonWestern regions, although growing, are yet to take a more permanent and recognisable position in the international Visual Anthropology landscape. Many of the non-Western events lack the same international recognition as the longstanding “canonical” events in the field, and as a result their histories have remained obscured, even in the cases of festivals closer to Europe (see, for example, Vasileva (Chistyakova) and Trushkina on the former USSR and post-Soviet Russia in this volume). In regions which are more peripheral with respect to the “centre” of the anthropological film festival circuit, the development of ethnographic festivals has been uneven. In Latin America, for example, new festivals have benefited from the growing international networks between anthropologists and filmmakers, inside and outside the region. However, their expansion has been slow, and their international impact is yet to be seen (see Peirano, this volume). In Asia and Africa, on the other hand,

32

Part I. Introduction

there are still only a few stable, specialised festivals, so cinema with anthropological interest normally circulates at other broader events. Some festivals in these parts of the world include ethnographic films in their programme (for example, the Zanzibar International Film Festival in Tanzania, Festival panafricain du cinéma et de la télévision de Ouagadougou (Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou, FESPACO) in Burkina Faso, and the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival in Japan) and have a fairly anthropological curatorial line (such as the ViBGYOR International Film Festival in India and the Ânûû-rû Âboro Film Festival in New Caledonia, French Pacific), but they do not consider themselves “ethnographic” or “anthropological” in the strict sense. Besides established film events, there are a number of exhibition platforms for ethnographic cinema in most non-Western regions, but they are not yet institutionalised in the form of established festivals. We can find some specialised festivals which do not happen regularly, including a few one-offs. Some hope for future editions, for example the Delhi International Ethnographic Film Festival organised by the University of Delhi in 2008, and the Anthropological Film Festival of Ho Chi Minh City, organised by the Vietnam Institute of Culture and Arts Studies (VICAS) in 2012. 8 We also can find ethnographic film events within academic contexts, such as Visual Anthropology seminars and conferences, which have traditionally counted on the presence of international guests outside their regional scope. 9 Other festivals, while held within Euro-American 8

Currently, VICAS hopes for a new version of the festival and is also organising another anthropological film festival, the Vietnam–Korea Anthropological Film Festival. According to organiser Nguyen Thi Thu Ha (personal communication, 21 March 2016), the event was going to take place from 14-18 November 2016 in Hanoi, with financial support from Korean Foundation and four main partners including VICAS, the Association of Korean Research in Vietnam, the Hanoi University of Culture, and the Hanoi University of Social Science and Humanity. The festival was going to consist of a seminar, the screening of Vietnamese and Korean films, and discussion between filmmakers and specialised audiences (such as researchers and students of film and anthropology). 9 For example, in South Africa Visual Anthropology encounters with film screenings were held at universities in the late 1970s (University of Witwatersand) (see van Zyl 1981) and late 1990s (Visual Voice, University of KwaZulu-Natal). In India the first Delhi Symposium on Visual Anthropology was held in 1978 and the first International Seminar of Visual Anthropology in Jodhpur in 1987 by the Anthropological Survey of India and the Indian National Trust for Art and Culture (Sahay 1991). To this day ethnographic film screenings are held at this type of event, inviting local and international guests.

Mapping Ethnographic Film Festivals

33

centres, support visual anthropologies from and about peripheral regions, notably the Ethnographic Film and Media Program of the Middle East and Central Eurasia of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA). Besides the often precarious conditions for establishing ethnographic and anthropological events in peripheral regions, the seemingly Eurocentric development of festivals can also be seen as a result of broader developments of the anthropological discipline. The uneven distribution of festivals relates to both the specific historical difficulties for establishing independent film festivals in these regions (such as documentary film festivals and other specialised events),10 and the global trajectories of Visual Anthropology. The field has not been detached from the positioning of the core centres of anthropology’s “academic worldsystem” (Kuwayama 2004), which carry higher prestige for the construction of anthropological knowledge (see Gerholm 1995; Hannerz and Gerholm 1982). Thus, even when festivals have led to dynamic and collaborative encounters between international anthropologists and filmmakers, Western centres for the exhibition of ethnographic and anthropological films could also be related to what El Guindi has called an “unrecognised sense of domination” in the field, arguing that “the EuroAmerican white dominance is consistently reflected in the composition of juries, selection committees and evaluative boards in ethnographic film conferences and festivals and in most writing about film and Visual Anthropology” (2004, 59). Exhibition platforms, therefore, are not disconnected from historical power relationships within academia and film production. From this standpoint, festivals can also be seen to echo a EuroAmerican anthropological endeavour of “otherisation”, therefore reinforcing the historical position of the discipline. As the “ethnographic” remains mainly a way of marking images from outside the centres of film production and exhibition, the current distribution of film festivals may be seen as underpinning an idea of Visual Anthropology as the study of “the other” from a Western-centred perspective. Since anthropology has historically aimed to understand and represent “non-Western” subjects, what happens when those subjects do anthropology? This question has been widely discussed from World Anthropologies perspectives (Ribeiro and Escobar 2006; Restrepo and Escobar 2005), and there is not the space here to develop this discussion, but this problem could help us make sense 10

For further analysis of the difficulties for festivals of independent cinema in nonWestern regions, see Dovey (2015) (Africa), Rangan (2010) (India), Iordanova and Cheung (2011) (East Asia), and Iordanova and Van de Peer (2014) (Middle East).

34

Part I. Introduction

of the current distribution of ethnographic film festivals. What does visual ethnography mean in these regions, and how does this affect film production and circulation? Is “ethnographic” a marker which is not needed for film festivals that show documentaries filmed by, and representing, “our societies” or “us”? In this sense, it is noteworthy that while peripheral regions do not have many “ethnographic” festivals, they do have important indigenous film festivals, such as Film South Asia Festival in Nepal, CLACPI Festival Internacional de Cine y Video de los Pueblos Indígenas in Latin America, and Wairoa MƗori Film Festival in New Zealand. Moreover, these festivals have successfully developed strong networks between one another, linked to international indigenous filmmaking,11 and they aim to defy prevailing categories of “otherisation” in film circulation and exhibition. While El Guindi’s argument was made more than a decade ago–before the explosion in global festivals noted in this overview–it seems that is still relevant to rethink film festivals’ distribution and the possibilities of exhibition and circulation practices in ethnographic cinema. Festivals ask for a continuing revision of visual practices within anthropology, particularly those aiming to decentre knowledge spaces and rework the peripheries of Visual Anthropology. Filmmakers and festival organisers have actively reflected on ways of subverting Western-centred practices and, consequently, continue to work towards horizontal international relationships and collaborative exchanges. Nevertheless, the expansion, stability and impact of film festivals remains a challenge. We have seen that festivals’ geographies and histories coincide with the history of ethnographic cinema and the anthropological discipline, as vital spaces for academic encounters, the dissemination of knowledge and the promotion of cultural awareness. A closer look at these events could add to our reflections on the future developments of anthropological cinema and the new paths of Visual Anthropology at a global level. New histories have begun to be written.

Works Cited Córdova, Amalia. 2012. “Towards an Indigenous Film Festival Circuit.” In Film Festival Yearbook 4: Film Festivals and Activism, edited by Dina Iordanova, and Leshu Torchin, 63–80. St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies. 11 For a detailed account of indigenous film festivals worldwide, see Córdova (2012). 

Mapping Ethnographic Film Festivals

35

Dovey, Lindiwe. 2015. Curating Africa in the Age of Film Festivals: Film Festivals, Time, Resistance. London, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. El Guindi, Fadwa. 2004. Visual Anthropology: Essential Method and Theory. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Engelbrecht, Beate, and Hammacher, Susanne. 2006. Coordinating Anthropological Film Festivals in Europe CAFFE. Minutes of the Meeting 29 May, 2006, Göttingen. Accessed January 23, 2016. http://www.anthropological-filmfestivals.eu/pdf/CAFFEMeeting_May_2006_final%20minutes.pdf —. 2007. Coordinating Anthropological Film Festivals in Europe CAFFE. Minutes of the Meeting 1 July, 2007, Manchester. Accessed January 23, 2016. http://www.anthropological-filmfestivals.eu/pdf/ Protocol_ CAFFE-Meeting_2007-june.pdf Gallois, Alice. 2009. “Le cinéma ethnographique en France: le Comité du Film Ethnographique, instrument de son institutionnalisationௗ? (19501970).” 1895. Mille huit cent quatre-vingt-quinze. Revue de l’association française de recherche sur l’histoire du cinema 58:80– 109. Accessed January 23, 2016. doi:10.4000/1895.3960. González-Abrisketa, Olatz, and Aida Vallejo. 2014. “Circuitos de distribución y espacios para la difusión del cine etnográfico contemporáneo: una guía práctica.” Anales del Museo de Antropología 16:60–82. Accessed June 15, 2016. https://sede.educacion.gob.es/ publiventa/circuitos-de-distribucion-y-espacios-para-la-difusion-delcine-etnografico-temporaneo-una-guia-practica/antropologia/20098C Hockings, Paul, ed. 1975. Principles of Visual Anthropology. The Hague: Mouton Publishers. Husmann, Rolf. 2006. “Report in NAFA 2006.” NAFA Newsletter 13(2). Accessed January 23, 2016. http://www.anthropological-filmfestivals. eu/pdf/Report%20in%20NAFA_2006_05.pdf Iordanova, Dina, and Ruby Cheung, eds. 2011. Film Festival Yearbook 3: Film Festivals and East Asia. St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies. Iordanova, Dina, and Stefanie Van de Peer, eds. 2014 Film Festival Yearbook 6: Film Festivals and the Middle East. St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies. López-Gómez, Antía, Aida Vallejo, Mª Soliña Barreiro, and Amanda P. Alencar. Forthcoming. “Found in Translation: Film Festivals, Documentary, and the Preservation of Linguistic Diversity.” In Documentary Film Festivals, edited by Aida Vallejo, and Ezra Winton. Pilard, Philippe. 1994. “Aux origines de Cinéma du réel.” Images documentaires 16:11–16. Accessed January 23, 2016. http://www.imagesdocumentaires.fr/Cinema-du-reel.html

36

Part I. Introduction

Pink, Sarah. 2012. “Advances in Visual Methodology: An Introduction.” In Advances in Visual Methodology, edited by Sarah Pink, 3–17. London: SAGE. Rangan, Pooja. 2010. “Some Annotations on the Film Festival as an Emerging Medium in India.” South Asian Popular Culture 8(2):123– 141. Accessed January 23, 2016. doi: 10.1080/14746681003797963. Restrepo, Eduardo, and Arturo Escobar. 2005. “‘Other Anthropologies and Anthropology Otherwise’: Steps to a World Anthropologies Framework.” Critique of Anthropology 25(2):99–129. Ribeiro, Gustavo Lins and Arturo Escobar, eds. 2006. World Anthropologies: Disciplinary Transformations within Systems of Power. New York: Berg. Ruby, Jay. 2001. “The Professionalization of Visual Anthropology in the United States: The 1960s and 1970s.” Visual Anthropology Review 17(2):5–12. Sahay, K.N. 1991. “The History of Visual Anthropology in India and the Task Ahead.” Visual Anthropology 4(1):25 –41. Accessed January 23, 2016. doi: 10.1080/08949468.1991.9966549. Van Zyl, John. 1981. “Conference Report: Ethnographic Film Festival.” Critical Arts 1(4):46–48.

I.I. CURATING ANTHROPOLOGY

CHAPTER 1 FESTIVALS, CONFERENCES, SEMINARS AND NETWORKS IN VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY IN EUROPE1 COLETTE PIAULT2

With such a wide subject, I cannot pretend to give an exhaustive or “objective” inventory. 3 Rather I will try to sail between what David MacDougall calls a “parochial view” and an attempt to describe “meeting activity” in Visual Anthropology from the 1970s onwards, with some personal insights added. First I should note that my knowledge and activity in Visual Anthropology is restricted to films. I know that some other meetings and conferences have been devoted to photography and other approaches in Visual Anthropology. A second limitation concerns “geography”: I have attended a few festivals and meetings in the United States but none in Asia or Australia, where I know that important meetings were held. Therefore, I will concentrate on Europe and try as much as possible to talk about Eastern 1

The first part of this chapter was originally published as Piault, Colette. 2007. “Festivals, Conferences, Seminars and Networks in Visual Anthropology in Europe.” In Memories of the Origins of Ethnographic Film, edited by Beate Engelbrecht, 343– 361. Oxford: Peter Lang. Reproduced with permission of Peter Lang. ISBN: 9783631507353. https://www.peterlang.com/view/product/54826. The second part (“Remarks and Comments”) was written as an update for this new version–Ed. 2 Acknowledgements: Thanks to Dr Elisabeth Wickett for help with my English. 3 On such a wide subject, my knowledge is limited. At the conference, I urged participants to complete my information so that I would not leave too much out. Unfortunately, my call stayed unanswered, so I am still limited to my personal knowledge. (The author refers here to the conference where the original paper was presented: The Origins of Visual Anthropology: Putting the Past Together, held in Göttingen, Germany, in June 2001–Ed.)

40

Chapter 1

Europe as well as Western Europe. Also, I will use the adjectives “ethnographic”, “ethnological” or “anthropological” indiscriminately in front of the word “film” so as to respect the titles given by the organisers themselves to their festivals. It is not possible to know exactly why one of the words was used rather than the other. During the 1960s and 1970s, it is clear that “ethnographic” was more often used in Europe. But “Social Anthropology”, under the joint support of anglophone anthropology and Claude Levi-Strauss, has slowly but surely replaced “Ethnology” and “Ethnography” as the preferred name for the discipline, although by the time this came about, filmmaking had moved on to belong to what started to be called “Visual Anthropology”. No doubt, organisers, who were not always anthropologists, sometimes copied the titles which they found being used at other festivals without wondering too much if it corresponded to their aim or not. What is certain is that “Visual Anthropology” and “Anthropological” in front of film looks obviously more up to date. This paper will be organised around the following main themes: motivations and context, chronology and locations–with some attempts to classify and/or to analyse situation.

1. Motivations and Context Why are there so many and such lasting international film festivals and conferences in our field? If we consider Visual Anthropology to be a specialized field in Anthropology, and Anthropology to be a scientific domain with its place in the academic world, then Visual Anthropology clearly appears as a kind of black sheep–with its frequent international meetings such as film conferences and festivals–and odd man out. The number, the importance and, above all, the durability of international ethnographic film festivals is remarkable: I do not think that any other academic field ever generated any identical or equivalent activity.

1.1. Visual Anthropology, between Anthropology and Cinema, an Ambiguous Status Because it deals with images, photographs or films, Visual Anthropology keeps one foot in the academic world whilst the other foot stands, whether just a little or deep in, in the creative world of cinema, dealing with forms which have not much to do with written forms. Something similar may also be the case for Ethnomusicology, dealing with

Festivals, Conferences, Seminars and Networks in Europe

41

anthropology and music. To stand between two worlds, not really recognized in either, is an unstable position. It provides the discomfort of the margin but also its freedom. An ambiguous but fruitful position! However, everyone needs some kind of social or professional recognition, at least from his (or her) peers. One of the reactions in the 1960s to the lack of institutional recognition for anthropological films was to show our films to each other and to invite colleagues with special interests in the subjects of the films (e.g. communities in different parts of the world, minorities, special crafts or techniques, specific rituals, etc.). At that time, there were no film festivals as we know them nowadays, but only lectures with film showings and discussions among specialists in the subject presented in the film. However, the specialists were neither competent nor interested in the filming itself. Ethnographic filmmakers had to convince their colleagues of the scientific interest of films in anthropology and to behave like fighters... which they still have to do.

1.2. Constraints of the Format in 16 mm or 35 mm We need to remember that in the 1960s and 1970s ethnographic films were made in 16 mm or 35 mm. They could only be shown privately on an editing table or by projection in a public place. The possibility of viewing a video was not as widespread as it is now, when the popularisation of video cassettes means we can screen a film in a video library or at home, almost as easily as we read a book. Meetings where anthropologists could show, present and discuss their films were, then, a necessity. Films were, and still are, made for public viewing.

1.3. The Lack of and Need for Institutional Recognition In the 1970s, anthropology itself was still not fully accepted for academic institutional status in many European countries. In France, for example, Ethnology or Social Anthropology was often only a guest in Sociology departments. As for Visual Anthropology, the attitudes of our colleagues wavered between ignoring us, amusement, contempt, and firm opposition. Only a very small number of anthropologists in each country were seriously interested in making films. Any institutional recognition was unthinkable.4 Therefore, the film festivals and the conferences took the place of institutions or permanent structures. They were necessary to keep certain 4

See Houtman 1988.

Chapter 1

42

continuity and, with time, they became the most dependable and structured bases for anthropological filmmakers. These ritual meetings contribute strongly to the development and the permanence of the field. They created links generating networks and the possibility of common projects.

1.4. International as a Necessary Characteristic Ethnographic film festivals had to be international, as we were, and still are, with so few anthropologist filmmakers in each country. This is another peculiarity, which explains the necessity for festivals and their exceptional interest and atmosphere. The publication of reviews in Anthropology journals after each festival became part of the ritual, and helped them to be better known. Visual Anthropologists often acted as militants, which created an esprit de corps. The fact that the only structured organisations in Visual Anthropology were international film festivals rather suited the need for freedom that filmmaking generates.

1.5. Importance of Individual Initiatives This loose definition of our field, the fact that it is neither wellstructured nor fully recognized as a field of research and teaching in most Anthropology departments, brought individuals to the centre of its organisation. In any country, the initiatives often rely on one individual, someone with personality. This person while intensely involved takes initiatives and gives an important impulse to the field for a certain period of time, but in his own way and without giving a permanent structure to the field. An example could be the extraordinary international impulse given by Asen Balikci when he was President of the so-called “Commission” (International Commission on Visual Anthropology of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences). When such a person stops (for any reason) being active and enthusiastic, Visual Anthropology returns to a kind of sleep... waiting for the next fighter. There are exceptions, of course, when a collective structure emerges, the best example being the Nordic Anthropological Association (NAFA), probably the most important fixed point and the first one in Europe, a model for most of us.5 In this context, the durability of ethnographic film festivals was, and still is, essential.

5

See Crawford 1993.

Festivals, Conferences, Seminars and Networks in Europe

43

2. Chronology and Main Locations The first film festivals where ethnographic films were shown were neither organised by anthropologist filmmakers in an academic context nor focused on anthropological films but rather devoted to the promotion of social documentaries with a political connotation. The fact that they were called, as for the Cinéma du Réel, Ethnographic and Sociological Film Festival had not been thought through very carefully: the films shown were about society, communities, minorities, etc., which usually belong to the field of Social Anthropology and/or Sociology. Therefore, the organising committee, which had often included an anthropologist or a sociologist, chose this title. We have all started by showing our films through those festivals. A strong link between social documentaries and more specialized ethnographic films remains. The distinction cannot be sharp, as ethnographic films belong also to the category of social documentary, and it is more a question of degree of specialization in the film itself and of the public it is aimed at. The Margaret Mead Film Festival in New York (1977), for example, is oriented towards a general public, with films about social issues or problems anywhere in the world; however, it is also for us a very famous anthropological film festival. As far as I know, the first festival open to films made by anthropologists was the Festival dei Popoli in Florence (Italy). The first one took place in 1959-60. At the beginning of the 1960s, when it was still the only international place in Europe to show ethnographic films, Jean Rouch took the initiative of following the end of the Festival dei Popoli with two or three days of discussion seminar called, in 1966, Evaluation of Ethnographic and Folkloristic Films. Films shown at the Festival, and also some which had not been selected, were freely discussed by a limited number of participants. I think this was the first international public opportunity in Europe for open public discussion of ethnographic films. In other parts of the world, a few specialized meetings were held at roughly the same time: for example, the UNESCO Round Table on Ethnographic Film in the Pacific Area held in Sydney in July 1966.6 Then there was the Colloquium on Ethnographic Film held at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in April 1968.7 These two meetings preceded the Conference on Visual Anthropology held at the 6 Among the participants there were Ian Dunlop, Enrico Fulchignoni, Robert Gardner, David and Judith MacDougall, Jean Rouch and Colin Young. 7 Participants included Timothy Asch, Asen Balikci, Merian C. Cooper, Ian Dunlop, David and Judith MacDougall, Jorge Prelorán, Jean Rouch, Colin Young and Basil Wright.

44

Chapter 1

University of Illinois in Chicago in 1973, in the context of the ninth meeting of the International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (ICAES). That meeting can be considered the founding act (or its foundation myth?) of Visual Anthropology. The collective book Principles of Visual Anthropology, edited by Paul Hockings (1975), stemming from this meeting was, and still is, thanks to a new edition, our Bible, although there are now many other books on Visual Anthropology. Since then, international meetings have been considered essential steps in the development of our field. Going back to Europe we can differentiate two main orientations in film festivals.

2.1. Social Documentary Film Festivals and Festivals Specialized on Themes Related, More or Less, to Anthropology The first film festivals open to our films were festivals showing documentaries with some political slant about social problems. The two largest and most well known were the Festival dei Popoli in Italy, which started in 1959-60, and in France, much later, the Festival Cinéma du Réel starting in 1978 (38th edition in 2016). In France, there are more than 200 film festivals a year covering fiction and documentary films, organised by regions or cities. Some are for documentaries in general but some ethnographic films are occasionally accepted: this is the case for Les Etats Généraux du Documentaire (Lussas, Ardèche) and Vue sur les Docs (Marseille, Bouches du Rhône), 8 both started from 1989. Some specialized film festivals catch the attention of anthropologists, folklorists and ethnographers, as festivals on rural films or festivals on music of the world in which ethnomusicologists-filmmakers often collaborate. 9 In other countries, there are also documentary film festivals which are open to some ethnographic films, even if they are not specifically so. Let’s mention as an example the International 8

Today FIDMarseille–Ed. Festivals about certain countries or on minorities: Arctic Film (Dioppe 1983), Armenians, Jews, Arabic world (Paris, 1993) or Mediterranean countries, city suburbs, etc. One of the most important, interesting and international is the Festival of Douarnenez (Finistère), which was founded in 1978, still exists, and is devoted to oppressed minorities. There are also film festivals about hunting, water, mountain, killing of animals, etc. which wish to be connected to Anthropology. In France, there are more and more of these regional film festivals focused on a theme. Some take place just once, as an exceptional event, whilst others continue year after year.

9

Festivals, Conferences, Seminars and Networks in Europe

45

Documentary Film Festival in Nyon (Switzerland), which started in 1970. Or the Festival of Tampere (Finland). And many others. We could also note here for Eastern Europe the International Festival of Documentary, Scientific and Educational Films organised by the Academia Film Olomouc, now in Czech Republic, each year since 1966.

2.2. Ethnological Film Festivals and Visual Anthropology Meetings There is another group of festivals organised in the frame of Anthropology with the aim of concentrating mainly or only on ethnographic films, which contributed to the development of Visual Anthropology. Nordic Countries Among those, indisputably the pioneers were the founders of the NAFA, among them: Knut Ekström and Solveig Freudenthal (Sweden), Heimo Lappalainen (Finland), Mette Bovin (Denmark) and Henning Siverts (Norway), and others... The NAFA was established in 1975 through cooperation between anthropological institutions in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Iceland and Norway with the aim of promoting the use of audiovisual anthropological works for educational purposes at all levels, from primary schools to universities, as well as in the public-oriented activities of museums, etc... Then a cooperative film library was created for the acquisition of 16 mm prints, later video and nowadays continuing with DV format.10 They probably have about 130 titles by now. Every year since 1979, a meeting (festival, seminar, conference or internal meeting) has been organised in one of the Nordic countries with the participation of leading international experts on Visual Anthropology. The recurrent themes have been the relationship between the art of film and the science of anthropology, the ethical problems involved in audiovisual media and cross-cultural communication, and the potentials of using local narrative traditions in the structuring of ethnographic films. Their meetings have been a model for all of us. The first one I attended was the Blidö seminar in 1983, with about 16 to 20 participants, and it became my model for the seminar Looking at European Societies that I organised between 1983 and 1992 10

The idea of a film library organised as a cooperative between universities was the origin of the Société Française d’Anthropologie Visuelle (French Association for Visual Anthropology)’s cinematheque, which I founded in 1985.

46

Chapter 1

(see infra). The Nordic countries are located at one extremity of Europe; at the beginning the meetings were rather conceived as a way of exchanging views and contacts between Nordic countries once a year with the collaboration of a few guests from other countries. But slowly, and with the decreasing cost of flights, they became more and more international. For example, in Bergen in 1996, a few Chinese filmmakers were present, and in Helsinki in 1997, there were a few guests from Russia and South America. The NAFA, with its very democratic and innovative way of doing things, is still a role model.

Fig. 1–1. Audience at "Origins of Visual Anthropology" Conference. MaxPlanck Institute, Göttingen 2001. (From left to right). Second row: Colin Young (former Director of the National film and Television School, Beaconsfield, UK), Ian Dunlop (anthropologist and filmmaker, Australia), Dunlop’s wife, Judith MacDougall (documentarist filmmaker, Australia). Third row: Dwight Read (El Guindi’s husband), Dr Fadwa el Guindi (anthropologist and filmmaker, US), David MacDougall (anthropologist filmmaker, Australia–almost not visible). Fourth row: Peter I. Crawford (anthropologist filmmaker, Denmark). Photo: Colette Piault.

The NAFA has been able to establish a regular newsletter, and its website11 is quite active and useful. The NAFA is indisputably one of the 11

www.nafa.uib.no

Festivals, Conferences, Seminars and Networks in Europe

47

main poles in Europe for Visual Anthropology, as it has been for more than twenty years now. France Another pole existed in the 1960s in France centred around the strong and imaginative personality of Jean Rouch between the Musée de L’Homme and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). Anyone who attended the Regards Comparés on Yanomami (1978), Bushmen (1979), Dogon (1981), Papua and New Guinea (1986), Inuit (1989), and eleven years later the second Dogon meeting (2000) 12 can remember the excitement and the interest of the screenings and the passionate discussions, which followed. The idea of confronting films on the same group of people made by different filmmakers coming from different countries and diverse backgrounds was very fruitful, and others copied it. In the same year, 1978, in France, the first Cinéma du Réel took place. At the very beginning it gave a large space to ethnographic films. With about 400 films sent in for selection each year, the Cinéma du Réel was faced with more and more social documentaries and shifted its interest to them. Therefore, in 1982, Jean Rouch, with the collaboration of Françoise Foucault, decided to organise his own film festival at the Musée de l’Homme, the Bilan du Film Ethnographique,13 which is unique insofar as it is open to all and free of charge, at least up to now. But in France, if we were rather efficient at organising film festivals and gathering a public to discuss ethnographic films, we had no permanent collective organisation behind these meetings, no conference followed by a publication and no serious connection between the film festivals and the Anthropology departments in universities. For a long period of time, most Anthropology teachers had no culture in anthropology films. To fill that gap, I created (in 1985) the Société Française d’Anthropologie Visuelle (SFAV, French Association for Visual Anthropology), which considerably developed the interest in ethnographic films in France. The SFAV bought the non-commercial rights for foreign ethnographic films, and distributes them through universities and cultural 12

This event, still organised by the Comité du Film Ethnographique at the Musée de l’Homme, still exists and was devoted in 2001 to Australian Aborigines, and in 2002 to Brazil. 13 Renamed as the Jean Rouch International Film Festival, today the festival is back at the Musée de l'Homme, still with free access. Website: www.comite-filmethno.net

48

Chapter 1

centres. With a very modest public contribution (between 4 and 7000 euros a year), we managed to buy 72 films, of which 40 are on film stock, 16 or 35 mm. However, time has passed. The initiative of the SFAV now provides universities anywhere in France with the possibility of borrowing and showing ethnographic films of high quality–“the classics” made between 1914 and 2000. Following a new cultural trend including a new interest in Anthropology and different societies, the past ten years have seen the birth of a certain number of ethnographic film festivals or Weeks of Ethnographic Film. These are put on each year, mostly organised by associations of anthropology students: Caen and Bordeaux (1995), Grenoble and Amiens (1997). In order to finance these festivals, films were often shown in movie theatres for a general public, and the fact that the SFAV could make many of the films available in 16 mm (or 35 mm) helped to introduce anthropological films into the cultural life of the city. United Kingdom In the United Kingdom, the interest in ethnographic films previously existed through the film library of the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI), probably the first ethnographic film collection in Europe, but it seemed to grow more active and better known after 1980 with the establishment of the RAI International Film Prize as a prestigious award. In 1985 (London, SOAS) the RAI, in collaboration with the National Film and Television School and its Director, Colin Young, organised its First International Film Festival together with an important conference. This event then was repeated about every two years at a different university: Manchester (1990 and 1992) in collaboration with the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology of Manchester University (an important international venue for teaching Anthropological Filmmaking), Canterbury (Kent 1994 and 1996), London (Goldsmith 1998), London (SOAS 2000), and Durham (2003). The collaboration between anthropologists and film found a very creative place at the National Film and Television School with Colin Young there. Given his strong interest in anthropology and anthropological films, he developed further the teaching in documentary film (including anthropological filming) that he had started at UCLA in the 1960s and 1970s throughout the 1980s in Beaconsfield. 14 The RAI 14

See David MacDougall’s contribution to this book. (The author refers here to his chapter in the original publication of this text, “Colin Young, Ethnographic Film and the Film Culture of the 1960s”, in Memories of the Origins of Ethnographic

Festivals, Conferences, Seminars and Networks in Europe

49

plays an important part as a permanent supporter of Visual Anthropology in the United Kingdom. The Conference at the UK Festival is an essential component of the event, attended by anthropologists who may well not be active filmmakers. For example, some of the papers presented in Manchester (1990) were put together and published as a book (Crawford and Turton 1992). Reviews of film festivals around the world regularly appear in the RAI publication Anthropology Today. Italy For more than twenty years, the Festival dei Popoli in Florence was the only place for showing social documentaries and ethnographic films (see above). However, with time passing in the 1980s another focus emerged in Sardinia, at the Instituto Superiore Regionale Etnografico of Nuoro, with a biennial Ethnographic Film Festival held each time with a different theme: Shepherds and their Imaginary (1982), Carnival (1984, Marriage (1986), Woman and Work (1988), Islands (1990), Mountain (1992), Man and Rivers (1994), Magic and Medicine (1996), Music and Rituals (1998), Children (2000), Food (2002), Tourism (2004). Very folkloristic and narrowly linked to Sardinian culture at its beginning, this festival became more anthropological and international year after year. The generous welcome gained it a great reputation. Most filmmakers whose films were selected would come to be present for the festival. In Italy, there were also one-off events like the International Conference on Visual Anthropology at Padua in 1988. I should also mention the Settimana Mediterranea del Film Antropologico organised at Palermo in Sicily, the seventh took place in 1989. It is interesting to note how each festival has its particular aim (not excluding local political goals), which generates its own image and character–often related to the organising country and the personality of the organisers themselves. This remark can be linked to the problem of financing. Germany In Freiburg in 1985, the Forum of Ethnological Films 15 started. It takes place every two years, and combines screenings and discussions. Then in 1993, the Göttingen International Ethnographic Film Festival 16 was created at the IWF and soon became one of the most important Film, edited by Beate Engelbrecht–Ed.) 15 Website: www.freiburger-medienforum.de 16 Website: www.iwf.de/giff/

50

Chapter 1

rendez-vous for Visual Anthropology in Western Europe. The festival includes a students’ film competition with a jury and awards. In some years an international conference follows the film festival. The Netherlands A focus on Visual Anthropology developed in the Netherlands in Amsterdam with the creation in 1989 of the conference and film festival called Eyes across the Water (Beeld voor Beeld).17 Organised at the University of Amsterdam as a conference with film screenings, it still exists, and the 14th meeting took place in 2003. Another centre is at Leiden University where Ethnographic Film has existed as a subject for teaching and production for many years. In 1999, the Department, as a homage to Dirk Nijkand, the founder, organised a conference entitled Evaluating Visual Ethnography: Research, Analysis, Representation, and Culture, which included film screenings. An important place was given to the papers and discussions, from which a book was published in 2006.18 Spain In Spain, there are also meetings on ethnographic films. The Certamen de Cine y Video Etnológico de las Comunidades Autónomas takes place in Huesca; the first one was held in 1985 and it seems to continue regularly. Another ethnographic film festival has been held at Santa Fe (Granada) from 1992 onwards. A European Research Film Seminar As a transition between what is happening in Western and Eastern Europe, I must say a few words about the international research film seminar Looking European Societies that I created and organised six times between 1983 and 1992 in different countries–Cannes, France (1983), Beaconsfield, UK (1985), Biskops Arnö, Sweden (1986), Budapest, Hungary (1987 and 1990), Sandbjerg, Denmark (1992)–as a narrow, continuous collaboration with some people from Eastern European countries. For example, it was after our meeting in Budapest in 1987, to which some Russians were invited, that the first ethnographic film festival 17

Website: www.beeldvoorbeeld.nl The author refers here to the book: Postma, Metje, and Peter I. Crawford, eds. 2006. Reflecting Visual Ethnography: Using the Camera in Anthropological Research. Hojbjerg and Leiden: Intervention Press and CNWS Publications–Ed. 18

Festivals, Conferences, Seminars and Networks in Europe

51

was organised in Pärnu, in the Soviet Union at that time. Due to its small scale, the seminar was difficult to finance but highly appreciated as a place to think and exchange ideas for a whole week in a quiet place. It had some rules. The participants had to be active filmmakers interested in anthropological films, available for a whole week, who were willing to present one of their films chosen by themselves, connected to or independent of the general theme of the seminar. There were about 25 participants, coming from 12 to 16 different countries from Western and Eastern Europe. No translation: English was the communication language. Each film was followed by a long debate, and two or more general discussions about the theme took place during the week. We tried to keep an equilibrium among participants: no more (and if possible no less) than one third beginners to two thirds experienced filmmakers, and no less than one third women. Within these six meetings, about 100 different people participated, and of course many came a number of times.19 Eastern Europe In Eastern Europe, most of the meetings began after 1989, but there is one festival I am curious about: the International Festival of Documentary, Scientific and Educational Films organised by the Academia Film Olomouc in the Czech Republic each year since 1966. It accepts ethnographic films, and had reached its 35th edition by 2000. According to Asen Balikci, there are very few regular ethnographic film festivals in Eastern Europe, but instead they tend to have one-off events here and there. There are some initiatives in Zagreb (Croatia), where the meeting of the international Commission (the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, IUAES) took place in 1988, and some attempts at bilateral meetings in Bulgaria. Estonia The first important international meeting on ethnographic film in the Soviet Union took place in Pärnu, Estonia in 1987, gathering participants from Eastern and Western Europe.20 It was a great moment for all of us who had the chance to participate: we discovered colleagues from all the different Soviet Republics of the Union: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Georgia, etc. The films were then still made under 19

See the section “Further Reading” in the bibliography. USSR/ESTONIA (1987, 88), followed by ESTONIA (1989, 90) website: www.chaplin.ee/english/filmfestival/ 20

52

Chapter 1

the control of communist regimes at official studios in 35 mm, no synch sound but music and voice-over commentary. Of course, there were some exceptions among the filmmakers, who already had outside contacts such as those from the Baltic countries. This first meeting between visual anthropologists from the East and the West was an event.21 The Festival continues each year as an international Visual Anthropology festival based in Estonia and oriented primarily to Northern Europe and the Baltic countries, but open to everyone. Poland In Poland, a festival of ethnographic film started in 1983 in àódĨ. I have been invited since 1986, but it was a little complicated to organise the journey before 1990. I finally attended the festival in 1995. It is international, but each year only a small number of foreigners came from Western Europe. In 1995, there were only two outsiders: a Serbian postgraduate student from the EHESS in Paris and me. The film tradition is strong in àódĨ, where a very well known School of Cinema is established. Romania It is at Sibiu that an international ethnographic film festival (Astra Film Festival) started in 1993,22 which now takes place every two years. The festival tries to show as many films as possible made by Romanian filmmakers, as it is their opportunity to get known. There are many foreign films and guests as well. In 1997, in Bucharest, the Museum of Romanian Peasant organised an international workshop focused mainly on direct anthropology, gathering, conservation of archives, and anthropological research through exhibitions, publications, projections, etc., where participants from West and East Europe met. Russia After the first event constituted by the Parnü Film Festival of 1987, a visual ethnography training seminar took place in the village of Kazim in North West Siberia in 1991 for Native Siberian cultural activists. The creation in 1998 of the Russian Visual Anthropology Association gave the impulse to organise the first (1998) and second (2000) Russian Anthropological Film Festivals in Salekhard. In 2002, there was a French 21 22

See Balikci 2000. Website: http://www.logon.ro/astrafilm

Festivals, Conferences, Seminars and Networks in Europe

53

Russian Ethnographic Film Festival organised by the Russians in Moscow in collaboration with the French Association for Visual Anthropology. Another Russian ethnographic film festival, more international, should take place in 2004 in Moscow. There are also more limited meetings about certain specific themes of Visual Anthropology. Hungary There is no official International Anthropological Film Festival in Hungary but the audiovisual service of the Museum of Ethnography, animated by János Tari, puts on many events in Budapest. Perhaps the first event was our seminar Looking at European Societies in 1987 and 1990. Afterwards, a number of audiovisual meetings took place about themes of Anthropology like Shamanism, or were organised by Avicom, the audiovisual network of Museums. In Spring 2000 they hosted The Euroregios network with the Wheel of Time meeting whilst another meeting devoted to Visual Anthropology, organised by Ákos Östör and János Tari, took place in winter 2001. The new dynamism and importance of Visual Anthropology nowadays can be measured by the rapidity with which it has spread in Eastern Europe as soon as it became possible. This panorama is probably far from exhaustive. I have probably left out some important meetings. Knowing that I could not mention all the names of organisers, on purpose I have avoided as much as possible mentioning any of them. All that I have tried to do is to give an account of the spread and importance of these meetings in Visual Anthropology.

3. Content Maybe it is time to talk about the content of these festivals–i.e. films, themes of discussion, and participants–and also about teaching, which was an important focus during the last twenty years of the century.

3.1. The Teaching and the Films Roughly from the 1950s until the end of the 1970s, ethnographic films in Europe followed no rules, were full of ideas but rather naïve and unskilled (with some exceptions, of course). Some professional filmmakers found them stimulating and found new ideas in them, although they considered that they could not be called “films”. They were made by anthropologists who had no specific training at all, in the best cases had

54

Chapter 1

some experience in photography, but most of the time had to count on their own skill and sensitivity. I remember, at the end of the 1960s, discussions between Jean Rouch and Michel Brault (from the ONF in Canada). Brault was a trained cameraman-filmmaker who had been through a film school and defended the necessity of a systematic teaching whilst Rouch advocated very elementary teaching of the tools but put his emphasis on the importance of practice and of being a clever eye behind the camera. So, in the festivals we could see “the best and the worst”, which was very stimulating: we often learn more from a failed film than from a finished masterpiece. However, as the idea of a specific training for ethnographic documentary filmmaking emerged, Anthropological filmmaking found other places than festivals to be talked about. We can mention the special programme for four anthropologists organised by the RAI and the Leverhulme Foundation at the NFTS2 in Beaconsfield at the beginning of the 1980s, and following that, the birth of the Granada Centre in Manchester, the Department of Ethnography in Leiden, the Department of Anthropology in Tromsö, etc… In France, around Jean Rouch, the group Anthropologie Filmique was created in 1969, directed by Claudine de France in Paris X and Annie Comolli at the EPHE in Paris. Later in the 1990s, many European Universities started courses in Visual Anthropology and ethnographic filmmaking, inserted in the programme of anthropology studies. The films became slowly more professional, but also, under the influence of the media and television standards, they became more and more similar and a certain monotony started to appear. For a certain period, anthropologist filmmakers wanted so much to be recognized and to have their films broadcast that they tried to conform to television demands and switched off the specificity of their subjects or of their training and knowledge as anthropologists. They were not professionally trained as filmmakers; the results were often disappointing, as we could discover when we screened their films in selection committees. Anthropologists who were seriously interested in filmmaking gradually lost their innocence and became more aware of the demands of the cinematographic language. Also, the television channels refused their films if they had not been produced and shot by television crews or made in collaboration with them. After their disappointments, anthropologist filmmakers began to recover their freedom and creativity. The low cost of video and now the emergence of digital images have also helped. The festivals can again present the best and the worst.

Festivals, Conferences, Seminars and Networks in Europe

55

Fig. 1–2. John Marshall (on the left) and Richard Leacock (on the right) at the "Origins of Visual Anthropology" Conference, Göttingen 2001. Photo: Colette Piault.

3.2. Themes of Discussion Some film conferences, independent or joined to the festivals, were especially concerned with certain groups of population (See the Regards Comparés in France) or some specific theme (see Nuoro’s Film Festival, Italy). The debates were therefore focused on the way these populations or these themes had been shown and discovered or explained through filming. Otherwise, the themes treated at conferences can be gathered around general topics, often controversial ones:  The nature and specificity of ethnographic films, history, attempts at definition and categories, evaluation, future, scientific or nonscientific, backward discussion,  The aesthetics of ethnographic films, relationships with art, with written work,  The analysis of the relationships with the “Other” through filming. And also, in restricted workshops:  Technical problems: sound, lighting, condition of production, teaching archiving and conservation,  How to film different subjects: minorities, rituals, music,

56

Chapter 1

technology, social change, relationships and conflicts, intimacy, etc.,  How to transmit knowledge through films: contextualisation,  The question of cultural and linguistic translation, and the possible devices to use: commentary, the interviews, voice over, captions. The plan to publish was usually present but not always possible. However, a few books have appeared as the results of a conference. Sometimes articles inspired by the conferences were written by a participant (see information in the bibliographic section, Festival Reviews).

3.3. The Participants and the Financing The organisation of the first limited meetings organised in the 1960s and 1970s did not need much money, and at that time institutions like universities could provide it. Money was not a serious problem for those who wanted to organise a film meeting. At the end of the 1980s, and even more in the 1990s, it became more and more difficult in most European countries to find any public funding for such events. In the United Kingdom under Mrs Thatcher, universities had to be run as enterprises and could not expect more state funding for a subject like Visual Anthropology. Then some private sponsoring appeared. To get money from sponsors, organisers had to convince them that it would be a great event and that it would bring something to them… which is a very narrow path for Visual Anthropology to tread. The first consequence was that festivals had to ask for registration fees from participants first, to register their films in the selection and after that, to participate. To gather as many participants as possible became an obligation so that the sum of their registration fees would amount to something. There was no more space for limited research seminars closed to the general public. Festivals became larger and larger gatherings, which is not always a good thing. Also, without state funds, socioeconomic discrimination appeared, as it became difficult to invite participants from far away or less developed countries. The NAFA, which manages to gather government funds, is still able to invite participants from countries outside the usual network. But it is becoming more and more difficult: participants usually have to cover all their expenses, or at least their journey. This creates an unpleasant discrimination between countries which some of us try to bypass. For example, at our Looking at European Societies seminar, we tried to share the state funds provided by some countries among the different

Festivals, Conferences, Seminars and Networks in Europe

57

participants (instead of using them only for the nationals of these states). This allowed us to invite (and cover the expenses of) participants from Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia to the UK and Sweden, as well as getting Russians to come to Budapest. However, one of the main reasons for the end of this seminar in 1992 was the growing difficulty of raising funds for such a limited, international and closed research meeting. Depending on which country organises the festival, the problems of funding differ. State scientific institutions in most European countries do not provide as much funding now as in the 1960s and 1970s, so the festivals in order to continue have to become more closely tied to local politics, as happened in Sicily, may happen in Sardinia and perhaps in many other countries. Another aspect, linked to finances, is the awards. Some festivals give awards and some do not. When the funding was easy to find, it seemed normal to have a jury and distribute awards. However, from a very personal point of view, I think that a festival can be very popular, well known and attended without giving awards (see Margaret Mead Film Festival 23 ). I defended very strongly this position when the Göttingen International Ethnographic Film Festival started in 1993 and the organisers wondered whether they should have awards or not. The main danger for these festivals is to be so tied to sponsoring and money that they could no longer make the decisions about their choices and orientations.

3.4. Networks One of the most positive aspects of these international meetings is the development of Visual Anthropology as a field of research and production. These regular meetings stimulated the creation in different countries of national associations for Visual Anthropology. Of course, they are not all on the same model and do not fulfil the same aims, but they exist and can be used as correspondents. Having been invited last year to a rather isolated university in New Zealand by a visual anthropologist, I became conscious of the importance of the networks. In Europe, as we meet each year–and sometimes more than once–in festivals, the links are always there. But in New Zealand and other isolated places, the link that Asen Balikci had created in the 1980s through the Newsletter of the International Commission was essential as it was the only possible link to 23 The Margaret Mead Film Festival currently gives the Margaret Mead Filmmaker Award (see http://www.amnh.org/)–Ed.

58

Chapter 1

Visual Anthropology in the world. E-mail communication helps a lot, but it is only a technical tool, which needs content. Another very positive aspect of these film festivals is the existence of networks based on solidarity and generosity. In each of our countries we probably have professional problems as everyone does, but when we meet at an international level we can forget about them, and concentrate on the intellectual and creative aspects of filmmaking Anthropology. No more competition is possible at that level. It seems to me that the pleasure we get from meeting at one and then again at another festival is rare in academic life in general. I think that making films implies some effort or talent for sociability. It is difficult to say for many of us whether we are colleagues or friends; there may be some to whom we have not talked too much but suddenly discover as friends. We stay quite naturally at each other’s places even when we are not what you would like close friends. The limited number of Visual Anthropologists is probably the reason of this collective behaviour. But I do not know with increasing numbers whether the same atmosphere can be kept. The network is a very important aspect of Visual Anthropology, also because filming needs collaboration… and collaborators.

Fig. 1–3. Conference participants taking pictures of each other. A typical image of festivals and conferences related to Visual Anthropology. Photo: Colette Piault.

Festivals, Conferences, Seminars and Networks in Europe

59

Conclusion I hope to have convinced you of the importance of film festivals and conferences and of their specificity in Visual Anthropology. The fact that films are made to be shown to a public, and that watching films is a pleasure, made the festival aspects of Visual Anthropology. The alternation between images and lectures gave a very satisfying content to these meetings. Of course, some were more pleasant and/or successful than others, but on the whole they all brought something interesting to those who participated. It is difficult to take into account such a long period of time from the 1960s to 2000 and such a large space as Europe. I know some events I have not mentioned were as important–or even more important for their organisers–than the ones I have cited here. I have tried to present a picture of the main trends observed in anthropological film festivals for the last forty years, and I intended the examples as illustrations, with no pretensions to be exhaustive! And an end, I wish long life to our film festivals and networks…

Remarks and Comments (February 2015) Since my contribution to Memories of the Origins of Ethnographic Film in 2007 (Piault 2007b), I have been invited to, and participated in, about ten international anthropological film festivals, often as a member of the jury in festivals commemorating their tenth, twentieth or thirtieth anniversaries, but also to present a new film selected by the festival, Return to the Brouck: The Fenland, 40 Years On (Retour au Brouck), as in 2012. In this short paper, I will not describe each of these festivals in detail but I would like to point out the changes which have occurred which have affected the style and content of those meetings. Without pretending to be exhaustive, I can mention at least three important changes: funding, the format and formulaic nature of films produced for television, and, most important for those of us anthropological filmmakers, the selection criteria based on the year of production.

60

Chapter 1

Funding For a long period of time, at least, through the 20th century, festivals were organised in association with permanent institutions which helped with financing.24 But, more and more, and mainly since what has been called “the Crisis” in 2008, finding money for cultural purposes has become very hard, and, as a result, most Festivals have had to ask for a larger contribution from their guests. This has excluded the participation of some countries and many young people. If I take the NAFA Film Festival, which took place at the University of St Andrews in Scotland in August 2011, as an example, in that case, only a very limited number of people, between seventeen and twenty full-time participants, were able to come. The already reduced residential rate was about £400 for five days, and those of us who came had to pay our own travel expenses. Not everyone, naturally, could afford such an expenditure! Some festivals now offer accommodation, but very, very few ever contribute to travel expenses. To compensate, many festivals have tried to attract a large number of applicants to pay their own registration fees and encouraged them to submit their films and admission fees at their own expense. Of course, participants in these festivals have also had to cover their own travel and accommodation. This has contributed to a reduction in the number of filmmakers wishing to come to the festivals, reduced exposure of anthropologists to well-made anthropological films, a high cost of such festivals to educational institutions, a reduced opportunity for these institutions to recoup their expenses–and an unintended consequence: fewer festivals! In 2001, at the very important International Conference on the Origins of Ethnographic Film organised at the Max Planck Institute by the IWF in Göttingen, there was a very large contingent of US citizens in evidence as their universities were still willing to pay their expenses. Some festivals avoided that impasse for particular reasons, for example, the festival at Sibiu in 2007. As the city of Sibiu was Cultural Capital of Europe that year, they received funds from Europe and private sponsorships including from Sony, and were able to organise a very important and international film festival as a result. Even the biannual Nuoro Film Festival, which 24

For example, the Margaret Mead Film Festival (Museum of Natural History, New York), the RAI Film Festival (Universities of Manchester, Canterbury and others, UK), the Göttingen Film Festival (IWF, Germany), the International Ethnographic Film Festival (Istituto superiore regionale etnografico della Sardegna, Nuoro).

Festivals, Conferences, Seminars and Networks in Europe

61

started in 1982 and was one of the best endowed, did not take place in 2014 for financial reasons. Nevertheless, there are new anthropology film festivals that are less ambitious. For example, I was invited in October 2014 by a new film festival in Kratovo in Macedonia to show my 2003 film about Cyprus Dead Presumed Missing? (Colette Piault and Paul Sant Cassia, 2003). But these festivals cannot afford to invite many international guests, and most of these smaller festivals are mainly attended by local participants. Maybe the lack of money will give a new impetus to festivals to reorient themselves and perhaps become more like the anthropological film research seminar entitled Regards sur les Sociétés Européennes (Looking at European Societies), which took place between 1983 and 1992 (Piault 2007a). In that case, a limited number of participants, between 20 and 25, all active filmmakers from fifteen different countries, were invited to the festival. Each was asked to present one of his or her own films, and then time was shared equally between film screenings and discussions. After a meeting place was found, it was often only necessary to find money to cover the individual expenses of participants. Sometimes the host city would participate in funding residential costs, but participants had to manage to pay for their own travel expenses. This same model could work in the future if filmmakers could be persuaded to fund themselves using whatever means at their disposal, including “crowdfunding”...25

Film Formats Over the last decade, we filmmakers have found that our films are continually changing format. From the era of 16 mm and 8 mm film stock, through the phase of VHS and then to DVD, we have seen that films have slowly lost their substance, and are able to “travel” directly across continents on the Internet via YouTube and Vimeo, for example... I remember arriving in the States in 1982 to present my first Greek film in different places and festivals. It was two hours long as it was in 16 mm... I travelled on the plane with three heavy big reels... And now, when I ask a student to see his or her rushes, it is often not possible because the film is on a computer, on a card which cannot be read on another computer, or it needs a transfer to DVD, or for them to carry their computer with them to screen the film. Not everyone has the equipment available to do this... 25 Looking for funds through a website describing the project and offering something in exchange.

62

Chapter 1

At major film festivals, organisers usually ask for professional formats that they can screen properly (such as Blu-Ray or 35 mm), but again, this is a huge expense for anthropological filmmakers. In other cases, sometimes organisers want to simplify the screenings and show all the films on their own personal computers. My last film was selected by the Society for Visual Anthropology (SVA), which is part of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) in the US.26 I went to San Francisco in 2012 to present it. The screenings of all films lasted four days and often, at least once a day, a DVD did not play properly on the computer and the session was simply cancelled due to technical reasons! It seems so simple to show films on DVDs that it is a temptation for many festivals to do so. But what about the quality of the film shown? The results are often grainy and/or out of focus. Changing formats all the time and trying to convince us that the next one will be much better is just the face of capitalism. It is true that some phases in the evolution of formats have created a real improvement in cinema quality, like High Definition, but in general they have not. These developments are just a device to open new markets and find new consumers, I fear... It would be better if we did not feel obliged to change all our material every two or three years and be sure that the original quality has not changed without being obliged to transfer to several other new formats. Shot in 16 mm, my Greek series (six films with three versions: the original Greek, English and French, 18 films in toto) has been transferred to VHS, Umatic, Beta SP, Digital Beta and DVD... At each new transfer, I have had to throw away so many boxes of film, most of which have often not even been screened once! Unfortunately, I do not believe that these continuous changes will stop any day soon, probably not even for a decade, but what is clear is that we are heading now to the disappearance of film in any tangible form. Our films will be “on the Cloud”... and festivals will have to adapt themselves to this… but will these films live forever or die, lost in the ether?

Date of Film Production as a Criterion for Selection The third point is probably the most important and relevant to us. All anthropological or documentary film festivals impose a deadline for production in order to accept the films in their selection. It is true that for the last few years, documentary film festivals have been overwhelmed by 26 The American Anthropological Association gathers about 5,000 anthropologists and meets annually.

Festivals, Conferences, Seminars and Networks in Europe

63

applications from filmmakers proposing their films.27 In consequence, all of them have chosen not to accept films older than two or three years. So what happens to the films which are four years old or more? Very simple! They are not seen anymore, anywhere. Unfortunately, there are not any specialised ethnographic film festivals which would take into account the fact that the older they are, the more interesting they are for us, and retrospectives are a very marginal practice. For us, anthropologists or documentary filmmakers filming human communities, this is just ridiculous! Without pretending, as our “ancestors” did, that we were witnessing and filming “a disappearing world”, it is clear that our films remain testimonies to the period in which they were shot, and interest in them is constantly evolving over time...The passing of time is the most important “actor” in our films, as I tried to develop in a paper I wrote about family films (Piault 2004). So we should find a way to show our films in public and discuss them, whatever their year of production! The Nuoro International Ethnographic Film Festival started focusing on anthropological or ethnographic themes such as Marriage, Music, and Islands, and at that time, the films selected could have been shot in any year as long as they were related to the theme. They also had an “Archive session” in which quite old Italian films were screened. But it was not very easy to identify a new theme every year and to find good quality anthropological films related to that single theme. So now, just like the other festivals, they also do not select films more than two years old... I shot my Greek series between 1978 and 1992, and I think that my films are much more unusual and interesting now, twenty years later, than when they first appeared. What the films describe, and the issues they deal with, no longer exist, yet there are very few opportunities to show them in public. When they are shown, however, I have found that the audience is actually very interested in them. They find it hard to believe that I could have elicited such a profound response from the communities and the spontaneous participation of the people when making these films. These are basic ethnographic films, a far cry from what television channels show nowadays: they have less sophisticated camerawork and were often shot with rudimentary equipment, but people often tell me that they are “refreshing”... Working on my last film in the North of France in the same location where I had filmed a documentary forty years earlier, I had an identical experience.28 I had produced DVDs of the two films (the first made in 27

About 400 to 600 films each year. Le Brouck (1972) and Retour au Brouck (2010), Marais de Saint Omer, Pas de Calais, North of France.

28

64

Chapter 1

1970 and the second in 201029) and packaged them in the same box. I noticed that people bought the box more for the 70s film than for the new one, which had been coproduced and shown by a local television channel. The black and white image, the non-sync sound, as well as the way the people being filmed responded to the camera, endowed this old film with a rare and special quality. It would be so much better if we could manage to avoid being tied to television and global rhythms… if we were able to maintain our priorities as filmmakers, one of which must be our role as witnesses to the past… Often the question asked is: “What is the difference between anthropological films and documentary films which include reportage?” There is a small but important difference. Anthropological films are documentary films, but they are also concerned with the past30 and a deep knowledge and understanding of the communities filmed. In many cases they are also focused on interactions between people. They are usually not, or less, concerned with contemporary events, news, “scoops”, etc. There is no need for me to repeat the statement that television has ruined the creativity of documentary. The fact is, we have become used to this style of documentary! Some historical documentaries, especially those using precious archives, are quite valuable. There is no need to fight against them in particular. Freedom and originality are in very short supply because television channels and networks have adopted very strict policies. They require particular formats and shooting styles if a film is to be accepted for broadcast. For example, the length of the film must conform to that required for a particular time slot, there should be lots of close-ups but few long takes, lots of action, no long silences, etc. In the future, festivals and meetings of anthropologist filmmakers will probably continue to exist, but they may have to adapt their formats and move towards festivals with more modest budgets. They will continue to select independent films with interesting or original subjects, but will have to be satisfied with a reasonably good quality broadcast “format”. Let us not be duped by all those sophisticated devices! Can we dare to hope that the lack of money will stimulate the freedom and creativity of filmmakers, and that festival organisers will lead the move back to basics?

29

Shot by myself alone, with a spring camera, black & white, less than 10" shots, no sync sound. 30 The “past” is sometimes simply the period during which the film was shot, sometimes ten to thirty years previously.

Festivals, Conferences, Seminars and Networks in Europe

65

Works Cited Balikci, Asen. 2000. “The Second Russian Anthological Film Festival, Salekhard, 29 August-4 September 20.” Anthropology Today 16(6):20–23. Crawford, Peter I., ed. 1993. The Nordic Eye. Hojbjerg: Intervention Press. Crawford, Peter I., and David Turton, eds. 1992. Film as Ethnography. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Hockings, Paul, ed. 1975. Principles of Visual Anthropology. The Hague: Mouton Publishers. Houtman, Gustaaf. 1988. “Interview with Maurice Bloch.” Anthropology Today 4(1):18–21. MacDougall, David. 2007. “Colin Young, Ethnographic Film and the Film Culture of the 1960s,” In Memories of the Origins of Ethnographic Film, edited by Beate Engelbrecht, 123–132. Oxford: Peter Lang. Piault, Colette. 2004. “Films de Famille et films sur la famille.” In Le film de famille, edited by Nathalie Tousignant, 55–65. Bruxelles: Publications des Facultés universitaires Saint-Louis. —. 2007a. “Looking at European Societies. The European Research Film Seminars–Regards sur les Sociétés Européennes, 1983-1992.” Visual Anthropology Review 23(1):111–113. —. 2007b. “Festivals, Conferences, Seminars and Networks in Visual Anthropology in Europe.” In Memories of the Origins of Ethnographic Film, edited by Beate Engelbrecht, 343–361. Oxford: Peter Lang. Postma, Metje, and Peter I. Crawford, eds. 2006. Reflecting Visual Ethnography: Using the Camera in Anthropological Research. Hojbjerg and Leiden: Intervention Press and CNWS Publications.

Further Reading Festival Reviews Reviews and/or articles of European festivals were mainly published in these journals: CVA Newsletter (1987-1994) published by Asen Balikci when he was President of the Commission on Visual Anthropology (CVA) of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES). The Newsletter stopped publication after the departure of Asen Balikci. Published again since 2002 by Rolf Husmann, Göttingen. Journal des Anthropologues, published by the Association Française des Anthropologues (AFA) to which the SFAV was associated. (EHESS,

66

Chapter 1

Paris) NAFA Newsletter, published by the Nordic Anthroplogical Film Association (NAFA) is open to all reviews on film festivals anywhere in the world through the Internet. RAIN: Royal Anthropological Institute Newsletter, which became Anthropology Today, the newsletter published by the Royal Anthropological Institute in the United Kingdom. Visual Anthropology Review (formerly SVA Newsletter) published by the Society of Visual Anthropology (SVA) of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) in the United States. Visual Anthropology, edited by Paul Hockings in the United States. Many papers were also published in different countries in journals of anthropology not specialized in Visual Anthropology. Reviews and Articles Concerning the Regards sur les Sociétés Européennes Research Seminar 1982 Premières Rencontres Internationales du Film Ethnographic et Scientifique, Cannes, 20-28 November 1982: Bromhead, Toni de. 1983. “Festival of European Ethnographic Film.” RAIN: Royal Anthropological Institute Newsletter 55:7–8. Mesnil, Marianne. 1983. “A propos des Premières Rencontres Internationales du Film Ethnographique et Scientifique, Cannes, 20-28 Nov. 1982.” Revue de l’Institut de Sociologie 1(2):259–262. 1983 Les Rencontres de Cannes: Freudenthal, Solveig. 1984. “Regards sur les Sociétés Européenes: Ethnographical Film Festival in Cannes”, RAIN, Royal Anthropological Institute Newsletter 64:10–11. Sluys, Colette. 1983. “Les Rencontres de Cannes.” Bulletin de l’Association Française des Anthropologues 14:74–77. 1985 Regards sur les Sociétés Européennes: Ministry of Culture. 1986. “Cinéma et Ethnologie Européenne. Entretien avec Colette Piault.” Terrain 6:72–77. Waltner, Lisl. 1986. “Regards sur les Sociétés Européennes.” Österreichische Zeitschrift für Volkskunde 40(20):173–175. 1986 Cinéma et Ethnologie Européenne: Arnott, Susi. 1986. “Regards sur les Sociétés Européennes (Looking at European Societies).” Anthropology Today 2(6):26. Balikci, Asen. 1986. “Regards sur les Sociétés Européennes.” CVA Newsletter August:10–11. Ministry of Culture. 1987. “Regards sur les Sociétés Européennes.”

Festivals, Conferences, Seminars and Networks in Europe

67

Terrain 8:98–99. 1987 Filming Ritual: Bregenhoj, Carsten. 1987. “Films Around the Clock–Regards sur les Sociétés Européennes.” Nordic Countries Folklore Journal 87–92. Bromhead, Toni de. 1987. “Regards sur les Sociétés Européennes.” Newsletter of the European Association for the Visual Studies of Man (EAVSOM) 3:24–27. MacDougall, David (chaired by). 1989. “Round Table about ‘Filming Ritual’.” SVA Newsletter 5(1):19–23. Piault, Marc Henri. 1987. “Regards sur les Sociétés Européennes.” Bulletin de l’Association Française des Anthropologues 29/30:169– 171. —. 1989. “Filming Ritual.” SVA Newsletter 5(1):17–19. Piault, Colette. 1989. “‘Filming Ritual’. Introductory Remarks.” SVA Newsletter 5(1):15–17.Waltner, Lisl. 1988. “Filme rund um die Uhr. Regards sur les Sociétés Européennes.” Österreichische Zeifschrift für Volkskunde 27(1):77–80. 1990 “The Ancient Art of Memory”: Banks, Marcus. 1990. “Memories of a Meeting: Ethnographic Film.” Anthropology Today 6(6):18–19. Jablonko, Allison. 1991. “The Memory” Bus: Notes on a post-graduate printer for ethnographic film.” Visual Anthropology Review 7(2):107– 110. Wickett, Elisabeth. 1990. “Regards sur les Sociétés Européennes Seminar. Budapest, July 8-15 1990.” CVA Revue: Commission on Visual Anthropology Fall:54–55.

68

Chapter 1

Appendix Festivals, Juries and Awards Colette Piault (ed.)31 This text reassembles some remarks gathered during a friendly dinner which reunited some filmmakers, all of whom have repeatedly served on juries and/or won awards. All of the positions cited in support of assertions were actually experienced. The question posed was: Should international documentary and/or anthropological film festivals appoint juries to issue awards? Which festivals and which juries for which awards, for which films? How are awards useful for distribution? Participants:  Anne Connan, historian, documentary filmmaker, Graduated of National Film & Television School (NFTS), Beaconsfield (France)  David MacDougall, documentary filmmaker (Australia/United States)  Colette Piault, anthropologist and filmmaker, Research director at the CNRS (France)  Marc H. Piault, anthropologist and filmmaker, Research director at the CNRS (France)  Martin Taureg, anthropologist and journalist specializing in documentary and ethnographic film (Germany)  Hugo Zemp, ethnomusicologist and filmmaker, Research director at the CNRS (France) No divergence arose during the course of the debate. Different points of view were expressed which complemented and enriched one another, but we were generally in agreement on the heart of the matter. This is why the opinions could be brought together in a collective text.

Festivals It appeared legitimate to us that the large Festivals, "big budget" Festivals such as the Cinéma du Réel or the Festival dei Popoli, issue awards, but the need for more limited and specialized festivals to conform to the awards system is questionable, this often being derisory. 31

Remarks gathered, transcribed and edited in French by Colette Piault, April 1994, published in La Revue Documentaires, N° 9, July 1994. Translated by Holy Haverty for CVA Newsletter.

Festivals, Conferences, Seminars and Networks in Europe

69

There is absolutely no need to issue awards, nor any shame in not presenting them: The Margaret Mead Film Festival, which does not present awards, is no less regarded than the Bilan du Film Ethnographique, which does present them. Each festival is different, offering its own image. Just to be selected to participate in the Margaret Mead Festival is considered an important distinction, just as the international Forum division of the Festival of Berlin enjoys a certain reputation which attracts attention to the films shown there. Selection for participation seems to have less value in France than in Anglo-saxon countries, perhaps because the tradition of awards is stronger in France. Simply giving awards entails additional fees for a festival. This is not due to the awards themselves, often donated by corporations (JVC, Kodak, or Fuji in Manchester or Paris) or of a symbolic nature (hand-crafted objects in Parnü, Estonia), but by the need to put together and invite an international jury which will be sponsored by the festival. Some organisers have limited budgets and must rely on the entry fees of participants to finance their festival, which leads them to search for a large number of entries. By saving the costs of an international "VIP" jury, one is able to alleviate the budget and invite the filmmakers whose films are to be shown. Thus, it is completely satisfactory that certain festivals, which have the means, give awards, but the festivals without awards can be just as attractive and advantageous for filmmakers and the public. Festivals are all different, and it’s fine this way.

Juries First, one can question the way films are selected for a festival’s program. This appears to be a rather hidden process. The few who make the choices are part of the sponsoring organisation’s team. They need not explain their choices, and are often quite ignorant about filmmaking because they come from other fields. In regards to the members of the jury, they are often chosen for their "novel eye". Thus, a jury is made up of writers and painters, with a "novel eye" indeed, who have often never seen documentary or ethnographic films before the festival itself. It is, therefore, difficult to find a common language within the jury. Moreover, members of the jury, due to their heterogeneity, have the tendency to prefer a film for very personal reasons, tied to the subject (of which they are specialists), to the geographic area (which is familiar to them) etc... In this way each of them will only be able to express themselves in the most subjective way: I like it, I don’t like it, I am for it, I am against it. This could be the case of the Jury of the

70

Chapter 1

Librarians at the Cinéma du Réel Festival, of which the choices often resemble familiar television styles. The workings of the jury is difficult, and to a certain degree, unforeseeable. The decisionmaking is complex (linked to the complexity of the films themselves, see below): the results of negotiation are often difficult, compromised, even dishonestly so; they are not sheltered from internal and external pressures. More concretely, in the absence of precise criteria and specifications for the award (see below), frequently, an innovative film, which takes risks, provokes, disturbs and arouses passions among the members of the jury does not arrive at obtaining unanimous approval. The jury, firmly divided, then prefers to give the award to a more conformist film, perhaps even a mediocre one without inventiveness, but against which no strong opposition will arise. Thus, the law of the smallest common denominator is applied. One can also mention pressures that could be called political, in the literal sense (giving an award to a film from a nation which supports the country or institution where the festival takes place, accepting that a member of the jury is exclusively chosen so that his or her political power influences the award choices etc...), but also, in a figurative sense when strategies are put into place to defend this or that filmmaker-friend, or that film produced by this or that television channel, with which certain members of the jury would like to maintain good relations. If some strategies are explicit, others are less so. Thus, a member of the jury cannot know who is the friend of whom, which strategies will be put into place and by whom. The jury member often comes to question, as the public will do afterwards, the reasons for certain awards.

Films Film is the most difficult of artistic creations to judge because we are all affected so directly by film that our subjective reaction can very strongly influence our judgement. Each of us sees, in fact, a different film, and our imagination constructs the same film differently. This is why it is so difficult to simply recognize one or a few films while eliminating all of the others. In addition, the award given to a film unfortunately does not represent a critical analysis of this film; it is not generally accompanied by a detailed, critical commentary which makes known the reasons for the choice, even if a few lines are read when the award is presented. These remarks succeed

Festivals, Conferences, Seminars and Networks in Europe

71

in explaining certain hostilities toward some awards, the presentation of which appeared arbitrary and unjust. An interesting solution, however, is proposed: as practiced by the fiction film festivals, such as Cannes, give specific awards, for example, an award for the "best leading shot" or "best interrelation", "best background theme", or best image, best sound, etc... This approach would be more precise allowing the jury to make explicit and justify its choices.

Filmmakers and Awards Are awards useful? Incontestably, awards are stimulating and appreciable for the filmmakers who receive them. Yet, in contrast to common thought, if the achievement of an award allows attention to be drawn to a film, it is clear that it does not allow one to find better financing for the next film, especially since the principal sponsors are now almost exclusively television channels for which awards are in no way a factor in the decision. Awards are important for beginners, for first films. Incontestably, they constitute a factor of encouragement and subsequently, they can be, in the face of the difficulties in making films, an obstacle to discouragement. They allow one to gain confidence in oneself and sometimes solicit the confidence of others and obtain grants for a new project, but above all in the past because now financial support is only granted with the approval of the television channels. On the other hand, awards have an equally negative effect when the filmmaker sees his or her first film rewarded and, then, the next films receive no awards. This can disrupt a career, as in the case of child prodigies, actors or musicians, for example. Accustomed to recognition, they totally lose confidence in themselves when their work is no longer an object of reward. Some festivals propose forty films in competition to afterwards reward eight or ten. This is not a good solution. If a single film is given an award among the forty presented in competition, all of the denied films find themselves on the side of the majority and this does them no harm. If, on the contrary, ten films among forty are awarded, the thirty others are more clearly rejected. Taking into account what has been said above about the arbitrariness of a jury’s judgments, this situation should be avoided: Better one single (or very few) awards.

72

Chapter 1

Awards and Distribution Many remarkable and award-winning films have never been shown on television, particularly by the British and American channels, simply because they are not films made for television: the criteria for each variety are different, even opposed. In addition, if during a brief period the television channels were purchasing independently produced documentaries, this is no longer the case: the films presented on television are now produced by and for television. Besides, these telefilms are often presented in professional festivals reserved for television, such as FIPA (International Festival for Audiovisual Programs) in Cannes. In other respects, festivals endeavour to organise an extension of their programming. Thus, since 1993 the Margaret Mead Festival chose a selection of films which, after the Festival, circulated the United States. This initiative is greeted with interest. The Cinéma du Réel does this as well. In particular, the award-winning films are purchased by the office of the Ministère des Affaires Etrangères (France), which has them circulated through its cultural services abroad. In conclusion, if we desire large festivals to present awards, this must not be considered as an obligation for all festivals. The absence of awards can also be a plus for some more modest festivals. It would be desirable that juries work with more precise directives and, in particular, that awards be presented for a film’s specific recognized qualities and not following a global judgement which can only be profoundly arbitrary and subjective.

CHAPTER 2 ETHNOGRAPHIC AND INDIGENOUS FILM FESTIVALS IN LATIN AMERICA: CONSTRUCTING NETWORKS OF FILM CIRCULATION MARÍA PAZ PEIRANO

With the development of Visual Anthropology and indigenous media in Latin America, ethnographic film festivals have been very slowly positioning themselves in the region. This chapter gives a general account of the main Latin American events that enable the circulation of film and video of anthropological interest. 1 These films are either ethnographic works made by external observers and researchers, or films made by the Latin American indigenous peoples who, moving from their position in front of visual anthropologists’ cameras, are now producing some of the most significant films about their own societies in this region. The chapter discusses some of the connections between these festivals, and their relationship with the broader circuit of Latin American film festivals, aiming to present an overview of the regional state of art. In general terms, the international film festival circuit has helped the circulation and consumption of contemporary “peripheral” nonmainstream cinema (Iordanova 2010) by providing a relatively stable channel of exhibition. As mentioned in this volume’s introduction, the circuit can be understood as a relatively autonomous network with its own nodes and connections (Elsaesser 2005), in which each festival enables the encounter of a more or less stable group of film professionals who shape “alternative” film circulation. Festivals establish vital links 1

This chapter is based on an original paper entitled “Making the ‘Other’ Visible: Indigenous and Ethnographic Film Festivals in Latin America,” presented at the Nordic Anthropological Film Association Symposium, Bilbao, Spain, 9-13 October 2013.

74

Chapter 2

with various other entities, such as states, city stakeholders and other institutions (De Valck 2007; Stringer 2001), and are open to an assemblage of performances and purposes. These events also add value to films, and filmmakers in the field often gain prestige due to the circulation of their products on the circuit and the construction of an “author’s signature”. Ethnographic and indigenous film festivals only operate under these logics of networking, circulation and prestige to some extent. According to Piault (2007, 344), the specificities of ethnographic festivals are conditioned by their aims and structure, which are normally related to the ambiguous status of Visual Anthropology between art, science and activism. Ethnographic filmmakers’ prestige is frequently built on artistic performance and festival circulation as well as academic interest in their work. Ethnographic film festivals can be understood as specialised documentary or scientific film festivals, which normally hold a peripheral position regarding mainstream festivals and depend on academic institutions. Similarly, specialised indigenous film festivals that often refer to ethnographic issues frequently depend on institutions and organisations committed to the promotion of indigenous rights, and can be understood as a form of human rights and other activist film festival (Iordanova and Torchin 2012). Thus, ethnography-related festivals tend to form their own circuits, with their own particular extra-filmic agendas, in which the artistic values may be displaced by other cultural and political needs. Only in some cases have ethnographic and other films of anthropological interest been able to circulate across different types of festivals, being awarded on both the main circuits and the more specialised ones. This is the case with, for example, the films of Kim Longinotto, such as Pink Saris (2010), or The Act of Killing (2012), directed by Joshua Oppenheimer, and Leviathan (2012), directed by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel of the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard University.

Latin American Ethnographic Film Festivals Similarly to other parts of the world (see introduction to this section), the development of ethnographic film festivals within Latin America has been marked by limited access to funds and other resources, plus the relatively recent development of Visual Anthropology. Despite having seen the emergence of outstanding work in Visual Anthropology in the past, such as the films of Argentine Jorge Prelorán, the subfield has only been recognised as an established academic discipline in recent decades

Ethnographic and Indigenous Film Festivals in Latin America

75

(see, for example, Cuevas 2015).2 Consequently, the emergence, continuity and reach of Latin American ethnographic film festivals have been rather limited. There are a few well-established, on-going ethnographic film festivals in the region, particularly in countries with a stronger anthropological academic tradition, such as Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. We can also identify several one-off encounters of Visual Anthropology depending on individual initiatives. 3 Ethnographic films are also often exhibited in the context of regional or international anthropological conferences, such as the Congreso Latinoamericano de Antropología (ALA, Latin American Anthropology Conference) and the Reunión de Antropología del Mercosur (RAM, Mercosur Anthropology Meeting), as well as various other national academic meetings. Many of these events, such as the Encuentro de Antropología Audiovisual (Encounter of AudioVisual Anthropology) organised by the Red Mexicana de Antropología Visual (REMAV, Mexican Visual Anthropology Network), are not strictly “film festivals” but regular academic and cultural events, which include conferences, roundtables, workshops, photography and art exhibitions along with film exhibition. The Jornadas de Antropología Visual de Mexico (Mexican Days of Visual Anthropology),4 for example, were created as a “cultural-academic” event, which integrated an academic symposium with retrospectives of Kim Longinotto, Jorge Prelorán (both in 2010), John Marshall (2012), and the Brazilian Vídeo Nas Aldeias (VNA) project, presented by Vincent Carelli (2011). The Jornadas were also involved in the screenings of archival material in the Cine entre culturas (Cinema between Cultures) section, organised in collaboration with the Festival Internacional de Cine Documental de la Ciudad de México (DocsDF, Mexico City International Documentary Film Festival). 2

The development of Visual Anthropology varies from country to country, but in most of them it has been positioned as a systemised sub-discipline since the 1990s. 3 For example, in Chile the Núcleo Chileno de Antropología Visual (Chilean Visual Anthropology Group) has organised specific showcases and events over the last decade. 4 Jornadas de Antropología Visual is an independent organisation, supported by a network of formal academic institutions, government funds and the Documentary Film Festival DocsDF. The other specific institutions involved in this project are: the organisation Etnoscopio A.C.; the academic institutions Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia (ENAH), Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de México (UACM), Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana (UCSJ); and the Government Fund Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (FONCA).

76

Chapter 2

Fig. 2–1. Posters of various editions of the CLACPI Festival (Festival Internacional de Cine y Video de los Pueblos Indígenas). From left to right: Mexico 1985, Venezuela 1989, Chile 2004, Peru 1992, Colombia 2012, Mexico 2006). Images: courtesy of CLACPI Festival.

Despite their connection with local academia, regional ethnographic film festivals also tend to promote not only academic works but any documentaries that are considered to have “anthropological interest”, meaning those that express a broad interest in human societies and cultures, in particular those focusing on indigenous peoples. For example, the small Festicine San Agustín in Colombia shows fiction and documentary films that, even when they are not strictly ethnographic, aim to provoke an anthropological discussion. Similarly to other regional events, the festival is conceived of as a meeting point between general audiences, filmmakers and scholars,5 and aims to disseminate local heritage and culture beyond the strictly academic context. 5

“Festicine San Agustín attempts to build a reflective and critical audience regarding audio-visual media, which it is seen as a pedagogic tool, aimed at leisure and communication. That is why [the Festival] has established Visual Anthropology as a thematic line, an instrument for the observation, description and analysis of human reality.” In: “Se inicia el cuarto Festival de Cine y Video de San Agustín”, Festicine San Agustín. November 23th 2012.

Ethnographic and Indigenous Film Festivals in Latin America

77

The main ethnographic film festivals in the region are found in Brazil, matching its greater level of ethnographic film production and Visual Anthropology research. Most of the festivals, such as the Festival do Cine Etnografico de Recife, the Mostra amazônica do filme etnográfico,6 and the Belo Horizonte Fórum de Antropologia e Cinema (Forumdoc.bh, Belo Horizonte’s Documentary and Ethnographic Film Festival), have been supported by both universities and private investors. Festivals can include both competitive and non-competitive events focusing on documentary films, plus some experimental and animated films. For example, the Mostra Internacional do Filme Etnográfico (Río de Janeiro International Ethnographic Film Festival) was a biannual event that also showed interest in broader documentary filmmaking and the creation of international networks. Created in 1993 but currently suspended for lack of funds, it was one of the oldest festivals in the region, particularly interested in the promotion and production of national ethnographic film. It also hosted an academic event, the Fórum de Cinema e Antropologia, as well as establishing international connections with world-class academic centres of Visual Anthropology, such as the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology of the University of Manchester (in 2009 and 2010), and some of the major ethnographic film festivals in the world (such as the Margaret Mead Film Festival and the Bilan du Film Ethnographique in 2000). The connections between the Mostra and other Latin American festivals and institutions, however, was not as strong, and the film programmes often exhibited fewer Latin American films (mainly from Argentina), mostly focusing on national and European films. So far, this disconnection with other Latin American countries has been a common trend within festivals in the region. There has been a tendency to frame ethnographic films and festivals under national schemes. Similarly to what has happened with other forms of Latin American cinema historically, exchanges within Latin American countries are not fluid and permanent, unlike the “international” character of the European events (Piault 2007, 345). However, this is slowly beginning to change, and more recent editions seem increasingly open to including works from across the region. Some films do manage to circulate within the region, and some festivals, such as the aforementioned Mexican Jornadas and the http://www.festicinesanagustin.wordpress.com. Translation by the author. 6 The Mostra Amazônica do Filme Etnografico, organised by the Nucleo de Antropologia Visual NAVI/UFAM, had five editions (2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2011), but it is currently suspended due to other research commitments of the team in charge, about documentary production in Amazonia (2013-2014) (Selda Vale da Costa, personal communication, 20th May 2016).

78

Chapter 2

Argentinian Muestra Nacional de Cine y Video Documental Antropológico y Social (DocAnt, National Showcase of Anthropologic and Social Documentary Film and Video), have attempted to establish more regional connections. DocAnt, for example, sponsored by the Argentinian Ministry of Culture and the National Institute of Anthropology and Latin American Thought (INAPL), has developed a number of inter-festival regional exchanges. Running in different Argentinian cities, such as Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, Córdoba and Rosario, since 1991, DocAnt is the oldest anthropological film festival currently taking place in Latin America. The festival aims to spread the works of Argentinian, Latin American and international filmmakers among audiences interested in “the social construction of identity”, including works on indigenous peoples and other ethnic groups, traditional festivities, and local socio-political issues.7 DocAnt has screened diverse forms of non-commercial cinema, from classic ethnographic films to participatory video, especially from Latin America. Occasionally, its programme has also included “mainstream” films that circulate at larger documentary film festivals. For instance, in 2006 the successful Mexican documentary film De Nadie by Tim Dirdamal was included in the programme, after winning the audience award at Sundance (2006) and being shown at important Latin American festivals, such as the XVI Festival Internacional de Cine de Viña del Mar (FICVIÑA, Viña del Mar International Film Festival) and the XII Festival Internacional de Cine de Valdivia (FICVALDIVIA, Valdivia Film Festival) in Chile. DocAnt is conceived of as a space for discussion and international exchanges around the programmed films, and is open to both Latin American and international academics, independent filmmakers, students and general audiences, who participate in the screenings, talks and debates. The festival also constitutes an ethnographic archive, since the films presented become part of the INAPL archives and are included in its permanent “diffusion programme” for further screenings in Argentina. The DocAnt programme has also been shown as a sidebar in other specialised festivals, such as the aforementioned Río de Janeiro Mostra, the Festival Internacional de Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano de La Habana (Cuba), and the Rassegna Internazionale di Documentari Etnograficci di Cerdeña (Italy). More recently, the Argentinian films screened in the DocAnt archives have also been lent to other Ibero-American films festivals, such as the Festival Político, Social y de los Derechos Humanos Cine Otro (Valparaíso, Chile), the Muestra de Documental Etnográfico de Sobrarbe 7

See “Muestra de Documental Antropológico y Social” at http://www.inapl.gov.ar

Ethnographic and Indigenous Film Festivals in Latin America

79

Espiello (Spain), the Festival Internacional de Puebla (Mexico) and the Muestra de Documental Peruano, DocuPeru (Lima, Perú).8

Indigenous Film Festivals in Latin America Most Latin American countries host indigenous festivals, sometimes specialising in particular ethnic groups. We can find a growing number of indigenous film festivals, such as the Festival de Cine de los Pueblos Indígenas del Chaco (Argentina) and the Muestra de Cine y Video Indígena en Colombia Daupará (Colombia), among other events in Mexico, Chile, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay, and the Festival Internacional de Cine y Video de los Pueblos Indígenas (International Film and Video Festival of Indigenous Peoples), held annually in different Latin American countries. These specialised festivals run independently but often in collaboration with anthropology schools, local museums, national and international cultural institutions and organisations, and also with other documentary film festivals. Indigenous festivals are devoted to the work of native media producers, and also include films by non-indigenous filmmakers dealing with indigenous issues, and thus they constitute a common place for screening ethnographic films. For example, the annual Muestra de Cine + Video Indígena de Santiago in Chile, hosted by the Cineteca Nacional, often shows classic ethnographic material from the archives of the Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino (Chilean Pre-Columbian Art Museum).9 Indigenous festivals screen auto-ethnographic films related to cultural practices, video-letters, and a smaller number of fiction films and animation (Córdova 2011). Their main focus, however, is often to exhibit political cinema which, in tune with the main role of indigenous media in the region, aims to make visible issues which are pressing for indigenous communities.10 As Ginsburg has pointed out (1991 and 2002), indigenous 8

For example, the 2013 edition of DocuPeru included a section based on DocAnt, screening a retrospective of Argentinian ethnographic films curated for the 2012 edition, which included classic works by Jorge Prelorán, plus other more recent works. This sidebar was added to a programme that combined a selection of contemporary avant-garde films from Peru and the rest of Latin America, social documentary and ethnographic films. See http://www.muestradocumentalperuano.wordpress.com 9 The museum has been very active in showcasing its materials, preparing various ethnographic exhibitions over the last two decades (Mercado 2010). 10 Regarding the political importance of these events, see also Iván San Jinés’ interview with Hernán Scandizzo, “Iván Sanjinés y el culto a la comunicación

80

Chapter 2

communities have tended to use audiovisual technologies for cultural affirmation, as self-representation practices can subvert and defy the small number of external images of indigenous peoples–usually negative–which are widely disseminated. Thus, even when indigenous festivals include ethnographic productions, and when indigenous productions participate in ethnographic film festivals,11 they can be distinguished by their attempt to overcome the still dominant outside gaze of ethnographic productions (Salazar and Córdova 2008). The tension with ethnographic local film production, often still constructed under classic ethnographic conventions that reinforce the divide between “one” and “other”,12 is partially overcome by the space for debate provided by indigenous film festivals. Screenings take place in a context that promotes discussion between active audiences and filmmakers, often stimulating a reflective approach to the films. This is especially the case with the main indigenous film festival in the region, the Festival Internacional de Cine y Video de los Pueblos Indígenas, which is held annually in different Latin American countries, including Mexico, Brasil, Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, Guatemala, Chile, Colombia and Argentina (see Fig. 2–1). Created in 1985, prior to the ethnographic film festivals in the region, the festival is organised by the Consejo Latinoamericano de Cine y Video de Pueblos Indígenas (CLACPI, Latin American Council for Indigenous Peoples’ Film and Communication), a strong community of academics, filmmakers and activists. The festival promotes indigenous media and coordinates the circulation of indigenous film and video, creating an archive of indigenous production. It was created by a group of Latin American anthropologists and filmmakers, who then transferred its organisation to indigenous leaders (Bermúdez 2013), and it promotes the participation of both indigenous and non-indigenous filmmakers and activists. The festival has shown an outstanding stability in comparison to other events in the region, and is an important site of social encounter and cultural exchange. The film programme runs alongside workshops, forums and seminars related to specific regional and national issues, and thus the festival has become an important node for the transmission of knowledge, not only about film audiovisual indígena” Indymedia Argentina Centro de Medios Independientes, 18th July 2008. http://www.argentina.indymedia.org 11 Latin American native productions have participated in important ethnographic or ethnographic-interest film festivals, such as the Margaret Mead Film Festival and the recently discontinued National Geographic All Roads Film Festival. 12 For an extensive analysis of ethnographic conventions in Latin American documentary film, see Carreño (2005).

Ethnographic and Indigenous Film Festivals in Latin America

81

practices but also on the living conditions of different indigenous peoples of the region. Despite CLACPI’s aim of contributing to the particular political and cultural processes of each host country, it manages to overcome the limitations of national boundaries, precisely because it promotes the autonomy of indigenous peoples beyond the limits imposed by nation states.

Fig. 2–2. Awards ceremnony at the XI International Film and Video Festival of Indigenous Peoples, 2012. The CLACPI festival has taken place in different Latin American countries since its inception in 1985. The 2012 edition took place in Bogotá, Colombia. Photo: courtesy of CLACPI festival.

Indigenous film festivals are linked to a broader and expanding native film festival circuit, which includes more than 75 specialised festivals around the world (Córdova 2012). Latin American indigenous festivals have helped establish networks between local filmmakers and the international circuit, and regional productions have been widely screened around the world, including well-established “nodes” such as the ImagineNATIVE Media Arts Festival in Toronto, the First Peoples’ Festival in Montreal, the MƗori Film Festival in New Zealand, and the Smithsonian’s Native American Film and Video Festival in New York. Similarly to mainstream film festivals, these events provide a valuable

82

Chapter 2

networking opportunity and promote practices embedding new forms of indigenous solidarity and community formation (see Dowell 2006).

Ethnographic and Indigenous Films in the Latin American Film Festival Network Besides the specialised ethnographic and indigenous film festivals, some events on the mainstream Latin American festival circuit also include ethnographic and indigenous films in their programmes. As with the first European events (Piault 2007, 347), the presence of these films is more common at festivals with clear political and social aims, such as documentary festivals willing to support the tradition of Latin American social documentary films. In addition, films that fit mainstream festivals’ expectations and standards–those that are aesthetically appealing, according to festivals’ artistic criteria–can be selected for the programme of non-specialised events, and ethnographic films portraying “other” cultural traditions tend to be included in heritage and cultural preservation sidebars of documentary film festivals in the region. The Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia in Michoacán, Mexico, for instance, has regularly screened ethnographic and native films, and even organised a panel on indigenous media in 2004.13 Similarly, the Contra El Silencio Todas las Voces (Against The Silence All the Voices) festival in Mexico City, an international event devoted to social and political cinema, includes a sidebar for indigenous film in its programme, and the Geografías Suaves/Cine Video Sociedad (Smooth Geographies/ Cinema Video Society) festival in Mérida and Oaxaca, aimed at more experimental filmmaking, has also included films with anthropological interest in its programme. As mentioned above, DocsDF, which promotes contemporary documentary cinema from Mexico and Latin America, has included a special sidebar in conjunction with the Jornadas de Antropología Visual “dedicated to the best of world ethnographic cinema”, understanding “ethnographic” as “documentary in a pure state”.14 In Chile, the Arica Nativa Festival of Rural Cinema has a strong indigenous component. It shows local and global native productions, and includes a specific competitive sidebar for short native films (Jallalla Cine Indígena). Other small festivals often include indigenous and ethnographic productions, such as the Cine Otro (Other Cinema) festival, focused on 13

Formas y destinos de los medios de comunicación indígenas. See: http://moreliafilmfest.com/ 14 See Jornadas de Antropología Visual at http://www.antropologiavisual.com.mx

Ethnographic and Indigenous Film Festivals in Latin America

83

social and political documentaries that make visible underrepresented social groups, including indigenous peoples.15 The DIVA International Film Festival of Valparaíso, whose curatorial line focuses on (cultural, social and sexual) “diversity”, has included indigenous films out of competition. Larger festivals in the country have also begun to include ethnographic and indigenous films in their sidebars. For example, the Lebu International Film Festival (FECIL) has a special sidebar for native films (Pueblos Originarios), and the Valdivia Film Festival (FICValdivia) has included indigenous cinema in the Disidencias (Dissents) section, as well as having a First Nations (Primeras Naciones) focus in 2015. The International Documentary Film Festival of Santiago (FIDOCS) also often shows films of anthropological interest. In 2013, for example, it screened The Human Zoo: The Story of Calafate by Chilean filmmaker Hans Mulchi, which reconstructs the story of Fueguino indigenous peoples exhibited in European zoos during the 19th century, and the film won this edition’s Audience Award. In Argentina, the Festival Internacional de Cine de Derechos Humanos (International Human Rights Film Festival) hosts a special programme on First Peoples and Nations (Programa Pueblos Originarios). The Festival de Cine Independiente de Buenos Aires (BAFICI, Buenos Aires Independent Film Festival) also includes some works with indigenous or ethnographic subjects, particularly in the Imágenes Paganas (Pagan Images) and Human Rights sections, and have included panel discussions about Visual Anthropology in the past (2014). As with other mainstream and art-oriented film festivals like FICValdivia and FIDOCS (Chile) and É Tudo Verdade (Brazil), the films selected for these festivals are often made by professional filmmakers. Only exceptionally are films produced by anthropologists or non-professional indigenous filmmakers, for example The Hyperwomen (As hiper mulheres, Itão Kuêgü, 2011) shown at BAFICI in 2012, which was made by an indigenous organisation (Associação Indigena dos Kuikuro do Alto Xingu, AIKAX) and directed by Carlos Fausto (an anthropologist linked to the Brazilian NGO Video nas Aldeias), Leo Sette and Takumã Kuikuro, a Kuikuro filmmaker of the 15

Note that the festival is organised by CineForum, which also arranges the showcase for the Festival de Cine Indígena (Festival of Indigenous Cinema) in Valparaíso, Chile. The festival seems partially disconnected from other indigenous film festivals, arguably because it is directed by a non-indigenous filmmaker. The director Nelson Cabrera claims that “there is a lack of connection and sometimes the Indigenous film festivals’ organisers are very ‘purist’ and they don’t consider us the mestizos, despite my quechua [native] origins”. Interview with Mario Casasu, El Clarín, 15 January 2012. In Spanish in the original, translated by the author.

84

Chapter 2

Alto Xingu region. Interestingly, however, when asked about the film, Fausto tried to dismiss its categorisation as “ethnographic”. He described the project as an attempt to create a film as “little ethnographic and hypercontextualized” as possible,16 presumably in order to engage with festival audiences and appeal to national and international circuits beyond academic circles.

Current Challenges for Ethnographic and Indigenous Film Circulation We have seen that the multiple institutional exchanges and routes of circulation of ethnographic and indigenous films in Latin America show their strategic categorisation under similar labelling at films festivals. These markers have enabled the circulation of anthropological films in diverse academic and activist spaces; however, they still have marginal participation in other festival circuits, which demonstrates their limitations in reaching different contexts of reception. In the case of indigenous film festivals, the “indigenous” label given to heterogeneous productions has helped form a corpus of indigenous-related cinema, spreading not only the corpus of audiovisual works but also the political and cultural claims of native peoples. However, most indigenous film productions have been restricted to specialised festivals, mainly because their often “imperfect” aesthetic does not fulfil the parameters of mainstream film festivals (Salazar and Córdova 2008), at which indigenous filmmakers’ participation is rather limited. The historically predominant communitarian film practices of Latin American indigenous filmmakers sometimes conflict with the logics of film festivals. Some films are only meant to be circulated within the communities involved, and do not aim to please broader audiences (Córdova 2011; Dowell 2006). Indigenous communities do not necessarily agree with the political economies of mainstream film festivals, linked to the commodification of films and filmmakers according to a logic based on the accumulation of individual prestige (“the author”).17 Moreover, 16

Source: “Noticias Bafici” http://www.festivales.buenosaires.gob.ar “There is that myth that you are making a life with this, and even when people don’t earn very much, they build some prestige by participating in different festivals, there you can get better incomes and see how to distribute that. For example, if there is a festival where they ask you who is the film director, many times we have had to say ‘this is a collective creation, there is no director, “x” association did it and produced it as “directors”’, and that for some festivals is unacceptable or they just can’t get their head around it.” Córdova in Bajas (2005). 17

Ethnographic and Indigenous Film Festivals in Latin America

85

filmmakers cannot always meet festivals’ practical requirements, such as covering travel expenses, participation fees or subtitling of the films. Latin American indigenous media-makers usually work in precarious conditions, where the economic and political constraints are extremely pressing, and the circulation and visibility of indigenous film is still expanding.18 As for ethnographic films, many of them struggle to achieve visibility, while ethnographic film festivals often have a difficult time accessing broader audiences. The terms “anthropological” and “social” tend to be used broadly in regional festivals to designate these films, and thus they have helped the relatively small number of local ethnographic films reach a limited audience. However, specialised ethnographic film festivals are still often restricted to academic contexts, and the works of anthropologist filmmakers (exceptions apart) are somewhat marginalised from the broader film festival circuit. Similarly to other regions, ethnographic filmmaking in Latin America holds an unstable, conflictive, but also creative position between the worlds of academia and cinema (as it does within the academic world), and thus ethnographic films do not always match the expectations of mainstream film festivals. The aims of ethnographic filmmaking usually clash with the festival logics mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, where artistic values and personal authorship are essential for festival circulation. Ethnographic filmmakers in the region could probably benefit from exchanges with other filmmakers and audiences at mainstream film festivals, in order to expand and renew the field. Film festivals aim to show an alternative to massive-oriented industrial cinema, and they construct cinephile audiences that learn to watch and interpret diverse, “difficult” films. Increasing the connection with these festivals could expand conventional boundaries, thus not only facilitating the circulation of ethnographic films but also promoting the cultural diversity that the construction of any kind of anthropological knowledge is concerned with.

In Spanish in the original, translation by the author. 18 The specific conditions of production of Latin American indigenous peoples differ from other regions, such as North America. There, artistic personal authorship seems to have a different place, and the films shown at native film festivals have then been shown and awarded at prestigious international film festivals, such as Cannes, Sundance and Berlin (Dowell 2006).

86

Chapter 2

Works Cited Bajas, María P. 2005. “Una mirada al Video Indígena Latinoamericano. Entrevista a Amalia Cordova.” Revista Chilena de Antropología Visual 5. Accessed June 15, 2016. http://www.antropologiavisual.cl/amalia_cordova.htm —. 2008. “La Cámara en Manos del Otro. El Estereotipo en el Video Indígena Mapuche.” Revista Chilena de Antropología Visual 12:70– 102. Bermúdez, Beatriz. 2013. “CLACPI: Una historia que está pronta a cumplir 30 años de vida.” Revista Chilena de Antropología Visual 21(1):20–31. Carreño, Gastón. 2005. “Pueblos Indígenas y su Representación en el Género Documental: Una mirada al caso Aymara y Mapuche.” Revista Austral de Ciencias Sociales 9:85–94. CLACPI. 2013. “Reseña de Festivales de Cine y Video de los Pueblos Indígenas organizados y coordinados por CLACPI.” Accessed June 15, 2016. http://www.clacpi.org Córdova, Amalia. 2011. “Estéticas Enraizadas: Aproximaciones al Video Indígena en América Latina.” Comunicación y Medios 24:81–107. —. 2012. “Towards an Indigenous Film Festival Circuit.” In Film Festival Yearbook 4: Film Festivals and Activism, edited by Dina Iordanova and Leshu Torchin, 63–80. St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies. Córdova, Amalia, and Gabriela Zambrano. 2004. “Mapping Mexican Media: Indigenous and Community Video and Radio.” Native Networks. Close Ups. Film and Video Center (FVC) of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). Accessed June 15, 2016. http://nmai.si.edu/explore/film-media/native-media-topics/mappingmexican-media Cuevas, Valeria. 2015. “Antropología Audiovisual en la Ciudad de México: La Experiencia de Cinco Iniciativas Académicas.” Revista Chilena de Antropología Visual 25:88–103. De Valck, Marijke. 2007. Film Festivals: From European Geopolitics to Global Cinephilia. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Dowell, Kristin. 2006. “Indigenous Media Gone Global: Strengthening Indigenous Identity On and Off-screen at the First Nations/First Features Film Showcase.” American Anthropologist 108(2):376–384. Elsaesser, Thomas. 2005. European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Ginsburg, Faye. 2002. “Mediating Culture: Indigenous Media, Ethnographic Film and the Production of Identity.” In The

Ethnographic and Indigenous Film Festivals in Latin America

87

Anthropology of Media: A Reader, edited by Kelly Askew, and Richard Wilk, 210–235. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Himpele, Jeffrey. 1996. “Film Distribution as Media: Mapping Difference in the Bolivian Cinemascape.” Visual Anthropology Review 12(1):47–66. Iordanova, Dina, David Martin-Jones, and Belén Vidal, eds. 2010. Cinema at the Periphery. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Iordanova, Dina, and Leshu Torchin, eds. 2012. Film Festival Yearbook 4: Film Festivals and Activism. St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies. Mercado, Claudio. 2010. “Cruzando el Tiempo: Imágenes y sonidos del Archivo Audiovisual del Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino.” In Archivo, Prospectos de Arte, edited by Macarena García Moggia, 125– 138. Santiago de Chile: Publicaciones Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino. Mouesca, Jacqueline. 1987. “Sergio Bravo: Pionero del Cine Documental Chileno.” Araucaria de Chile 37. Accessed June 15, 2016. http://www.cinechile.cl Piault, Colette. 2007. “Festivals, Conferences, Seminars and Networks in Visual Anthropology in Europe.” In Memories of the Origins of Ethnographic Film, edited by Beate Engelbrecht, 343–361. Oxford: Peter Lang. Salazar, Juan. 2002. “Activismo indígena en América Latina: estrategias para una construcción cultural de las tecnologías de información y comunicación.” Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies 8(2):61–79. Salazar, Juan, and Amalia Córdova. 2008. “Imperfect Media and the Poetics of Indigenous Video in Latin America.” In Global Indigenous Media: Cultures, Practices and Politics, edited by Pamela Wilson and Michelle Stewart, 39–57. Durham: Duke. Shohat, Ella, and Robert Stam. 2002. Multiculturalismo cine y medios de comunicación. Barcelona: Paidós. Stringer, Julian. 2001. “Global Cities and International Film Festival Economy.” In Cinema and the City: Film and Urban Societies in a Global Context, edited by. Mark Shiel, and Tony Fitzmaurice, 134– 144. Oxford: Blackwell. Wilson, Pamela and Michelle Stewart, eds. 2008. Global Indigenous Media: Cultures, Poetics, and Politics. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

CHAPTER 3 VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE USSR AND POST-SOVIET RUSSIA: A HISTORY OF FESTIVAL PRACTICES1 VICTORIA VASILEVA (CHISTYAKOVA) AND EKATERINA TRUSHKINA

This chapter explores the history of Visual Anthropology film festivals in the USSR 2 and post-Soviet Russia. 3 It discusses how the term “Visual 1

The research is made with support of the Russian Foundation for the Humanities (RGNF), research project 15-01-00324(a). 2 The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Soyuz Sovietskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik), abbreviated to USSR or shortened to the Soviet Union, was a state that existed between 1922 and 1991. A union of multiple subnational Soviet republics, its government and economy were highly centralised. The Soviet Union was a single-party state, governed by the Communist Party with Moscow as its capital. Constitutionally, the USSR was a federation of constituent Union Republics, which were either unitary states, such as Ukraine or Belarus (Soviet Socialist Republics) or federal states, such as Russia or Transcaucasia (Soviet Federative Socialist Republics), all four being the founding republics who signed the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR in December 1922. In 1924, during the national delimitation in Central Asia, the Uzbek and Turkmen SSRs were formed. In 1929, the Tajik SSR was split off from the Uzbek SSR. With the constitution of 1936, the Transcaucasian SFSR was dissolved, resulting in its constituent Armenian, Georgian and Azerbaijan SSRs being elevated to Union Republics, while the Kazakh and Kirghiz SSRs were split off from Russian SFSR, resulting in the same status. In August 1940 the Moldavian SSR was formed from parts of the Ukrainian SSR and Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. The Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian SSRs were also admitted into the union. The Karelo-Finnish SSR was split off from Russia as a Union Republic in March 1940, and was reabsorbed in 1956. Between July 1956 and September 1991 there were 15 union republics. 3 The post-Soviet Russia (the Russian Federation, or Russia) in its borders is the former Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), which was one of

90

Chapter 3

Anthropology” entered Soviet academic use at the end of the 1980s, and how this term corresponded with the earlier experiences of ethnographic films and film footage screenings. The chapter focuses on the Folklore on the Screen festival, held for the first time in 1977 at the All-Union House of Composers (Vsesoyuzny Dom Kompozitorov) in Moscow, and the first International Festival of Visual Anthropology organised in 1987 in Pärnu (at that time in Soviet Estonia). The hypothesis is that the Soviet festival movement arose principally within the practice of musical folklore recording and reproduction. This movement is largely rooted in the activities of folklorists and ethnomusicologists who aimed at the audio-visual representation of musical folklore phenomena. The research presented in this chapter is based on the analysis and description of a range of various archival sources, including interviews, personal memoirs, official documents (e.g. informational letters and bulletins of the Union of Composers of the USSR4), research papers of the Folklore Commission, periodicals, posters, photographs and other materials. The research consists of the reconstruction of the complicated, non-linear and discontinuous history of the festival movement, divided into the late Soviet and post-Soviet periods.

History of the All-Union Commission for Music Folk Art of the Union of Composers of the USSR (the Folklore Commission): 1972-1992 The so-called Khrushchev “Thaw” (Khrushchovskaya “Ottepel”)5 political period that took place between the mid-1950s and mid-1960s in the Soviet Union allowed a degree of freedom of expression in the media, arts, and 15 republics of the USSR from 1922 to 1991. It is treated as the legal continuator state and for most purposes the heir to the USSR. 4 The Union of Composers of the USSR was founded in 1932 as a professional organisation of composers in the Soviet Union. Since 1991 it has existed as the Union of Composers of Russian Federation. 5 The Khrushchev “Thaw” is the term introduced by Russian/Soviet writer Illya Ehrenburg (1891-1967), who after the death of Stalin published the short novel The Thaw (Ɉɬɬɟɩɟɥɶ, 1954). Later on, the term became an unofficial name for the period in the history of the USSR from 1953 to 1964, and was connected with Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971), who held the post of First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1953-1964). During this period partial a liberalisation of political life and a slight weakening of the totalitarian regime occurred.

Visual Anthropology in the USSR and Post-Soviet Russia

91

culture that resulted in, among other things, a novel appeal to a previously neglected ethnic past. The 1960s were marked by the rise of what in Russia was called the “folklore movement” or the “folkloric wave”, when music, dance and theatre groups whose repertoires were based on living folklore began to form. The folkloric wave was likely a social phenomenon involving a certain degree of protest, similar to the subcultures of rock musicians and singer-songwriters (Andreyeva 2013). At the same time, academic researchers took a renewed interest in the concept of “ethnos”, which had been expelled from the Soviet departments of humanities and social sciences in the 1920s. 6 Soviet folklore studies from the 1960s included a significant number of expeditions to study folklore, academic papers and collections of folk recordings, as well as new educational programmes and the formation of departments of choir directors. In Moscow in 1961 the Union of Composers of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR)7 organised a Folklore Commission, which aimed to consolidate the specialised work and to coordinate their activities in collecting, studying and preserving living folklore throughout the RSFSR. In 1964 the Commission organised the first ever ethnographic concert in Moscow, having gathered living folk music performers from different regions of the RSFSR. The concert was such a great success that a decision was made to organise similar programmes regularly. This practice was continued by the All-Union Commission for Musical Folk Art created in 1972, which began to hold folk music concerts at the AllUnion level.

6

The first Russian scholars to employ the term “ethnos” were Nikolay Mogilyansky (1871-1933) and with subsequent impact Sergei Shirokogorov (18871939), a specialist in traditional societies in Siberia and the Russian Far East. Both scholars emigrated from Russia in the 1920s and were largely neglected in the Soviet Union. In 1929 Shirokogorov’s work on the ethnos was declared “idealistic” and was not discussed by scholars for decades. Until the middle of the 1950s the scholars were not permitted to develop the theories of ethnos and ethnicity. These issues were the prerogative of ideologists and were considered almost only within the so-called “Russian Marxist theory of the nation”. The term “ethnos” reappeared in the late 1950s-1960s, when Yulian Bromley (1921-1990), Lev Gumilev (1912-1992) and some other scholars incorporated it into academic use to discuss ethnic issues in the Soviet Union in new ways. 7 The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) was one of fifteen republics of the USSR from 1922 to 1991. After the USSR collapsed in 1991 it was renamed the Russian Federation (Russia).

92

Chapter 3

Fig. 3–1. Informational Letter of the Union of Composers of the USSR, 1976, No. 6-7. (ɂɧɮɨɪɦɚɰɢɨɧɧɨɟ ɩɢɫɶɦɨ ɋɨɸɡɚ ɤɨɦɩɨɡɢɬɨɪɨɜ ɋɋɋɊ). The document contains the Folklore Commission’s regular progress report, including ethnographic and folkloric film screenings review. Image: Private archive of Eduard Alekseyev.

The concert of 1964 revealed a new type of music unfamiliar to the general public and strikingly different from the so-called academic folk choirs and state folk music companies of the republics of the USSR, whose repertoire, costumes and manner of singing primarily conveyed the official ideology. The official cultural policy followed Stalin’s formula, according to which “the culture of people of the USSR must be national in

Visual Anthropology in the USSR and Post-Soviet Russia

93

form and socialist in content”. In practice this meant that the official (“academic”) way of representing folk art had to completely neutralise the real cultural content of existing ethno-national groups. This “academic” pseudo-folklore, transmitted repeatedly by the central television and radio, was a sort of simulacrum, or rather a sign, the referent of which was not any real ethnic community, but “the policy of the Communist party”.8 The appearance in the public space of the pieces of non-domesticized, “savage” folklore, beyond the canons of “socialist culture”, could threaten the rise of nationalism, or even pan-nationalism (as in the case of the Turkic or Finno-Ugric peoples). Thus, there was a hidden contradiction between how the phenomenon of folklore was treated by the official ideology and how it was interpreted by scholars, and those scholars who were involved, for instance, in folkloric or ethnographic filmmaking could not screen their films either on television or in cinemas. In 1972 the Secretariat of the Board of the Union of Composers of the USSR decided to start the All-Union Commission for Musical Folk Art (shortened to the Folklore Commission) after a group formed by leading musicologists and folklorists from Moscow, Leningrad and the Soviet republics put forward the idea. The Commission was chaired by Tikhon Khrennikov,9 and was de facto guided from 1972 until 1991 by one of the deputy chairmen Eduard Alekseyev. 10 The group was approved by the Secretariat of the Board of the Union of Composers as a Commission Bureau. The establishment of the Commission was a response to the great surge in public and scholarly interest in musical folk art that characterized the period. As ethnomusicologist and filmmaker Zinaida Mozheyko 11 commented, the creation of the Folklore Commission was 8

According to this official point of view, the nationalities question in the USSR was resolved completely and there were no reasons for contradictions in the inter-ethnic relations. 9 Tikhon Khrennikov (1913-2007), Soviet/Russian composer, First Secretary of the Union of composers of the USSR from 1948 to 1991, pedagogue and public person. His name gave a real support to the Folklore Commission and blocked all possible aggressions (first of all, from official ideology) against the Commission’s activities. 10 Eduard Alekseyev (born in 1937), Soviet/Russian ethnomusicologist and folklorist, permanent leader and de facto chairman of the Folklore Commission (1972-1991), bright scholar and talented promoter of the Commission’s meetings throughout the USSR. Later on he created the personal website with memoirs, interviews, books and other materials connected with the issues of Soviet ethnomusicology, as well as letters and documents related to the Commission’s activity: eduard.alekseyev.org. 11 Zinaida Mozheyko (1933-2014), Soviet/Belarusian ethnomusicologist and filmmaker, active participant in the Commission’s meetings (especially film screenings).

94

Chapter 3

caused by a discrepancy between the immeasurable richness of the musical folklore of the USSR and the research conditions of the field in the republics and regions. Although there were some institutions engaged in folklore studies, none of them had been developing ethnomusicology and musical folklore studies as a primary aim.12 The Folklore Commission had been working within the Union of Composers on a pro bono basis, and its purpose was to coordinate, integrate and guide research in the field of musical folklore throughout the USSR. As Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov explained in an interview dated July 16, 2015, the Folklore Commission was the form of institutionalisation of research activity, which could not be part of the academic mainstream presented by the Soviet academic and ideological establishment.13 There were plenary meetings, international conferences and young folklorists’ seminars, as well as similar events held by the regional commissions created in the republics. Sessions reporting on the activities of research expeditions and ethnographic concerts were held regularly. The Commission provided strong support for the study of musical folklore throughout the country, helped to organise expeditions and fieldwork in many ways, and tested the boundaries of the study of musical folklore by involving a wider range of experts: historians (Victor Gusev14), ethnolinguists (Nikita Tolstoy,15 Serafima Nikitina16), filmmakers (Andris SlapiƼš17) and the ethnographic film historian KĊstutis A. Janulaitis.18 In 12

Eduard Alekseyev interviewed some former members of the Folklore Commission and their colleagues, including Zinaida Mozheyko, in 2012. This interview is on the personal website of Eduard Alekseyev: http://eduard.alekseyev.org/document4.html 13 Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov (born in 1929), Soviet/Russian philologist and anthropologist, specialist in Slavic, Baltic, and Indo-European linguistics, mythology and folklore. Participant in the Folklore Commission meetings. 14 Victor Gusev (1919-2002), Soviet/Russian historian, specialist in folklore and literature. 15 Nikita Tolstoy (1923-1996), Soviet/Russian philologist, specialist in Slavic languages and mythology. 16 Serafima Nikitina (born 1938), Soviet/Russian linguist, specialist in folklore, expert in Old Believers’ history and culture. 17 Andris SlapiƼš (1949-1991), Soviet/Latvian cameraman and documentary filmmaker. Active participant in the Folklore Commission festivals and other meetings. He was shot by snipers on 21 January 1991, while filming a Soviet coup in Riga. Became a symbol of Latvia’s struggle for independence. 18 KĊstutis A. Janulaitis (1934-1989), Soviet/Lithuanian film historian, participant in the Commission’s meetings. The only scholar outside the Folklore Commission who looked carefully for ethnographic films throughout the USSR for cataloguing and screenings.

Visual Anthropology in the USSR and Post-Soviet Russia

95

the estimation of many experts, from the moment of its foundation right up until the beginning of the 1990s, there was no other organisation as effective in the field of music matters as the Folklore Commission.19

Folklore on the Screen Film Festival Held by the All-Union Commission for Musical Folk Art of the Union of Composers of the USSR (the Folklore Commission): 1977–the End of 1980s The wide promotion of Soviet music inside and outside the country was one of the most important goals of the Union of Composers of the USSR. To that end the All-Union Bureau of Promotion of the Soviet Music of the Union of Composers of the USSR was established in 1969. The Bureau introduced a set of forms and methods of Soviet music promotion, such as concerts, festivals, awards, conferences, exhibitions, books and printed music, youth organisations, public meetings with composers and musicians, etc. This cultural policy aimed to make musical folklore from the diverse nationalities20 and ethnic groups of the USSR broadly accessible. In 1978 in Kutaisi (in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic at that time, now the Republic of Georgia), for example, the Folklore Commission organised the eighth meeting of a seminar called “Tasks and Methods for Promoting Musical Folklore”, to explore the framework within which folk concerts and ethnographic film screenings were organised.21 At the same time, scholars were trying to solve the problem of how folklore could be documented. Musical folklore, on the one hand, and folklore studies, on the other, were divided between oral and written types of culture. Despite significant advances in the technical tools of sound recording, these tools served only as an intermediary between the musical source and its transcription. Musicological methods, such as written 19

General opinion of the former members of the Folklore Commission and their colleagues, interviewed by Eduard Alekseyev. The interview was published on the personal website of Eduard Alekseyev: http://eduard.alekseyev.org/document4.html 20 In the USSR “nationality” was understood “ethnically”, i.e. there were a number of nationalities that had national-state entities (republics, regions, etc.) within the country. Thus, the citizens of the USSR indicated diverse “nationalities” on identity cards. 21 These activities of the Folklore Commission were described in detail in the Union of Composers’ regular five-year progress report: Mezhdu s’ezdami. 19741979. Sojuz kompozitorov SSSR / Moscow: Sovietskij kompozitor, 1979, 55.

96

Chapter 3

documentation, even though they allowed subsequent reproduction by folk music teams, did not make possible the study of living material, with its numerous contextual and cultural links, and its musical, acoustic and vocal qualities (Alekseyev 1986). Therefore, scholars began to reproduce living folk musical forms by means of ethnographic concerts and film screenings. From the mid-1970s films and screenings of field materials were regularly organised in Moscow at the Folklore Commission sessions. The coordinator of these sessions was folklorist and ethnographer Elena Novik, 22 who aimed to screen not only recent films from the Soviet republics and regions, but also archival audiovisual materials. During one such session in 1975, the film Russian Folk Theatre (Ɋɭɫɫɤɢɣ ɧɚɪɨɞɧɵɣ ɬɟɚɬɪ, Leonid Kupershmidt,23 1975, USSR) based on living folklore was screened. It was of those rare Soviet documentaries that fixed the old-time circle dances, traditional wedding rituals and folk pageants of different regions of the USSR (Ukraine, Georgia, Siberia, and others). The film combined both reconstructed episodes and fragments of rituals that still were being practiced in the villages. There were also film screenings during the other meetings of the Commission, for instance, within the framework of the Composer and Folklore concert, which was held at the All-Union House of Composers in Moscow on March 28-29, 1975, and at the meeting at the Moscow Youth Musical Club, which thematically adjoined the concert. The films made with the participation of leading folklorists were particularly successful, and it was widely lamented that television and cinemas had not screened these films. Among these films there were Timonya (Ɍɢɦɨɧɹ, V. Golovanov, T. Bogdanova, supervised by Marlen Khutsiev, 1969, USSR), made with the help of folklorist and choir director Anna Rudneva (19031983), and Polesye Carols (ɉɨɥɟɫɫɤɢɟ ɤɨɥɹɞɤɢ, 1972, Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, now the Republic of Belarus), made by Zinaida Mozheyko. As Elena Novik said in an interview dated on February 2, 2012, the ethnographic films were a certain danger for official ideology, as they 22

Elena Novik (1941-2014), Soviet/Russian philologist and folklorist. She belonged to the Moscow-Leningrad (since 1991 Saint-Petersburg) circle of structuralist-folklorists. Specialist in the archaic traditions of the people of Siberia, author of the concept of shamanic ceremony as folkloric fact. Follower of Eleazar Meletinsky (1918-2005), one of the major figures of Soviet/Russian academia in the field of folklore, literature, philology and the history and theory of narrative. Elena Novik was a key personality in the research group “Folklore on the Screen” organised within the Folklore Commission, and one of those scholars who in the 1970s and the 1980s developed theoretical approaches to shamanism free of ideological clichés. 23 Leonid Kupershmidt (born 1937), Soviet/Russian filmmaker.

Visual Anthropology in the USSR and Post-Soviet Russia

97

contained in many respects anti-Soviet aesthetics. That is why the Soviet mass media regarded them with suspicion. Such films, made not only by ethnomusicologists, but also by ethnographers who worked, for example, at the USSR Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Ethnography, had in fact a very small chance of screening to a wide audience. What is more, professional filmmakers, film historians, and film critics were not engaged in ethnographic film (except KĊstutis A. Janulaitis, who tried to reconstruct the history of ethnographic filmmaking in the USSR and attened the Folklore Commission’s meetings) and treated the notion of ethnographic film like something rather similar to Sergei Parajanov’s style. Folklorist and ethnomusicologist Vladimir Goshovskij 24 argued that filmmaking as such was not yet mature enough to represent folklore on the screen. The so-called “ethnographic film”, as he said, often seemed to be neither a feature film nor a documentary, but rather bad stylization, weak both ethnographically and musically. According to proponents of this line of argument, filmmakers would have to continue trying to find novel ways to express folk art vividly and truthfully. In this regard, the experience of composers who dealt with folklore should be very useful for them.25 In 1977 a proven track record of successful screenings resulted in the decision to start the Folklore on the Screen research group within the Folklore Commission, and to organise a conference and film festival under the same name.26 Elena Novik became a coordinator of this new group. The first festival was held between February 28 and March 4, 1977, at the All-Union House of Composers in Moscow. The programme included thirty films devoted to folk musical instruments, choreography, folk theatre, genres and styles of song culture, and showed a variety of feature films, television films, documentaries, newsreels, revue films and concert films. Among the participants were musicologists, ethnologists, journalists, folklorists, as well as professional film directors. The film The Winds of the Milky Way (Linnuteetuuled/ȼɟɬɪɵ ɦɥɟɱɧɨɝɨ ɩɭɬɢ, 1977) by the Estonian ethnologist, writer and filmmaker

24

Vladimir Goshovskij (1922-1996), Soviet/Ukrainian folklorist and ethnomusicologist, specialist in folk music of the Carpathian area, founder of the Soviet cybernetic ethnomusicology, one of the active members of the Folklore Commission. 25 The Folklore Commission’s regular progress report: ɂɧɮɨɪɦɚɰɢɨɧɧɨɟ ɩɢɫɶɦɨ ɋɨɸɡɚ ɤɨɦɩɨɡɢɬɨɪɨɜ ɋɋɋɊ, 1976, 6-7. Republished on the personal website of Eduard Alekseyev: http://eduard.alekseyev.org/document3.html 26 The Folklore Commission’s regular progress report: Informatsionnoje pis’mo Sojuza kompozitorov SSSR, 1977, 6-7:36.

98

Chapter 3

Lennart-Georg Meri27 made one of the greatest impressions at the festival. The film was devoted to the kinship, linguistic and cultural relationships of the Finno-Ugric peoples, analysed by Meri on the basis of his own original theory, which was inconsistent with the official Soviet version of the history of these ethnic groups. The film was one of the first international projects organised by Estonian cinematographers, with the help of television stations of Hungary and Finland. It captures many aspects of the daily lives of the Uralic (Finno-Ugric and Samoyed) peoples which have their roots in ancient traditions and systems of belief. Parallels in customs of agriculture, fishing and housing are recognizable among these groups despite the thousands of years which many of them have lived apart in very different physical and social environments (Hoppál 2003, 206). It was awarded with a silver medal at the New York International Film Festival in 1979. In Finland the film was used at schools as visual educational resource. The film was forbidden in the territory of the Soviet Union for political reasons.28 The second edition of the festival was held in Moscow between March 31 and April 2, 1979, and screened twenty films from the USSR, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. 29 One of the guests of the festival was the American 27 Lennart-Georg Meri (1929-2006), Estonian public official (from 1992 to 2001 President of Estonia), filmmaker, ethnographer and writer. He published a number of books based on his expeditions to Siberia, the Soviet Far East and the Arctic. Meri’s books have been translated into about a dozen languages. Meri’s ethnographic films in the 1970s and 1980s won international renown. He was not permitted to go out of the USSR until the late 1970s. When the Soviet authorities finally gave him permission to travel abroad, Meri began to establish cultural and academic links with western countries (first of all, with Finland) and to do all he could to remind the free world of the existence of Estonia. In particular, he founded the non-governmental Estonian Institute (Eesti Instituut) in 1988 to promote cultural contacts with the West. Meri was a leader of the movement to restore Estonian independence from the Soviet Union. A member of the Folklore Commission Bureau, and active participant in the Folklore Commission’s meetings in Moscow and other places. 28 Finno-Ugric studies in the USSR were liquidated in 1930s, when many ethnographers were arrested and put to death on false charges of planning the separation of the Finno-Ugric regions and the USSR, and the creation of the Confederation under the aegis of Finland. That was the so-called “SOFIN case”: “Sojuz osvobozhdenija finskikh narodnostej” (“The Union of Liberation of the Finnish Nationalities”) (1932-1933). After World War II Soviet Finno-Ugric studies were partly restored, but were constantly under suspicion and were supervised by the authorities (Zagrebin 2014). 29 The Union of Composers’ regular five-year progress report: Mezhdu s’ezdami. 1974-1979. Sojuz kompozitorov SSSR / Moscow: Sovietskij kompozitor, 1979: 57.

Visual Anthropology in the USSR and Post-Soviet Russia

99

folklorist Alan Lomax, who presented two films of his series Rhythms of Earth (Trushkina 2012, 13). Later on, these festivals and single film screenings became more or less regular events. During the 1980s, their audience became wider. The average size of the audience was 50 to 70, in some cases 100 to 150 viewers. In the period from 1980 until 1984, approximately 70 folkloric and ethnographic films were screened both within the festivals and in the scope of the smaller meetings of different types. Unique archival materials taken from the Central State Archive of the USSR for Film and Photo Documents were screened as a special event at the 1981 festival. Screenings in 1984 were devoted mainly to the best films of the last years. The audience of the screenings included scholars from both the Soviet republics and other countries. Thus, a British scholar Elizabeth A. Warner, a specialist in Russian folklore, attended this meeting and proposed an exchange of films between the USSR and Great Britain.30 There was no competition during the festivals, and the main idea was to involve as many experts as possible, and to create an information platform for the exchange of cinematic and video records. Throughout the decade, contacts between scholars and filmmakers became significantly closer than they had previously been, primarily, we can suppose, due to cooperation between the Folklore Commission and professionals from the Baltic states. Folklore expeditions began increasingly to incorporate experts from different fields, including philologists, ethnographers, linguists, and often documentary filmmakers. Folklorists were on their side often involved in the process of ethnographic filmmaking. In some cases, this resulted in long-term cooperation between groups of professionals who had worked together to make a film during field research. For example, some documentaries by Andris SlapiƼš were made with the participation of folklorists and ethnographers: The Time of Dreams (ȼɪɟɦɟɧɚ ɫɧɨɜɢɞɟɧɢɣ, 1982-1986) with participation of Eduard Alekseyev and Elena Novik, and The Field of Hopes (CerƯbu lauki/ɉɨɥɹ ɧɚɞɟɠɞ, 1988) with participation of Elizabeth A. Warner. The film The Time of Dreams was made by Andris SlapiƼš during several expeditions organised by the Folklore Commission: to Yakutia (1980, with folklorists Eduard Alekseyev and Elena Novik), to Chukotka (1981, 1983, 1986, with Elena Novik), and to the Khabarovsk Territory and the Primorye Territory (1984, with Elena Novik). There were a few versions of the film dated differently. The early version (1983) was 30

See The Union of Composers’ regular five-year progress report: Mezhdu s’ezdami. 1979-1985. Sojuz kompozitorov SSSR / Moscow: Sovietskij kompozitor, 1985: 64.

100

Chapter 3

screened in 1987 at the European Ethnographic Film Seminar in Budapest (organised by the Ethnographic Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary, and co-organised by the CNRS, Paris, France) and later in the same year at the first Visual Anthropology Film Festival in Pärnu. It was one of the first Soviet ethnographic films screened outside the USSR. The film documented the traditions and ritual practices of shamans. As Mihály Hoppál wrote, It is at last an authentic film about the shamans of Siberia. Moreover, it represents an important breakthrough in that, for long decades–actually, from the 1930s up until quite recently–shamanism was a taboo theme in the Soviet Union. […] It is no accident that this was the film to receive the greatest critical acclaim both from Soviet and foreign experts, for in it an ideal cooperation was achieved between cameraman–director, with his artistic style of vision, on the one hand, and the well-trained anthropologist-folklorist E. Novik and the ethnomusicologist E. Alekseev, on the other. He was an outstanding cameraman–and [shot] some wonderful scenes of the shaman performing his rituals, which are extremely difficult to film (Hoppál 2003, 212).

On the other hand, The Field of Hopes is a documentary on parallels between Celtic and Baltic cultures and the first documentary coproduction between the USSR and Great Britain (Riga Film Studio, The British Universities Film & Video Council, with participation of “SOVINFILM”). Cooperation between Elizabeth A. Warner and Andris SlapiƼš started in the 1980s when they met each other during one of the Folklore on the Screen festivals in Moscow.31 The Folklore on the Screen Film Festival ceased to exist at the end of 1980s, when the Folklore Commission began to reduce its activity, and then dissapeared completely soon after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 (like all other All-Union organisations).

The Beginning of the Parnü Visual Anthropology Film Festival By the late 1980s close contacts between the Folklore Commission and scholars and filmmakers from the Baltic states (at that time the Soviet republics) were set up, in the first place due to the activity of Estonian ethnologist, writer and filmmaker Lennart-Georg Meri, who was a member of the Commission Bureau and had frequently participated in Commission meetings in previous years. 31

Interview with Natalia Dyushen, Andris SlapiƼš’ widow, October 5, 2015.

Visual Anthropology in the USSR and Post-Soviet Russia

101

Fig. 3–2. Poster of the first International Visual Anthropology Film Festival in Pärnu. The festival took place from October 28th till November 3rd. Photo: Private archive of Paolo Chiozzi.

102

Chapter 3

On May 26, 1987 in Moscow the Council for Science and Documentary Film Theory and Criticism of the Union of Cinematographers of the USSR 32 with the assistance of the Folklore Commission organised an evening with Lennart-Georg Meri entitled “What is Visual Anthropology?” (“Chto takoe vizual’naja antropologija?”) (Janulaitis 1989, 236). Some of Meri’s films were screened during the evening, including The Winds of the Milky Way (Linnuteetuuled/ȼɟɬɪɵ ɦɥɟɱɧɨɝɨ ɩɭɬɢ, 1977), The People of the Water Bird (Veelinnurahvas/ɇɚɪɨɞ ɜɨɞɨɩɥɚɜɚɸɳɟɣ ɩɬɢɰɵ, 1970) and the recently released The Sounds of Kaleva (Kaleva hääled/Ɂɜɭɤɢ Ʉɚɥɟɜɵ, 1985), which was largely a screen version of a choral piece by Veljo Tormis,33 Curse Upon Iron (Raua needmine, 1972). The moderator of the evening, Soviet philologist and anthropologist Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov (a member of the Folklore Commission Bureau) introduced the term “Visual Anthropology” with respect to Meri’s films. Apparently, Meri had already made use of this term before, having taken it from his western colleagues (in 1987 he became a member of the editorial board of the Visual Anthropology journal initiated by the Center for Visual Communication, and had contacts with foreign scholars, at least from Eastern and Northern Europe). Soon afterwards, one of the guests of the evening, Elena Novik, published a brief review of this event in the official news edition of the Union of Composers of the USSR, and mentioned the term “Visual Anthropology” as the main topic of the meeting (Novik 1987, 34). From this we can infer that the term “Visual Anthropology” began to circulate in the Soviet humanities starting from this meeting (Aleksandrov et al. 1997, 75). In addition, during the evening in May 26, 1987 Lennart-Georg Meri announced that the festival of Visual Anthropology had to be held in Estonia that same year. Historical records differ regarding the type of this new event.34 The first announcement issued by the Folklore Commission reads as follows: The Commission of Visual Anthropology of the Union of Cinematographers of Estonia35 and the Folklore Commission of the Union 32

The Union of Cinematographers of the USSR was formed in 1965 as professional organisation of employees of the filmmaking and television industries. 33 Veljo Tormis (born 1930), Soviet/Estonian choral composer and folklorist, participant in the Folklore Commission meetings. 34 In some printed materials issued after the festival, the type of the meeting was varied too: in some cases, it was called the “festival”, in others the “festivalcolloquium” (Zhornitskaya and Aleksandrenkov 1989, 137). 35 Apparently, a new (probably informal) unit or initiative group created by

Visual Anthropology in the USSR and Post-Soviet Russia

103

of Composers of the USSR will hold 27-30 October, 1987 in Tallinn, the joint seminar in Visual Anthropology devoted to ethnographic films. Authors of ethnographic, folkloric, ethnomusical and other films, film documents on rituals, ceremonies, traditional forms of material and spiritual culture are invited to the seminar. The purpose of the seminar is to define the concept of Visual Anthropology and its current level in national and foreign cinematography, to discuss the theory and practice of Visual Anthropology, questions of authenticity of the film document, clashes of scientific and general cinema, organisational and technical issues connected with filming in field conditions.36

In the second announcement the same event was called a “colloquium” instead of a “seminar”. Meanwhile, Lennart-Georg Meri and some of his colleagues apparently used the term “festival”. The event was initially announced as the Tallinn Seminar of Ethnographic Films, but was finally called the Visual Anthropology Film Festival, and moved to Pärnu. Thus, the Commission of Visual Anthropology of the Union of Cinematographers of Estonia in collaboration with the Folklore Commission organised the first International Visual Anthropology Film Festival in Pärnu from October 28 through November 3, 1987. Filmmaker Mark Soosaar37 became the director and promoter of this new festival. The screening programme of 1987 included, among others, the films of the authors who had participated earlier that year at the European Ethnographic Film Seminar in Budapest and were invited to Pärnu soon afterwards, through the intermediation of Elena Novik. Elena Novik attended the European Ethnographic Film Seminar in Budapest in 1987 at the invitation of Mihály Hoppál (born 1942), senior research fellow of the Ethnographic Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences at that time. She brought to the Seminar the Film The Time of Dreams (dir. Andris SlapiƼš, 1983). Having seen the films in Budapest Lennart-Georg Meri and Mark Soosaar in structure of the Union of Cinematographers of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic primarily for the purpose of organisation of the Visual Anthropology festival in Estonia in 1987. The history of that Commission demands further study. 36 First announcement of the Tallinn seminar for ethnographic films. Issued in 1987 in typewritten form as an internal Folklore Commission document. It was not intended to be published and distributed widely. The document is now kept in the private archive of Evgenya Andreyeva (born 1945), Soviet/Russian musicologist, sociologist, author of the concept of a “sound landscape” in cultural geography, active member of the Folklore Commission from 1983 to 1992. 37 Mark Soosaar (born 1946), Soviet/Estonian documentary filmmaker, director of the Pärnu International Documentary and Anthropology Film Festival: http://www.chaplin.ee/filmfestival/

104

Chapter 3

and having received the Seminar film catalogue, Novik could provide Lennart-Georg Meri with contacts with international filmmakers.38 This made an important contribution to the Pärnu festival program in 1987, as because of the “Iron Curtain” the access to international ethnographic films and their authors was extremely limited. Another part of the programme was composed of the best Soviet films selected during the previous years for the Folklore on the Screen festivals and different smaller screenings organised by the Folklore Commission in Moscow. As a result, the Pärnu festival brought together a large number of Soviet and international scholars and filmmakers, including Jay Ruby, Paolo Chiozzi, Jean Rouch, Marc Piault, Asen Balikci, Alan Lomax and others (51 participants from 14 countries). The screening programme included 47 films. Lennart-Georg Meri headed the festival jury. The Grand Prix was awarded to the film At the Winter Sea Ice Camp (Quentin Brown, Canada/US, 1967). Among nine other awards there were several for films from the USSR, including Winter of River People (Ɂɢɦɚ ɪɟɱɧɵɯ ɥɸɞɟɣ, Arkady Mikhalev and Nadezhda Lukina, Tomsk, 1982), Galla (Ƚɚɥɥɚ, Majram Jusupova, Dushanbe, 1981), Polesye Weddings (ɉɨɥɟɫɫɤɢɟ ɫɜɚɞɶɛɵ, Zinaida Mozheyko, Minsk, 1986). It was informally recognised that Andris SlapiƼš’ film The Time of Dreams (1983) was the best in the Soviet programme (Frolova 1988, 1). Since then, the festival has been held annually until today.

The Post-Soviet Visual Anthropology Festival Movement: From the End of 1990s until Today Since the 1990s the landscape of ethnographic film in the region has been transformed. After the collapse of the USSR, the field experienced the effects of the decentralisation of the entire research field, the weakening of the role of state institutions and the increasing role of personal initiatives. This meant that scholars and filmmakers had almost a free hand, but at the same time they bore full responsibility for their projects. In addition, this period was marked by the growth of national consciousness, the “ethno-boom” consisting, inter alia, in the rise of public interest in ethnography and ethnographic films. The production of ethnographic films has also changed due to the more recent developments in ethnographic practice, including the revision of its own tools and the more recent academic discussions about its self-reflectiveness and the visual presentation of ethnographic data. 38

Interview with Elena Novik, February 2, 2012.

Visual Anthropology in the USSR and Post-Soviet Russia

105

After the USSR collapsed and Estonia declared independence in 1991, the Pärnu festival gradually ceased to be a platform where Russian (former Soviet) and international scholars and filmmakers could meet and cooperate. The development of Visual Anthropology in post-Soviet Russia became much slower. The first initiatives to promote Visual Anthropology in Russia in the post-Soviet period were realised in 1991 when Evgeny Aleksandrov39 and Leonid Filimonov40 started the Public Centre of Visual Anthropology at Lomonosov Moscow State University.41 The purpose of the Centre was to make films for educational courses, to collect audiovisual materials, and to bring students to the field of audioVisual Anthropology. In the same year the Ethnographic Bureau,42 an independent association of ethnographers, designers and documentary film directors, appeared in Ekaterinburg. Its main directions of activity were ethnographic research in the North of Eurasia, ethnographic filmmaking, archiving films and video materials, exhibitions, and publications. The anthropologist Andrei Golovnev43 became the director of the Bureau. The theoretical development of such concepts as “Visual Anthropology” and “anthropological film” in post-Soviet Russia started in 1993 when Evgenya Andreyeva, who had been acting as the Folklore Commission member for a long time, initiated the biennial seminar for audioVisual Anthropology for scholars and practitioners in the Likhachev Russian Research Institute of Cultural and Natural Heritage. The screenings within the seminars included both recent and archival ethnographic films, some of which were retrieved and presented by historian Vladimir Magidov.44 Seminars were held as separate meetings, and then began to be held in the framework of Moscow festivals, namely “Mediating Camera”, and later the “Days of Ethnographic Cinema”. The idea of creating a Visual Anthropology festival was circulating in academia at least from 1995-1996, and was being discussed in particular by 39 Evgeny Aleksandrov (born 1940), Soviet/Russian film historian and filmmaker, head of the Public Centre of Visual Anthropology at Lomonosov Moscow State University. 40 Leonid Filimonov (1939-2008), Soviet/Russian photographer and filmmaker, colleague and close friend of Evgeny Aleksandrov. 41 http://visant.etnos.ru/ 42 http://ethnobs.ru/about 43 Andrei Golovnev (born 1958), Russian anthropologist, filmmaker, director of the Ethnographic Bureau (Ekaterinburg): http://ethnobs.ru/en/ 44 Vladimir Magidov (born 1938), Soviet/Russian historian, specialist in the history and theory of audiovisual archives, and early Russian/Soviet ethnographic filmmaking (end of 1890s-1940s).

106

Chapter 3

the researchers Andrei Golovnev, Oleg Genisaretsky 45 and Evgeny Aleksandrov. This idea was realised in 1998 when the first Russian Anthropological Film Festival (RAFF)46 was held in Salekhard, the capital of the Yamal-Nenets autonomous region in Western Siberia. The Ethnographic Bureau in Ekaterinburg was one the festival organisers. As festival president Andrei Golovnev has explained, Salekhard (a site of gas production and the area where nomadic groups still exist) was a very special place, where traditions and innovations coexisted and where some representatives of the local administration, being intellectuals and openminded persons, helped in many ways to make this place convenient for research purposes as well as friendly relations. The festival was evidently created from nothing, the original initiative being carried out through selfdependent activities and efforts. 47 Starting from the end of 1990s, many bright film critics and scholars were invited to work as members of the select committee and jury of the RAFF (including former Folklore Commission members Evgenya Andreyeva and Elena Novik). One of the festival’s important achievements was to start cooperation with the world of documentaries, for example, with the Open Festival of the Documentaries “Russia”48 and the International Documentary Film Festival Flahertiana. The Open Festival of the Documentaries “Russia” started in 1988 in Ekaterinburg. It was one of the specific projects at the very end of the Soviet era when the last leader of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev started to follow the policies of glasnost (“openness”) and perestroika (“restructuring”) and to refocus Soviet strategic aims, contributing to the end of the Cold War. The idea of the festival was to express the critical issues of late Soviet society through documentaries. The International Documentary Film Festival Flahertiana started in 1995 in the city of Perm. It was called in honour of Robert Flaherty. The festival’s goal was to select documentaries where characters lived the part of their life on the screen (as in Nanook of the North by Robert Flaherty). The festival’s first prize is called the Golden Nanook. The festival has neither roots in academia nor research purposes, but its screening programmes include, as a rule, some films which could be treated rather as ethnographic.49 In 2011 the RAFF moved to Ekaterinburg. The decision to relocate the festival was made for two reasons: first, Ekaterinburg was the oldest centre 45

Oleg Genisaretsky (born 1942), Soviet/Russian art historian. http://www.rfaf.ru/ 47 Interview with Andrei Golovnev, February 24, 2015. 48 http://www.rossia-doc.ru/. 49 http://www.flahertiana.ru/ 46

Visual Anthropology in the USSR and Post-Soviet Russia

107

of documentary filmmaking and festivals with a large motivated audience, and second, it had a large number of universities. Students’ active participation could contribute greatly to the festival. In Ekaterinburg the CinemAnthrop student film competition started straightway. Nowadays the RAFF can be considered a very dynamic academic and creative framework with multiform contents, as well as an experimental platform that searches for new cinematic forms. The idea of a Visual Anthropology festival was also realised in Moscow during the 2000s. In 2002 the Public Centre of Visual Anthropology at Lomonosov Moscow State University (created in the early 1990s) started the International Festival of Visual Anthropology “Mediating Camera”. This festival aimed to promote Visual Anthropology and to involve of a mass audience to this area. The festival was held until 2012, and then discontinued because of lack of funding. In addition, the International AudioVisual Anthropology Film Festival “Days of Ethnographic Cinema” (Moscow) was created in 2009 by the Russian Institute for Cultural Research. After the Institute ceased to exist in 2013,50 it was restarted by the National Research University Higher School of Economics.51 The festival had the goal of transmitting Visual Anthropology primarily to Russian students and young scholars, and of promoting the practice of ethnographic filmmaking among them. Both festivals, different in structure and format, tried to fill a gap existing in Russian academia (at least in Moscow), and to promote a dialogue between Russian and international scholars and filmmakers. Both of them face difficulties now because of financial and institutional instability.

Conclusions We have argued that the earliest ethnographic film screenings in the USSR took place at the initiative of professional folklorists and ethnomusicologists. The main reason was the specific object of the musical folklore studies (“living culture”), which demanded to be documented and presented as a whole. For this purpose, the folklore expeditions began to incorporate, inter alia, documentary filmmakers. The folklorists were also involved in ethnographic filmmaking. Soviet cultural policy, in its turn, while trying to promote the folklore of the different nationalities of the USSR by organising different events, let some nonmainstream forms of academic life happen. One of these forms was the 50

The Russian Institute for Cultural Research (1932-2014) was liquidated by the decision of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation for unknown reasons. 51 http://www.hse.ru/

108

Chapter 3

Folklore Commission, which held the Folklore on the Screen conference and film festival from 1977 until the end of the 1980s. Thus, the Folklore Commission through its activities created an important niche where public film screenings and discussions took place. The end of the 1980s was marked by the rise of political activity and creative initiatives in the Baltic states (the Soviet republics at that time). Estonian ethnologist Lennart-Georg Meri–a symbolic figure in the early period of the restoration of Estonia’s independence–was integrated both into the Folklore Commission and circle of Soviet folklorists and into projects with western countries. On his initiative, and supported by his Soviet and western colleagues, the first Visual Anthropology Film Festival in Pärnu was organised in 1987. During the post-Soviet period, festivals were initiated personally by scholars and were held in an absolutely new economic and political context. The initial ethno-musical and folkloric roots were abandoned, and links with Soviet practice were barely retained. In new circumstances academic mobility increased greatly, and Russian scholars and filmmakers could travel abroad and attend international Visual Anthropology festivals. Many well-known anthropologists visited Russia with films, lectures, seminars and master classes beginning from the 1990s (among them Asen Balikci, Paolo Chiozzi, Marc Piault and Michael Herzfeld). Besides the attempts to make Russia an open space for recent ideas and projects in the field of Visual Anthropology, the post-Soviet festivals try to seek and promote films from the former Soviet republics. At the same time, Russian ethnographic filmmaking develops (though slowly), and in this regard the Ekaterinburg school of documentary and ethnographic film should be emphasised.

Works Cited Aleksandrov, Evgeny, Leonid Filimonov, and Olga Khristoforova. 1997. “Ⱥɧɚɥɢɡ ɫɨɫɬɨɹɧɢɹ ɨɬɟɱɟɫɬɜɟɧɧɨɣ ɢ ɡɚɪɭɛɟɠɧɨɣ ɜɢɡɭɚɥɶɧɨɣ ɚɧɬɪɨɩɨɥɨɝɢɢ (ɮɟɫɬɢɜɚɥɶ 1997 ɝ. ɜ ɏɟɥɶɫɢɧɤɢ).” In Ɇɚɬɟɪɢɚɥɶɧɚɹ ɛɚɡɚ ɫɮɟɪɵ ɤɭɥɶɬɭɪɵ. ɇɚɭɱɧɨ-ɢɧɮɨɪɦɚɰɢɨɧɧɵɣ ɫɛɨɪɧɢɤ, vol. 3, edited by S. Kolesnichenko, 69–80. Moscow: ɂɡɞɚɬɟɥɶɫɬɜɨ ɊȽȻ. Alekseyev, Eduard. 1986. “ɋɨɫɬɨɹɧɢɟ, ɡɚɞɚɱɢ ɢ ɩɟɪɫɩɟɤɬɢɜɵ ɪɚɡɜɢɬɢɹ ɨɬɟɱɟɫɬɜɟɧɧɨɣ ɦɭɡɵɤɚɥɶɧɨɣ ɮɨɥɶɤɥɨɪɢɫɬɢɤɢ.” In ɋɨɜɪɟɦɟɧɧɨɟ ɫɨɫɬɨɹɧɢɟ ɢ ɡɚɞɚɱɢ ɫɨɜɟɬɫɤɨɣ ɮɨɥɶɤɥɨɪɢɫɬɢɤɢ. Ɍɟɡɢɫɵ ɞɨɤɥɚɞɨɜ ȼɫɟɫɨɸɡɧɨɣ ɧɚɭɱɧɨɣ ɤɨɧɮɟɪɟɧɰɢɢ, 32–42. Moskow: ɇɚɭɤɚ. Andreyeva, Evgenya. 2013. “‘Ɏɨɥɶɤɥɨɪɧɨɟ ɞɜɢɠɟɧɢɟ’ ɤɚɤ ɤɭɥɶɬɭɪɧɵɣ ɮɟɧɨɦɟɧ ɜɬɨɪɨɣ ɩɨɥɨɜɢɧɵ ɏɏ ɜ.” ɂɫɬɨɪɢɹ ɢ ɋɨɜɪɟɦɟɧɧɨɫɬɶ

Visual Anthropology in the USSR and Post-Soviet Russia

109

2(18): 214–232. Fitzhugh, William W. 1991. “Andris Slapins, Latvian Filmmaker.” CVA Newsletter (Spring):2–3. Frolova, Galina. 1988. “… Ⱥ ɟɳɟ ɢ ‘ɜɢɡɭɚɥɶɧɚɹ ɚɧɬɪɨɩɨɥɨɝɢɹ’.” (Interview with Jaan Ruus, member of jury at the 1987 Festival of Visual Anthropology in Pärnu) Kino 2(540):1. Hoppal, Mihály. 1988. “Ethnographic Film in the Soviet Union.” CVA Newsletter (October):6–12. —. 2003. “Ethnographic films on shamanism.” In Shamanism: A Reader, edited by G. Harvey, 203–221. London: Routledge. Janulaitis, KĊstutis A. 1989. “ɑɬɨ ɬɚɤɨɟ ɜɢɡɭɚɥɶɧɚɹ ɚɧɬɪɨɩɨɥɨɝɢɹ?” In Ekran’89, edited by J. Tiurin and G. Dolmatovskaja, 236–240. Moscow: ɂɫɤɭɫɫɬɜɨ. Magidov, Vladimir. 2005. Ʉɢɧɨɮɨɬɨɮɨɧɨɞɨɤɭɦɟɧɬɵ ɜ ɤɨɧɬɟɤɫɬɟ ɢɫɬɨɪɢɱɟɫɤɨɝɨ ɡɧɚɧɢɹ. Moscow: Ɋɨɫɫɢɣɫɤɢɣ ɝɨɫɭɞɚɪɫɬɜɟɧɧɵɣ ɝɭɦɚɧɢɬɚɪɧɵɣ ɭɧɢɜɟɪɫɢɬɟɬ. Meri, Lennart. 1987. “Letter from Estonia.” CVA Newsletter (May):19–21. Novik, Elena. 1987. “Ɏɨɥɶɤɥɨɪ ɧɚ ɷɤɪɚɧɟ.” ɂɧɮɨɪɦɚɰɢɨɧɧɵɣ ɛɸɥɥɟɬɟɧɶ ɫɟɤɪɟɬɚɪɢɚɬɚ ɩɪɚɜɥɟɧɢɹ ɋɨɸɡɚ ɤɨɦɩɨɡɢɬɨɪɨɜ ɋɋɋɊ (Informational bulletin of the Secretariat of the Board of the Union of Composers of the USSR) 6/7:34. Trushkina, Ekaterina. 2012. “ȼɢɡɭɚɥɶɧɚɹ ɚɧɬɪɨɩɨɥɨɝɢɹ ɜ Ɋɨɫɫɢɢ: ɤɚɤ ɜɫɟ ɧɚɱɢɧɚɥɨɫɶ?” In Ⱥɭɞɢɨɜɢɡɭɚɥɶɧɚɹ ɚɧɬɪɨɩɨɥɨɝɢɹ: ɤɭɥɶɬɭɪɧɨɟ ɧɚɫɥɟɞɢɟ ɤɚɤ ɢɧɫɬɢɬɭɬ ɩɚɦɹɬɢ, edited by Evgenya Andreyeva, and Victoria Chistyakova, 7–16. Moscow: ɂɧɫɬɢɬɭɬ ɧɚɫɥɟɞɢɹ. Zagrebin, Aleksey. 2014. “ɗɬɧɨɝɪɚɮɢɱɟɫɤɨɟ ɮɢɧɧɨ-ɭɝɪɨɜɟɞɟɧɢɟ ɜ Ɋɨɫɫɢɢ: ɞɢɧɚɦɢɤɚ ɧɚɭɱɧɵɯ ɢɞɟɣ ɢ ɡɧɚɧɢɣ.” Ɍɪɭɞɵ Ʉɚɪɟɥɶɫɤɨɝɨ ɧɚɭɱɧɨɝɨ ɰɟɧɬɪɚ Ɋɨɫɫɢɣɫɤɨɣ ɚɤɚɞɟɦɢɢ ɧɚɭɤ 3:3–8. Zhornitskaya, Marya, and Eduard Aleksandrenkov. 1989. “Ɏɟɫɬɢɜɚɥɶ ɷɬɧɨɝɪɚɮɢɱɟɫɤɢɯ ɮɢɥɶɦɨɜ.” ɋɨɜɟɬɫɤɚɹ ɷɬɧɨɝɪɚɮɢɹ 2: 135–137.

CHAPTER 4 THE ARTFUL NARRATIVE OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL FESTIVALS: VIEW FROM THE BALTICS CARLO A. CUBERO

This chapter examines a creative tension that ethnographic film festival programmers contend with in the process of curating their programmes. I will argue that ethnographic film festival curatorship is characterised by a paradoxical relationship, which reproduces a stable discourse of “anthropological cinema”, at the same time as it contests it. I will argue that these two approaches to the film festival do not represent a schizophrenic or negative paradox. Rather, the practice of curating a successful programme–one that ensures its continuity and contribution to the discourse–is the art of engaging with the simultaneous articulation of these contrasting perspectives. This chapter is informed by recent anthropological film programmes I curated in collaboration with filmmakers and anthropologists in Helsinki, Tampere, Tallinn, Tartu and Riga. These programmes have referenced practices associated with film festivals in the process of authoring a stance on the potentials and limitations of the format as a means of contributing to anthropological discourse. These programmes do not contextualise anthropological cinema as the sole privilege of academia. Rather, they understand scientific research as a creative practice with the potential to make an impact beyond academic institutions and beyond the discipline of anthropology. An intended outcome of this approach is to assess the contours of anthropological practice and contribute to cinematic forms. In this regard, anthropological cinema is rendered as both an object to be displayed and an approach towards the world, a way of storytelling. These two approaches represent a subtle balance that frames anthropological cinema as an open and specific project and the film festival as a site where this project is framed and re-framed.

112

Chapter 4

This chapter is ultimately an argument for the contextualisation of the ethnographic film festival within broader film festival discourse and practise. This necessarily leads to contextualising ethnographic cinema within the realm of cinema practice in general, in opposition to the view that anthropology is an exclusively text-based discipline. From this perspective, the film festival format is more consistent than the conference format for the production and reproduction of an audiovisual ethnography project.

An Anthropological Film Festival Tension The tensions I address in this chapter may be illustrative of the inconsistent definitions of anthropology as a discipline and of the complex role that filmmaking has had within anthropology (see MacDougall 2006). The anthropological film festival, then, is not only the site where “ethnographic cinema culture” is reproduced, but is particularly well placed to critically examine the varieties of anthropological discourse and practice. The goal of this chapter is to consider what this tension means for the production and reproduction of anthropological cinema discourse and practice, and to contextualise this discussion in relation to film festival studies. A central figure in narrating this complexity is the programme curator. I argue that a successful programme is the result of a narrativisation of the films through the programme, which contextualises their relationship with the discourse. In one instance, this argument follows Mark Cousins’ understanding of a film programme as analogous to a story authored by the curator, a narrative embedded within the order of the films selected, which the curator wishes to convey (Cousins 2013). From this perspective, the curators of anthropological film programmes do not necessarily choose the “best” films available, but construct a narrative by carefully selecting films and placing them in relation to each other in the programme (e.g. films addressing a particular region, a theme, reflecting a style, a mood, a methodology, etc.). The programmer’s role also includes convening the event, which plays a central role in articulating its narrative. The programmer does this through the choice of venue, the format of the screenings, order of the day, social events, promotion, etc. These choices have a direct result on the credibility of the event and function to contextualise each film.

The Artful Narrative of Anthropological Festivals

113

A Closed Event I begin by examining practices and narratives of the film festival that characterise it as a closed, elite and conservative event. Some film festival researchers have contextualised the development of the film festival within nation-building, the promotion of European fascism and authoritarian propaganda, the reproduction of an elite cinema culture, and the reproduction of imperialistic narratives such as Third World cinema and its opposition to First World cinema (Elsaesser 2013; Willemen 2013). This narrative can be connected to the argument that film festivals represent a closed network that categorises films according to preconceived notions (e.g. the anthropological documentary), which results in using the films and their categorisation to reproduce the festival’s own discourse. This dimension of the film festival is illustrated in anthropological film festivals by showcasing films that respond to specific cinematic codes, promote specific politics of representation, promote traditions, take place in specific venues, and prioritise a specific kind of talent: the anthropologist who also makes films. From this perspective, the anthropological film festival taps into a closed network, normatively located within the academy, which is illustrated when the event is held at a university (like early editions of the RAI Film Festival), a lecture hall, or in an ethnographic museum (like the first editions of the World Film Festival in Tartu). Other screening practices that presume a select audience of anthropologists, in my view, consist of framing the post-screening Q&As in terms of the works’ academic anthropological value. In these instances “experts” in the field that the film addresses moderate the sessions regardless of the presence of the filmmaker, as in previous editions of the RAI Film Festival. The traditional aspect of anthropological cinema is mirrored in the numerous debates that revolve around the nature of anthropological cinema. These debates occur in publications (see Banks 1992; Ruby 1975), in post-screening Q&As and discussions, and in classrooms. While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to review in detail the terms of these debates, cases are made for defining anthropological cinema in opposition to other cinematic forms such as the journalistic film, the experimental film, the film made for museum exhibits and art installations, the fiction film, etc. I would argue that discussions that centre on the anthropological value of any given film revolve around static definitions that emphasise, amongst other characteristics, references to the non-fiction documentary, realist aesthetics that mirror participant observation, references to text-

114

Chapter 4

based anthropological theory, to films now deemed classics of anthropological cinema (even though this list is inconsistent and in flux, e.g. Les Maîtres Fous (1955), Forest of Bliss (1986), Tempus de Baristas (1993), Nanook of the North (1922), Man with a Movie Camera (1929)), and films made by people with anthropology degrees or who are affiliated to an academic programme. In this instance, the anthropological film festival can be illustrated as an eternal feedback loop, a circular entity that exists because of a specifically defined film practice and discourse. It generates its own context at the same time as illustrating a pre-existing one.

Fig. 4–1. Poster of the 2014 edition of the EASA conference. Image: Enrico Barone.

The Artful Narrative of Anthropological Festivals

115

An Open Event The narrative of the film festival as a site that contests hegemony is highlighted by various film festival researchers (see Nichols 2013; Rich 2013). These researchers write of the film festival as a site for revolutionary possibilities by, for example, opening spaces for alternative narratives that contest hegemonic images. Bill Nichols, for example, makes the case that film festivals are unique events that screen and promote films that would not get circulation otherwise (Nichols 2013). The suggestion is that film festival practices result in the circulation of images that present an alternative to western hegemonic images and their associations with heteronormativity, nationalism, industrial capital, imperialism, and the oppositions suggested by First World and Third World (see Rich 2013). Nichols further argues for the networked quality of film festivals–a network sustained as films travel from one festival to the next, as programmers coordinate their calendar events so as to not conflict with each other, and with cinephiles pilgrimaging through the festival network, all institutionalised through the Fédération Internationale des Associations de Producteurs de Films (FIAPF), which regulates the international film festival market (see Nichols 2013; Elsaesser 2013; de Valck 2013). From this perspective, film festivals operate as a kind of engine that pumps alternative images and discourses through a global network. For Nichols, the film festival has the capacity to promote a sense of a “new globalism”, as a global project that values creative gestures and constructs a space that articulates meanings and subjectivities that were hitherto not valued. I would extend Nichols’ argument and propose that as a result of critically engaging with western hegemonic discourse, the film festival also contests itself as a stable and unitary signifier. In the spirit of maintaining its vitality and positive contributions, film festivals necessarily have to alter their programming strategies and formats. In his review of the history of the European film festival, Thomas Elsaesser observes that many film festivals emerged as counter-festivals and as imagined opponents to established festivals (Elsaesser 2013, 71). The implication of this goes beyond the festival programme as an opposition to an existing one, pointing to the fact that festival programmers design their events in relation to cinematic trends. A relatively simple example is to consider how contemporary technologies connected to the Internet and digital media have profound implications for the continuity of a film festival. Nowadays festival programmers have to accept the fact that they are not screening “films” but

116

Chapter 4

streamed digital content that was submitted online. For example, nowadays the majority of film entries are made by sharing Vimeo or YouTube links, and are screened through digital devices, as in works screened through DCP hard drives via computers. Programmers must also reconsider the theatre as the sole location of the film festival, and look into ways of having their collection available online, or ways of live-streaming the event, as is practised by the Viscult Festival in Joensuu, Finland. These recent technical developments challenge the idea of the festival as an event that is subject to time and place. In fact, festival programmers need to keep informed of the politics of representation and presentation, and continuously reinvent their events in order to keep a sense of consistent credibility and contribute positively to the discourse. The anthropological film festival is not immune to this complexity. I would argue that this responds to the wide array of practices and discourses that are associated with anthropology, particularly in the current climate of interdisciplinary research. While social anthropology maintains an institutionalised integrity through university programmes and journals, anthropological methods and theories are not the sole privilege of degreeholding anthropologists. The anthropological film festival, as a multidisciplinary event, attracts multiple stakeholders representing different traditions within anthropology, as well as practitioners from different fields seeking collaborations, conversations and feedback on their work. Anthropological film programmers are sensitive to the multiple agendas and stakeholders that their events attract, and are challenged to promote them discreetly and effectively. Illustrations of these tensions can be seen in films that have been programmed and awarded prizes and commendations at the Royal Anthropological Institute Film Festival, the Margaret Mead Film Festival and the World Film Festival–such as The Act of Killing (2012), Journey to the Maggot Feeder (2015) and Margaret Mead Film Festival’s Dennis O’Rourke retrospective in 2013–and the film programmes of academic conferences, such as recent programmes curated by Pille Runnell, Enrico Barone and myself for the European Association of Social Anthropology, the Finnish Anthropological Society and the International Society of Ethnology and Folklore. The case can be made that a significant number of the films featured at these events do not correspond to consistent definitions of “anthropological cinema”, and that they have featured films meant for commercial distribution, films produced for art galleries, television productions, animations, activist films, fictions, etc. Some recent examples include A Life with Asperger’s (Jaime Ekkens, 2013), Expedition Yemen–126 Degrees in the Shade (Mikael Strandberg, 2013),

The Artful Narrative of Anthropological Festivals

117

Alto do Minho (Miguel Filgueiras, 2012) and Cello Tales (Anne Schiltz, 2013). An analogous observation can be made about the format of these events, which mirrors the values of a film festival more than an academic conference. For example, the main representative of the film at these events is its director, not the anthropologist who did the research for the production or an academic expert on the issues depicted on the films. This results in Q&As and post-screening discussions engaging with the film as the result of cinematic practices, and not just as an exposition of anthropological argumentation. I contend that this trend speaks to the open-ended quality of the anthropological film festival and to its capacity to articulate new contexts and formats. Along the way, it holds the capacity not only to contribute to the narrative of “Visual Anthropology” but also to transcend its own terms and articulate radically different alternatives for anthropological and documentary practice and discourse.

The Power of the Curator The central figure in this process is the film festival curator, who authors and promotes the programme and its discourse. A challenge that is embedded in the practice of film festival curatorship is the fact that a film’s qualities are not a consistent quantified standard. Furthermore, it would be inappropriate to judge films according to a closed set of criteria, for each film must be viewed in its own context. This is further complicated by the fact that each screening contextualises the film in relation to the overall programme. This makes each screening unique, more akin to a live performance, where a constellation of factors including the make-up of the audience, the venue, the time slot, the order of the films, amongst many other factors, contributes to the assessment of the film. The lack of standardisation is a necessary condition of cinema, for its value is directly connected to its inconsistency. The lack of rationality when assessing films speaks to the affective, embodied and sensorial effect cinema has on viewers. From this perspective, the festival curator works to produce an experience-rich and affective narrative with his or her programme and event. Some film festival researchers have drawn analogies between the effect of film programmes and a religious or sublime experience when trying to articulate the effect of attending a festival. André Bazin’s classic article on attending the Cannes Film Festival emphasises its ritualistic dimension, drawing an analogy between

118

Chapter 4

attending the event and visiting a monastery and, by extension, between being a cinephile and a member of a monastic order (Bazin 2009).

Fig. 4–2. Poster of the 2015 edition of the Riga World Film Festival. Image: Edvards Percevs.

The Artful Narrative of Anthropological Festivals

119

For Elsaesser, there are ritualistic, religious and quasi-magical elements which play a role in making the festival into an event: It requires an atmosphere where an almost Eucharistic transubstantiation can take place; a Spirit has to hover that can canonise a masterpiece or consecrate the auteur, which is why the notions of “quality” or “talent” have to be impervious to rational criteria or secondary elaboration (Elsaesser 2013, 87–88).

The power of the curator, in my view, is not to be an arbiter of “taste” and “quality”. Rather, it is to summon his or her narrative skills to articulate an abstraction that engages the affects of the attendees, as a storyteller would. Curators working in the field of Visual Anthropology select films for their capacity to engage an audience through the films themselves. Recent anthropological film programmes in the Baltics have attempted to highlight the emotive, trans-subjective experience of watching and making films. For example, in many instances the final decision to programme a certain film and the decision on the final order of the films comes down to the “feeling” of a work and its relation to the rest of the programme. This approach is illustrated by the programmes I have collaborated on in Estonia, Finland and Latvia.1 In this regard, the films featured in these programmes do not emphasise the representation of research conclusions or the illustration of anthropological fieldwork. Rather, the programmes understand ethnographic cinema as more along the lines of, to paraphrase Robert Gardner, “a visual exercise which could impart concentrates and precipitates of a social experience” (Gardner 2007, 14). For Gardner, watching a film series resembles watching a “gigantic dance”, which is apprehended as a series of beats, of intervals of gesture and movement. Watching films does not entail analysing people’s behaviour, but is more of a development of a way of knowing and a form of communion, sharing a sense of accomplishment between the characters, the scenes, the filmmaker, and audience. The viewer gets to know how people can know and trust each other. For Gardner, his aim would be through a “kind of

1

With the World Film Festival and the Film Programme of the International Society for Ethnology and Folklore (2013) in Tartu; the European Association of Social Anthropology Film Programme (2014) in Tallinn; the Film Programme of the Finnish Anthropology Society Conference (2011 and 2015) in Helsinki (2011 and 2015) and Tampere (2013); and the Riga Pasaules Film Festival (2013, 2014 and 2015).

120

Chapter 4

human and actual animation, a series of linked and woven sequences, all echoing each other” (Gardner 2007, 14). This approach contrasts with the understanding of ethnographic cinema as a representation, analysis, exposition or illustration of culture (see Ruby 2000; MacDougall 2005), whereby viewing a film is an exercise in appreciating the way it represents a context that pre-exists the filmmaker, and judges the filmmaker’s skill in capturing that context. Supporters of this approach may understand ethnographic film as a scientific report on research findings, which must include a documentation of the methodologies used (Ruby 1975). From this perspective, anthropology is a comparative science that explores broad social contexts through detailed examination of people’s daily lives. Followers of this argument would make the case that it is not enough to engage with the affects associated with a social experience, but that these affects must be placed in a broader theoretical context, which ultimately requires text and discourse. However, recent programming in the Baltics has attempted to articulate a different kind of anthropology. In the first instance, these programmes stress that cinema–anthropological or otherwise–operates on a different register than text. An implicit agenda behind these programmes is that the development of a genuine anthropological cinema must engage first with the complexities of the medium it is working with. This position enables a contribution that expands the limits of anthropological discourse, at the same time as it contributes to cinematic practices. The kind of anthropology that emerges in these cases is a non-discursive practise, more akin to an approach than a method, and articulates an anthropology for the service of cinema, rather than a cinema for the service for anthropology.

Conclusions All this considered, anthropological film festival curators still operate within an environment of textual anthropology. Film festival researchers have noticed that the prestige of a festival within the network they seek to contribute to, and by extension the power of the curator, is mediated through the print that it generates and the impact it has beyond the event. Dayan and Elsaesser notice how a “verbal architecture”–composed of reviews, word of mouth, marketing, posters, internet presence, film schools and other artefacts that are not part of the event itself–produce “mountains of documentation”, which gives a presence to the event, moulds its significance, and legitimatises its discourse (Elsaesser 2013, 83). The power of the curator, then, is not exclusively contingent on the

The Artful Narrative of Anthropological Festivals

121

actual programme. The curator must also maintain the illusion that he or she is contributing to a particular field of knowledge by keeping a finger on the pulse of standards of “taste” and “talent” in their field and reacting creatively to them. The role that texts, documentation and factors outside of the festival play within anthropological film programmes works on numerous levels. For example, there is the actual promotion and marketing of the event, which is intended to present the event as an anthropological event. In the context of the Baltics, the “call for films”, for instance, and the marketing of the event has been done through anthropology mailing lists and networks, which will ostensibly attract filmmakers and cinephiles linked to and interested in academic anthropology. This network will be reproduced through any reviews, either of the event or of the films showcased, that are circulated through anthropology networks. In these instances, the anthropological film festival is an event that not only informs anthropological filmmaking practice through the films showcased, but also informs Visual Anthropology discourse and text-based anthropological theory. There is an ironic twist in the fact that the anthropological film festival, which tries to articulate a cinematic kind of anthropology, falls back on the text, the lecture, and the debate format as means to carry its message and sustain its project. The amount of print and talk generated because of these events necessarily takes attention away from the experience of the event itself. The insistence on “the word” or text-based knowledge for the production and reproduction of a sensorial anthropology and ethnographic cinema project speaks to the unfinished project of audiovisual ethnography and, by extension, to the unfinished project of anthropology in general. These and other complexities demonstrate the multiple engagements at play at the anthropological film festival, where cinema practice and discourse engage in a mutual alteration with anthropology. These are but some of the complexities that demonstrate the multiple engagements at stake in anthropological film festivals. In this chapter, I have attempted to show some ways anthropological film festivals are a site where cinematic and anthropological practise engage in a conversation that carries the potential to alter the terms of cinema and anthropological discourse. It characterises the festival as a curious event that showcases a specific type of cinema at the same time as its opposite, a type of cinema that produces and illustrates a discourse, and as an event that reproduces and deconstructs itself.

122

Chapter 4

Works Cited Banks, Marcus. 1992. “Which Films are the Ethnographic Ones?” In Film as Ethnography. Edited by Peter I. Crawford, and David Turton, 116– 130. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Bazin, André. [1955] 2009. “The Festival Viewed as a Religious Order.” In Dekalog 3: On Film Festivals, edited by Richard Porton, 13–19. London: Wallflower. Cousins, Mark. 2013. “Widescreen on Film Festivals (2006) / Film Festival Form: A Manifesto (2012).” In The Film Festival Reader, edited by Dina Iordanova, 167–172. St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies. De Valck, Marijke. 2013. “Film Festivals: Successful or Safe?” In The Film Festival Reader, edited by Dina Iordanova, 97–108. St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies. Elsaesser, Thomas. 2013. “Film Festival Networks: The New Topographies of Cinema in Europe (2005).” in The Film Festival Reader, edited by Dina Iordanova, 69–96. St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies. Gardner, Robert. 2007. The Making of Dead Birds: Chronicle of a Film, edited by Charles Warren. Boston: Peabody Museum Press. MacDougall, David. 2005. The Corporeal Image: Film, Ethnography, and the Senses. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Nichols, Bill. 2013. “Global Image Consumption in the Age of Late Capitalism (1994).” In The Film Festival Reader, edited by Dina Iordanova, 29–44. St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies. Rich, B. Ruby. 2013. “Why Do Film Festivals Matter? (2003–2004).” In The Film Festival Reader, edited by Dina Iordanova, 157–166. St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies. Ruby, Jay. 1975. “Is an Ethnographic Film a Filmic Ethnography?” Visual Communication 2(2):104–111. Ruby, Jay. 2000. Picturing Culture: Explorations of Film and Anthropology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Willemen, Paul. 2013. “On Pesaro” (1981/1985).” In The Film Festival Reader, edited by Dina Iordanova, 19–28. St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies.

The Artful Narrative of Anthropological Festivals

123

Festival Programs Cubero, Carlo. 2011. Finnish Anthropological Society Film Programme. Helsinki, Finland. Accessed May 5, 2016. http://www.antropologinenseura.fi/en/events/annual-conference-2011/ program/ Cubero, Carlo & Barone, Enrico. 2013. Finnish Anthropological Society Film Programme. Tampere, Finland. Accessed September 1, 2016. http://www.antropologinenseura.fi/en/events/anthropology-conference2013/ Cubero, Carlo & Runnel, Pille. 2013. International Society for Ethnology and Folklore Film Programme. Tartu, Estonia. Accessed June 2, 2016. http://www.nomadit.co.uk/sief/sief2013/panels.php5?PanelID=2333 Cubero, Carlo & Barone, Enrico & Runnel, Pille. 2014. European Association of Social Anthropology Film Programme. Tallinn, Estonia. Accessed June 2, 2016. http://www.easaonline.org/conferences/easa2014/films.shtml Cubero, Carlo & Barone, Enrico. 2014. Pasaules Filmu FestivƗls. Riga, Latvia. Accessed June 2, 2016. http://www.culture.lv/?s=248&id=22545&setl=2 Margaret Mead Film Festival & Anthology Film Archives. 2013. Dennis O’Rourke Tribute. Accessed June 2, 2016. http://www.amnh.org/explore/margaret-mead-film-festival/historyarchives/margaret-mead-film-festival-2013/films-a-z/dennis-o-rourketribute

I.II. CASE STUDIES

CHAPTER 5 BETWEEN FAMILIAR AND UNFAMILIAR. ETHNOGRAPHIC FILMS IN THE FESTIVAL DEI POPOLI VITTORIO IERVESE

To adopt a metaphor that is rather well known in the field of psychology and social sciences, every festival constructs a map of its own that defines the manner in which it orients itself in the territory referred to (Korzybski 1941). Given that the world in which a film festival exists is infinitely complex, it is not possible to orient oneself in it without reducing this complexity (Luhmann 1995). Maps are a form of selection and symbolisation, governed by a set of conventions that aim to communicate a sense of a territory. Reducing complexity is not only a theoretical problem but also a practical one, because every film festival is forced to reduce complexity in order to survive (Luhmann 1990). Complexity is reduced and at the same time reproduced by each operation of selection. To put these concepts into practice concretely, we need only keep in mind the numerous strategic choices that a film festival can make, selecting from the redundancy of options existing at the time when one must decide the direction to be given to a competition, which films to choose, how to present them, the priorities to be set for one’s actions, which compromises to accept, the various figures to invite, the types of relationships to consolidate with the audience, and so on. The success and more generally the sense of a festival’s project lies precisely in the space between the territory and the map (Bateson 1972). In this sense, film festivals perform an essential mediation between the various entities and fields precisely by supplying maps that make it possible to explore parts of the territory that may or may not be well known, and even help to construct parts of the territory. In this manner, festivals can be considered to be instruments of mediation and catalysing instruments within the film world, putting film directors and scholars (but also producers, audience, journalists, students,

128

Chapter 5

etc.) in contact and connection with each other (e.g. Iordanova and Torchin 2012). At least this is what happened to the Festival dei Popoli in the period from 1959 to the present. This paper aims to explore, with the tools and from the perspective of a researcher and member of a selection committee, the relationship between documentary films and ethnography through the long experience of the Festival dei Popoli (FdP hereafter), one of the first film festivals focused on ethnographic films. The FdP is a festival that has become a place of risk, where the map and the territory are drawn together.

Familiarizing the Unfamiliar: The Role of Film Festivals Despite the common ground they share, deep disagreement emerges between filmmakers and researchers about the different documentary (and ethnographic) filmmaking methods. For example, both Richard Leacock and Jean Rouch, two of the main pioneers of Direct Cinema and Cinéma Vérité, claimed Robert Flaherty as a legitimising figure, but they used different approaches and methods to reach the same objective of a cinema that establishes “direct and authentic contact with lived reality”: Rouch criticised Leacock for his lack of reflexivity […]. Rouch said Leacock was in fact “selling Coca Cola to the world” that is reproducing cultural stereotypes while pretending not to. […] [On the other hand, Leacock] claimed that […] Rouch was “forcing meaning and interpretation”, imposing preconceived ideas (Van Cauwenberge 2013, 191).

It is in the profundity, intensity and accuracy of the relationship between cultural orientations, aims and methods of documentary filmmaking that we can identify the “ethnograficness” or, in other terms, the quality of an ethnographic film. But looking at this relationship means also affirming that every ethnography constitutes rather than represents reality, and is a social construction in which the observed reality is interpreted and storied, through different media (oral telling and written documents, but also photos and films). Every ethnography, as well ethnographic films, can be considered as the attempt to reintroduce the unfamiliar (the other) into the familiar (ethnographic categories or taxonomies) (see Shklovsky 1998, 16). Traditionally, the symbolic function of using familiar terms to cope with the unfamiliar has been the province of religion (Luhmann 2000), but since early modern times we have witnessed a transformation of historical semantics and a consequent shift from “cosmology to technology”. In

Ethnographic Films in the Festival dei Popoli

129

other words, besides religion, symbols and scientific categories represent the distinction between familiar and unfamiliar within the familiar world. On the other hand, the purpose of modern and contemporary art is to “impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known” (Shklovsky 1998, 16). To accomplish this, art makes objects, persons, social relations, landscapes, and so on, “unfamiliar”. Art, in other words, has the power to make our process of seeing less habitual. This effect or property of art, to see things anew, was given a name in a 1917 essay by the Russian literary theorist Viktor Shklovsky. He called it “defamiliarisation” (ibid.).1 Familiarisation and defamiliarisation are two different approaches to dealing with otherness in scientific as well as artistic works. For example, according to Comolli, “the utopia of Direct Cinema […] lies exactly in trying to ‘(re)familiarise’ film, to bring it back to the simplicity of its beginnings, and to mix it back with daily life” (Comolli 2006, 139). All ethnographic films by their nature involve defamiliarisation, in that they bring about in the viewer a sympathetic understanding of the world of others, taking one outside one’s familiar world. But in some masterpieces, the depth and richness with which one enters the experiences of others can truly widen one’s sense of being. These are the films that the FdP has persistently and obstinately chased all its life. From the beginning, the FdP positioned itself in the midst of a turning point in the history of film forms–and not only those specific to documentaries. Technical experimentation and theoretical debates, linguistic innovations and new forms of authorship converged at this point. Therefore, from the beginning the debate about ethnographic cinema inside the FdP was based upon the familiarisation of the unfamiliar or, conversely, the unfamiliarisation of the familiar.

Festival dei Popoli between Scientific Conservatism and Modern Hybridisation Dividing the more than 56 years of history of the Festival dei Popoli into separate stages may certainly involve somewhat forced interpretations, and there is a risk of simplifying something that is decidedly more complex (Tasselli 1982). It is more important here to draw from this rich experience to identify the interplay between familiarisation and defamiliarisation in all these years. 1

Shklovsky’s concept of defamiliarisation can also be compared to Jacques Derrida’s concept of différance or to Bertold Brecht’s concept of Verfremdungseffekt (“alienation effect”).

130

Chapter 5

Florence, 1959: a group of humanities scholars, anthropologists, sociologists, ethnologists and media specialists found a not-for-profit organisation named the Festival dei Popoli. At the end of this same year, the scholars organise the first edition of a festival held from 14 to 20 December, to which they give an odd and complicated subtitle: An International Retrospective on Ethnographic and Sociological Film.

Fig. 5–1. Poster of the 1962 edition of the Festival dei Popoli. Image: courtesy of Festival dei Popoli.

Ethnographic Films in the Festival dei Popoli

131

A glance at the composition of the jury for the first festival suffices to indicate the presence of heterogeneity and freedom from the start. Ernesto De Martino, Edgar Morin, Jean Rouch and Cesare Zavattini appear among the members of the first jury: a panel that represents a compendium of the various possibilities for the use of audiovisual means and a statement on interdisciplinarity (Festival dei Popoli catalogue 1959) . At the time of the first edition of the FdP, Jean Rouch had just made Moi, un noir (Me, A Black Man, 1958), an audacious hybridisation of ethnographic documentary film with an improvised fictional plot outline and the creation of recognisable characters. A few years earlier, Edgar Morin had published his famous study Le Cinéma, ou l’homme imaginaire (The Cinema, or The Imaginary Man, 1956), in which he addresses the relationship between cinema, imagination and consciousness with a precise “non-realistic” description of this connection. Cesare Zavattini was already an accomplished screenwriter, having written several masterpieces of Italian neorealism. However, he was also a tireless innovator who considered film as a flexible and popular art form, which he would have liked to bend to the purposes of the civil renewal of society, saving it from market pandering. Ernesto De Martino (1908-1965) was one of the most important Italian social anthropology and religious studies scholar. During his field research in Southern Italy and on Sardinia he observed rituals of a “mondo antico” and “mondo magico” that can be traced back to shamanistic ideas persevering even in light of Ancient Greece’s cultural legacy. De Martino recorded his field research using both phono- and photographic technology, as well as film. The concept of “presence,” introduced by De Martino (1948 and 1977), perhaps provides the best summary of this founding stage of the FdP. De Martino speaks of “presence” as the ability to keep in one’s consciousness the memories and experiences needed to respond adequately to a given historical situation, actively participating in it through personal initiative and moving beyond it through action. Presence thus means being there (e.g. Heidegger’s “Da-sein”) as persons of sense, in a context of sense. There are moments, De Martino maintains, in which a profound “crisis of presence” appears. In such cases, rites help people manage this crisis of presence through encoded, collective behaviours. An intense debate broke out at the festival of 1962, between those who wanted to privilege the scientific documentary genre, focused on representation held to be objective and true-to-life, and those who preferred instead to focus more on the various forms of the construction of reality and the hybridisation of genres. That same year a special Colloquio

132

Chapter 5

Internazionale sul film etnografico e sociologico (International Conference on Ethnographic and Sociological Film, Florence, December 12-15, 1962) was organised, but did not lead to any points of agreement. The great discussions at that time actually dealt with this issue: How to pick a scientifically reliable movie that is also at the same time “cinema”? According to Seppilli: Initially the festival was much more focused on a selection of “ethnographical” films, meaning that it concentrated on the extra-European world, especially due to the need for information on unknown places and unknown situations. Consider that the festival was moving its first steps when television was at its beginnings and it did not offer that space for information which is its normal standard nowadays; in this way, the festival played an important informative function until 1968, when it reached its climax (Seppilli in Dottorini 2009, 123).

In more general terms, until the 1970s two perspectives coexisted, granting radically different roles to ethnographic film. Firstly, rather than investigating more urgent and pressing contemporary phenomena as some members would have preferred, the films presented in the early stages of the FdP tended to have a “conservative” approach, that is, they neglected the processes of hybridisation and change in favour of the objective recording of ethnic identity set in jeopardy by the phenomena of modernisation and globalisation. In academic terms, these cases are known as “salvage ethnography” (Clifford 1989) or “urgent anthropology”, indicating that an ethnic anthropological study should function to document and protect cultural diversity. Secondly, for other members of the FdP the term “ethnography” referred to a method of research more than a cultural exoticism of the subject matter. Thus, ethnography filmmaking is important because it places the researcher/filmmaker at the centre of the production of knowledge through images. Emblematic of this divergence inside the FdP was the film awarded as best documentary in the first competition: The Hunters (1957) by John Marshall and Robert Gardner. This film on four !Kung men of a primitive hunting society was later accused (and the same happened with Dead Birds awarded with the Marzocco d’oro in 1963) of not being sufficiently anthropologically researched, and being too altered by means of editing, staging, soundsyncing and in general: “colored by so many subtle fictional pretensions and artistic ornamentations that it has surrendered most of its usefulness as a socially scientific document” (Mischler 1985, 669). This critique suggested that researchers/filmmakers working on familiar territory (socially scientific field) could elicit greater understanding because cultural, epistemic, aesthetic and linguistic barriers do not have to be

Ethnographic Films in the Festival dei Popoli

133

negotiated with the public. On the other hand, interpretive research and creative documentaries aim to investigate the invisibility of everyday life, working in “a partial transparency that enables both filmmaker and spectator–through instruments–to perceive, express, and communicatively share the world” (Sobchack 1992, 194). Another good example of the distinction between familiarity and unfamiliarity is Silent Minority (1981), a film by Nigel Evans awarded at the 22nd FdP. Considered too “harrowing” by some viewers, part polemic and part narrative by others, Silent Minority came just before the transitioning of the British mental health system from an asylum-based system to one of care in the community. British Health Minister Sir George Young attacked the film as not being a true representation of the British mental health system and after the screening in Florence Nigel Evans affirmed that the films was not a “true representation” because it aimed to deconstruct the reality, or in other words to activate a process of exploring the categories that tradition has imposed and the history behind them (Festival dei Popoli 1981). The goal of Evan’s film was less to explain or illustrate than to guide viewers to share an experience that has brought about more experiences.

Promoting Reflection and Engaging the Audience The constant action of reflection accompanying the organisation of the screenings and the competition was not only a result of the intention of the organisers of FdP, but also the festival’s response to numerous perturbations coming from the outside. For example, in response to objections as to the coherence and quality of the films selected in previous years from local critics and the audience, a public meeting was organised in 1966 to discuss the films selected and not selected by the festival. Organised by the Comité International du Film Ethnographique et Sociologique (CIFES, International Committee of Ethnographic and Sociological Film), the meeting was also an important moment of reflexivity, in which experts and non-experts participated with the intention of re-establishing in a shared vision the festival’s selection priorities and criteria. The audience, consisting of a broader public (university students, scholars, urban residents, etc.), thus became an active participant, challenging the positions of the festival and influencing its decisions. One of the main criticisms against the FdP was that the competition was run on an equal, individualistic and middle-class level. And, worst, it transformed cinematographic research into a marketplace. But what was really questioned was the idea of “confrontation”:

134

Chapter 5 the atmosphere was so much politicized, that we didn’t even have a real theoretical and methodological discussion on the cinematographic form of political documentary. I remember that the real issue was all about screening those movies, as a real political stance, regardless of their peculiarities. We held but a very few real theoretical debates. Nonetheless it was a period of great interest, great vitality and energy, bringing afterwards to very different outcomes. Many of the 1960s political protesters ended up on the other side later on (Dottorini 2009, 126).

The festival system responded to these requests by rethinking its practices and narratives. Above all, there was the decision to drop the 1968 competition with the intention of: 1) getting away from the competitive way of thinking implicit in all competitions and 2) motivating the production and dissemination of lesser known works and authors that were not within a type of cinema “made hypertrophic by a greedy and cynical industry, in the late 1950s film became a burdensome, expensive, distant, and contrived machine” (Comolli 2006, 139). More than a scientific or a cultural issue, ethnographic cinema became a political issue.

Fig. 5–2. Audience at the Festival dei Popoli. Image: courtesy of Festival dei Popoli.

The political act was put before the cultural and scientific act, subordinating the elements of artistic and scientific quality in films. At the same time as the elimination of the competition in 1968, the establishment

Ethnographic Films in the Festival dei Popoli

135

of a jury made up of the general public was accepted, and, although temporarily, this “people’s choice” substituted the role of the jury and the judgment of merit with heated discussions focused on the political role of the films presented. This was an agitated but stimulating stage, in which the festival was giving testimony, publicly affirming its participation in the emerging debate of the times. This narrative entailed further decisions, such as that of defying censorship and taking the risk of screening films held to be “questionable” or even films that had been banned. This was the case of a protest film against the war in Le ciel, la terre (The Threatening Sky) by Joris Ivens, filmed in 1966. The film, which had been banned for a few years, was shown during the 1968 FdP, resulting in the police attempting to confiscate the copy that had arrived in Florence and the director being conducted to police headquarters. Even important films in terms of their aesthetic value and innovative cinematic language, such as Marat/Sade (1966) by Peter Brook or Titicut Follies (1967) by Frederick Wiseman, were only shown in Florence in the wake of public protests against censorship and against pressure exerted by the establishment. In 1970s, the FdP underwent a transformation that mirrored what was happening in Italian society (and not only in Italy) at that time. However, there were also contingent local events that were to influence the life of the festival. In this same period, the FdP changed its subtitle to Rassegna Internazionale del film di documentazione sociale (International Review of Social Documentary Film), in keeping with the new name taken by the Istituto Italiano per il Film di Documentazione Sociale (Italian Institute for Social Documentary Film). This is one of the more evident signs of the stage of reflection of that time: the framework of academic disciplines was being left behind in favour of an approach open to broader issues, which film, with its particular forms, could contribute to and address. By renaming itself, the festival took on a clear position in terms of the present reality. In fact, it set the objective of offering an “overview”, by means of documentary films, opening up “to one and all [...] the commitment to processing critical judgment” (Zilletti 1969, 21). The need to take stock of the situation and for a general rethinking was explicitly declared at the 12th edition of the festival (Graziosi and Zilletti 1971). For this reason, works from the festivals of preceding years were re-proposed, as if a perspective were possible only through a retrospective.

136

Chapter 5

The Map and the Territory Ethnographic films have often highlighted how some of the most seemingly mundane aspects of life become rooted in politics. The political ethnographic gaze calls into question many of the assumptions of traditional political studies, and calls for a significant re-theorisation. This process left indelible marks on the identity of the FdP that have remained until today. The framework of academic disciplines was left behind in favour of an approach open to broader issues with a strong political engagement. The charge of the real includes both screen and viewer, restructuring their parallel worlds not only as coextensive but also as ethically implicated each in the other: One that calls forth not only response but also responsibility […] It engages our awareness not only of the existential consequences of representation but also our own ethical implication in representation. It remands us reflexively to ourselves as embodied, culturally knowledgeable, and socially invested viewers (Sobchack 2004, 284).

From this perspective, ethnographic films promote social participation, social engagement and individual, deep involvement. Take the case of The Leader, His Driver and the Driver’s Wife (Nick Broomfield, US, 1991), a film that won the Gian Paolo Paoli Award for the best ethnographicanthropological documentary at the 32nd FdP. Made in 1991 during a pivotal moment in South African history, Nick Broomfield’s critically acclaimed film chronicles the collapse of the white supremacist Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging party during the last days of the apartheid regime. For the majority of the film Broomfield was unable to get an interview with the leader himself and his attention was drawn to his driver and his wife, hence the title. Even though nothing goes according to the director’s plan, this film gives spectators the opportunity to get into an absurd microcosm where racism is the only rule. It is a film in search of an ethnography, a dark and heavy cinematic experience in which spectators become active participants. This idea is clearly explained by J.P. Sniadecki and V. Paravel, directors of Foreign Parts, a 80-minute documentary film produced with the support of Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab and awarded at the 53rd FdP “For its courage of questioning the traditional approach of anthropological research” (extract of the motivation of the International Jury of the Festival dei Popoli 2012):

Ethnographic Films in the Festival dei Popoli

137

In short, our approach in Foreign Parts asks the viewer to be an active participant in the film’s meaning rather than passive recipient of information. […] To my mind, films should enact and embody an encounter rather than just report on one after the fact (Alvarez 2012).

Fig. 5–3. Film screening at the 56 edition of the Festival dei Popoli. Image: courtesy of Festival dei Popoli.

In recent years the FdP has adapted to what appears to be a common trend among contemporary international festivals, that is, the transition from being events to cultural institutes with a plurality of functions (Vallejo 2014). In 2016 the FdP has received approximately 2,000 new films from all parts of the world, and has selected works not only in a spirit of competition, but also so as to follow them on their path of achievement and development. The FdP has gone beyond the festival, that is, it has extended its gaze beyond the actual days of the competition and the presentation of films, planning activities that are carried out year-round. A market project has been started (Doc at Work–Industry),2 the training 2

Since 2014 FdP has created Doc at Work, a laboratory of ideas open to anyone who wants to learn all about documentaries. The program includes meetings with the authors attending the festival, presentation of books, DVDs and events, panel discussions and debates, workshops for those who want to deepen their knowledge in various aspects of film technique or with the rules of the market. Doc at Work– Industry is a selection of films in production or rough-cut presented to an audience of international experts (distributors, commissioning editors and film buyers) with the purpose of co-financing and sales.

138

Chapter 5

project (Doc at Work–Training) has been strengthened, projects dealing with distribution are underway (with the series of Popoli.doc DVDs) and publications (with the journal Quaderno del Cinemareale), and new relationships have been developed with national and international entities. The FdP is now seeking to follow the entire “supply chain” of film production, from supporting a new idea to the distribution of a finished work. In between, there is an ongoing dialogue with the public and the experts, in an effort to activate a process that creates value and meaning. To paraphrase Luhmann (2000, 398), festivals are become sites of interpenetration and connectivity between different societal systems (economy, education, religion, arts, etc.). Therefore, it is no longer possible to see a festival only as a festive moment or a showcase for works created as “closed” products for use in the darkness of a movie theatre.

Conclusions “Form is when the substance rises to the surface,” says Victor Hugo, a principle that is as suited to documentary film as it is to a festival that proposes and presents films of this type. To give shape or form to something is to separate it from the indistinct rest of it and thereby make it communicable, that is, the process of familiarisation of the unfamiliar. Against this backdrop, it is possible to affirm that “documentary is less a thing than an experience” (Sobchack 1999, 241), so that the potential existential connections made between events or people portrayed are dependent on our capacity to draw connections between different areas of lived and observed experience. To move together, to accompany, to live with: this is what familiarises cinema. And this is what makes it free, noncoded and indeed open. Thus, the cinema does not arrange the world, but makes itself available to the world. It accepts the world’s twofold uncertainty, the uncertainty of life as it takes place before you and the uncertainty of the film image, no longer obliged to foresee the spots where the camera should be placed and the duration of speech in advance. Richard Leacock, one of the fathers of documentary cinema, discusses in one of his writings the unique feeling of growing up in the Canary Islands, and how it has been difficult to try and convey “the feeling of being there” (Leacock 1997) through film. His gaze, a paradigm of much modern film, is based exactly on this, on the search for an image that can offer the experience of an event–a “being together” involving both the one filming and the one being filmed: “Get to know your subject if possible in order to generate some kind of mutual respect, if not friendship” (ibid.). The real, then, is whatever opens up in the dimension of an event, an

Ethnographic Films in the Festival dei Popoli

139

encounter. An event involves both filmer and filmed, beyond any naïve attempt to cancel one’s gaze. On the other hand, a festival such as the Festival dei Popoli can be described as a “contingency formula” (Luhmann 2000) that is produced within the system of art (e.g. visual art), economy (e.g. film industry) and science (e.g. university). Festivals like the FdP are contingency formulas because they make possible the relation of oneself to the abundance of opportunities. Stretching De Martino’s concept of “presence”, FdP can be conceived of as a collective rite that deals with disorientation in the world, or in other words an opportunity to “familiarise the unfamiliar” or to “unfamiliarise the familiar”. Most films selected by the FdP deal with wandering and getting to some place that you can only reach together: the film director and the character (and the viewer) swapping roles, often indistinguishably. From this perspective, the opposition between subjectivity and objectivity or between reality and make-believe becomes less interesting, although it has often engaged those who are involved with film (and images in general) as much as those engaged in social research. From this perspective, documentary cinema is no longer an “instrument for learning the truth” (Folchi and Simonacci 1962, 31) but a way “to detach a secondary word from the embroiled primary words provided by the world, history, and one’s existence” (Barthes 1972, 75). Maps stretch out, even beyond the borders established by historical or critical labels. One can also think of the Festival dei Popoli as an ongoing attempt to bring a map into focus, taking care of the territory: discovering that substance and surface are indissolubly interconnected by a mutually dependent relationship.

Works Cited Alvarez, Patricia. 2012. “Interview with Véréna Paravel and J.P. Sniadecki.” Visual and New Media Review, Cultural Anthropology website. Accessed April 10, 2016. http://www.culanth.org/fieldsights/33-interview-with-Véréna-paraveland-j-p-sniadecki. Barthes, Roland. 1972. Critical Essays. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Bateson, Gregory. 1972. Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Clifford, James. 1989. “The Others: Beyond the ‘Salvage’ Paradigm.” Third Text 3(6): 73–78.

140

Chapter 5

Comolli, Jean-Louis. 2006. Vedere e potere. Il cinema, il documentario e l’innocenza perduta. Rome: Donzelli. De Martino, Ernesto. 1948. Il mondo magico. Prolegomeni a una storia del magismo. Turin: Einaudi. —. 1977. La fine del mondo. Contributo all’analisi delle apocalissi culturali, edited by Clara Gallini. Turin: Einaudi. Dottorini, Daniele, ed. 2009. “On Essays and Novels: The Forms of Documentary. A Conversation with Tullio Seppilli.” In Festival dei Popoli, catalogue of the 50th edition. Florence: Festival dei Popoli. Folchi, Alberto, and Mario Simonacci, eds. 1962. “III Rassegna del film etnografico e sociologico.” In Festival dei Popoli, catalogue. Florence: Festival dei Popoli. Graziosi, Paolo and Ugo Zilletti, eds. 1971. “12 Rassegna del film etnografico e sociologico.” In Festival dei Popoli, catalogue. Florence: Festival dei Popoli. Korzybski, Alfred. 1941. Science and Sanity. New York: Science Press. Iordanova, Dina, and Leshu Torchin, eds. 2012. Film Festival Yearbook 4: Film Festivals and Activism. St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies. Leacock, Robert. 2009[1997]. “A Search for the Feeling of Being There (1997).” In Festival dei Popoli, catalogue of the 50th edition. Florence: Festival dei Popoli. Luhmann, Niklas (2000) “Familiarity, Confidence, Trust: Problems and Alternatives.” In Trust: Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations, edited by Diego Gambetta (electronic edition), 94–107. Oxford: Department of Sociology, University of Oxford. Accessed April 10, 2016. http://www.sociology.ox.ac.uk/papers/luhmann94-107.pdf —. 1990. Soziologische Aufklärung 5. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. —. 1995. Social Systems. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Mannay, Dawn. 2010. “Making the Familiar Strange: Can Visual Research Methods Render the Familiar Setting More Perceptible?” Qualitative Research 10:91–111. Mischler, Craig. 1985. “Narrativity and Metaphor in Ethnographic Film: A Critique of Robert Gardner’s Dead Birds.” American Anthropologist 87:68–72. Morin, Edgar. 1956. Le Cinéma, ou l’homme imaginaire. Paris: Editions de Minuit. Shklovsky, Viktor. 1998. “Art as Technique.” In Literary Theory: An Anthology, edited by Julie Rivkin, and Michael Ryan, 15–21. Malden: Blackwell. Shukman, Henry. 2014. “The Unfamiliar Familiar.” Tricycle: The

Ethnographic Films in the Festival dei Popoli

141

Buddhist Review 24(1). Sobchack, Vivian. 1992. The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience. Princeton: Princeton University Press. —. 1999. “Toward a Phenomenology of Non-Fictional Experience.” In Collecting Visible Evidence, edited by Michael Renov, and Jane Gaines, 241–254. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. —. 2004. Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press. Tasselli, Maria Pia. 1982. Il Cinema dell’uomo. Festival dei Popoli (19591981). Rome: Bulzoni. Vallejo, Aida. 2014. “Industry Sections. Documentary Film Festivals between Production and Distribution.” Iluminace. Journal of Film Theory, History, and Aesthetics 26(1):65–82. Van Cauwenberge, Genevieve. 2013. “Cinéma Vérité: Vertov Revisited.” In The Documentary Film Book, edited by Brian Winston, 189–198. London: British Film Institute/ Palgrave. Zilletti, Ugo. 1969. In Festival dei Popoli. Catalogo del Festival dei Popoli. Florence: Festival dei Popoli. Festival catalogues 1959. Catalogo del 1° Festival dei Popoli. Florence: Festival dei Popoli. 1969. Catalogo del 10° Festival dei Popoli. Florence: Festival dei Popoli. 1971. Catalogo del 12° Festival dei Popoli. Florence: Festival dei Popoli. 1981. Catalogo del 22° Festival dei Popoli. Florence: Festival dei Popoli. 2009. Catalogo del 50° Festival dei Popoli. Florence: Festival dei Popoli. 2012. Catalogo del 53° Festival dei Popoli. Florence: Festival dei Popoli.

CHAPTER 6 TEMPLE UNIVERSITY’S CONFERENCES ON VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY. A FIRST PERSON, CLEARLY BIASED REPORT ON AN EXPERIMENT JAY RUBY

From 1968 to 1980, I organised Visual Anthropology conferences at Temple University in Philadelphia. Condensing the contents of these events is a daunting task. To those left out of this article, I offer my apologies. For those interested in more detail, the complete programs for each conference are accessible on-line.1 The purpose of this essay is to describe these conferences and demonstrate their uniqueness when compared to other ethnographic film festivals. Over a twelve-year period, I produced:2 Table 6-1. List of COVA conferences 1968 1969 1

Festival of Anthropological Film (see Fig. 6–1.) Anthropological Film Festival

The complete programs for each conference can be found at: http://astro.temple.edu/~ruby/wava/temple/ 2 Readers will note that the name of the event changed over time. At first I used the term “festival”, a designation that is still today the most frequently used for events that deal with ethnographic film. I then moved to “conference” and finally to Conference on Visual Anthropology. I dislike the term festival because, in the film world, festivals are market-oriented places where filmmakers seek to promote their films, journalists try to find the “hot” new films to write about, distributors look for money-making films to buy and television agents look for properties to acquire. As a scholar and academic, I wished to remove anthropological films from the business of film and Hollywood. Again, I find myself holding a minority opinion on this subject since these so-called ethnographic film events are still called festivals.

144

1970 1971 1972 1974 1976 1978 1980

Chapter 6

The Human Condition: A Colloquium on Anthropological and Documentary Films Anthropological and Documentary Film Conference The Fifth Annual Anthropological and Documentary Film Conference Conference on Visual Anthropology Conference on Visual Anthropology Conference on Visual Anthropology Conference on Visual Anthropology

The Anthropology and the Radio-Television-Film departments and Program in Ethnographic Film3 sponsored these events. Faculty, staff and students all provided invaluable and unpaid assistance. A small annual university award covered some expenses. For the rest, I creatively borrowed from unnamed sources. The events were held in a building with an auditorium and classrooms that were converted into screening rooms and photographic exhibits. Initially, the people who came to these events were Temple students and faculty and folks from the greater Philadelphia area. Through time, the audience grew to 500-600 and became international. The conferences had wall-to-wall screenings, making it impossible to see everything. To partially relieve that frustration, I had most films screened twice. Since these events were designed as an opportunity for image-makers and anthropologists to exchange ideas and opinions, a free screening room was offered. Once a reservation was made, a filmmaker announced that he/she was showing a film not on the program and hoped to attract an audience.

3

PIEF came into existence under a Wenner-Gren grant in 1966. The original directors were Asen Balikci and Robert Gardner with the assistance of Karl Heider, Margaret Mead, Walter Goldschmidt, Sol Tax and Colin Young. The original intention was to encourage teaching, training, and production of ethnographic films. It was a committee of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and the US representative in the Comité international du Film ethnographique (founded in 1958). PIEF published Karl Heider’s Film For Anthropological Teaching and encouraged the addition of films to the AAA annual meetings. In 1969, I was appointed PIEF’s Executive Secretary and obtained a three-year operating grant from The Wenner-Gren Foundation. With the assistance of Carroll Williams (Anthropology Film Center), I edited the PIEF Newsletter, assumed the responsibility for film screenings at the AAA meeting and upgraded Heider’s Films For Anthropological Teaching. In 1973, PIEF became the Society for the Anthropology of Visual Communication.

Temple University’s Conferences on Visual Anthropology

145

Ethnographic Film in the US from 1968 to 1980 Let me try to reconstruct the state of ethnographic film in the US during the period of the conferences (Ruby 2002; Banks and Ruby 2001). Classrooms and museums were the most common places to see ethnographic films. The practice of using films to teach introductory classes in cultural anthropology became commonplace by the 1970s. Starting in 1963, the American Anthropological Association began showing films during their annual meetings. By 1968, film programs had become a regular feature and have continued until today. In the same year, John Marshall and Tim Asch founded Documentary Educational Resources, first as a way to promote and sell their films. Through time, DER became the largest ethnographic film distributor in the world. The Robert Flaherty Film Seminar (begun in 1959) is devoted to all forms of independent films. While the emphasis has always been on the documentary, they regularly show ethnographic films. In 1976, the American Museum of Natural History created the Margaret Mead Film Festival. At this time, there were few opportunities for anthropologists to learn to create films on their own–hence the popularity of the idea of a collaboration between a professional filmmaker and an anthropologist. UCLA’s Ethnographic Film Program was created in 1966. Film students were matched with anthropology students to collaborate on making a film. While David and Judith MacDougall graduated from this program, none of the anthropology students went on to make films. The program ended in the early 1970s. Carroll Williams started the Anthropology Film Center in the late 1960s. An independent school, it offered a one-year course of study. Towards the end of 1973, Temple University developed a Master’s in Visual Anthropology in which students spent one year learning anthropology at Temple and one year learning film production with Carroll Williams. To my knowledge, neither the school itself nor Temple’s program produced any anthropological filmmakers. 1972 marked the beginning of a change in how some US anthropologists viewed ethnographic film. I was able to obtain funds from the National Science Foundation to sponsor a Summer Institute in Visual Anthropology with Sol Worth, Karl Heider and Carroll Williams. During this time, Worth and I became increasingly convinced that “an anthropology of visual communication” approach (Gross and Ruby 2014) was the best way to develop a theory that included all pictorial and visual forms. As a consequence of this summer institute we created the Society for the Anthropology of Visual Communication to replace PIEF (Program in

146

Chapter 6

Ethnographic Film) thereby offering a theoretical “umbrella” under which ethnographic film could reside. PIEF’s newsletter became a scholarly journal, Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication, and I started calling my events “The Conference on Visual Anthropology”. While the debate over whether or not an anthropology of visual communication approach is the best way to theorize about ethnographic film continues to this day, no one has offered an alternative theory (Ruby 2014). I cannot prove or disprove my contention that these conferences played a role in this theoretical shift. However, given my role in this movement and the fact that Richard Chalfen and Sol Worth were also active participants in the conferences and advocates for the idea, it seems logical that our ideas as presented through discussions, sessions and symposia would have some impact on the hundreds of conference attendees.

Fig. 6–1. Poster of the first edition of the Anthropological Film Festival at Temple University (1968). Photo: Jay Ruby ©.

Temple University’s Conferences on Visual Anthropology

147

I had few models to emulate. The only somewhat similar event in the US was the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, started in 1959. The seminars’ format was to screen documentaries and other films made outside and against the dominant Hollywood model and to hold discussions, often with the filmmaker present. It was an intense week during which the participants sequestered themselves and concentrated completely on seeing films and talking about them. While I personally enjoyed the experiences when I attended the 1967 seminar, the model was not practical for a university setting. I was vaguely aware of the Festival del Popoli, held in Florence, Italy, founded in 1959. In addition to film screenings, they offered conferences and roundtable discussions. I can find no programs for this early period but I was able to determine that John Marshall’s The Hunters was awarded the Medaglia d’Oro prize in 1957 and these films were also shown: Rouch and Morin’s Chronicle of A Summer (1961); Robert Gardner’s Dead Birds (1963). Anthropologist John Adair was present when the films made by Navahos for the WorthAdair project were screened in 1967 and finally, Tim Asch’s The Feast was featured in 1970 (De Heusch 2007). While the Venice film festival is the oldest event of its kind (1932), it also seems to lack a comprehensive history. There appeared to be an ongoing interest in documentary/ ethnographic films as Flaherty’s Man of Aran was awarded a Golden Lion in 1934. A very incomplete list of ethnographic films shown at Venice includes: Rouch’s Les Maîtres Fous in 1955, Dead Birds that won a Gran Premio “Marzocco d’Oro,” Ian Dunlop’s Desert People that won a Golden Eagle in 1967, Roger Sandall’s Pintubi Revisit Yumari in 1971 and David Macdougall’s first film To Live with Herds won the Grand Prix “Venezia Genti” in 1971. Since 1972 the festival has offered two prizes, Venezia Genti-Prix Flaherty and Venezia Genti-Prix Vertov, that would appear to be devoted to the documentary and possibly ethnographic films, but I can locate no further information or any lists of the winners. The Educational Film Librarians Association held an annual American Film Festival, also beginning in 1959, where some ethnographic films were screened but the purpose of the festival was to provide film librarians with access to films that they might purchase. The American Anthropological Association (AAA) started showing films at their 1963 meeting. By 1968, the program had been expanded, abstracts of the films were printed in the program and repeat screenings offered – an idea I borrowed. It was not until the early 1970s that other European festivals emerged and the Margaret Mead Festival did not emerge until 1977.

148

Chapter 6

A Discussion of the Films/Videos Shown4 While films about archaeology, physical anthropology and linguistics were screened at COVA, this article will emphasize the socio-cultural. Some programs were organised around geo-cultural areas such as “Films about Africa”, while others revolved around a particular idea such as “Reflexive Films.” The following is a review of some of the films shown.

Anthropological Films5 During these conferences, works from filmmakers considered in the US to be seminal for the development of an anthropological cinema were offered–starting with Robert Flaherty. 6 While Flaherty is considered by most historians to be the “father” of both ethnographic films and the documentary, the less well-known Dziga Vertov should share that honor because of his seminal work Man With a Movie Camera (1929), the first reflexive documentary/art film. When Rouch was asked who his primary influences were, his response was Flaherty and Vertov. In addition to Man With a Movie Camera, Vertov’s Enthusiasm (1931), the first Soviet sound film was screened. This historical perspective was further expanded with Franz Boas’ The Kwakiutal of British Columbia (1929) and Edward Curtis’ In The Land of the Head Hunters (1914) and “A Tribute to Margaret Mead” where Balinese research films made with Gregory Bateson were offered with biographical films about Mead–Craig Gilbert’s Margaret Mead’s New Guinea Journal (1968) and Jean Rouch’s Portrait of a Friend (1978). In the 1970s, the significance of Jean Rouch’s work was just beginning to be understood in the US. My conferences offered his Lion Hunters (1965), Les Maîtres Fous (1955), Jaguar (1955), Funerailles a Bongo– 4

In 1971, we added videotape productions–a sign that moving picture production was about to be transformed from 16 mm film that was very expensive and required a great deal of skill to video that became less and less costly and required little technical training. This transformation opened up the possibility that anthropologists could become their own filmmakers and did not have to collaborate with a professional filmmaker. 5 A discussion about what constitutes an “ethnographic” or an “anthropological” film is outside the purview of this article. Those interested in reading about my position on this subject should see Picturing Culture (Ruby 2000). 6 Prior to the first festival, I organised a program of film screenings and discussion that was aired on the local Public Television Station. It has the now-embarrassing title “The Savage and the Cinema.” The panelists were Edmund Carpenter, Robert Gardner, John Szwed, Karl Heider and myself.

Temple University’s Conferences on Visual Anthropology

149

Anai Dolo 1848-1970 (1979) and Tourou et Bitti (1971). An interesting consequence of Rouch’s Chronicle of a Summer (1961) is that one of the principals in that film, Marceline Loridan, became a partner with Joris Ivens and produced films about China. Two were screened: Football Incident (1976) and High School 31 (1976). One of Rouch’s ideas that is often overlooked is his notion that films made by anthropologists do not have to look like what the industry would call “a good film” (that is, a work that meets the aesthetic standards of the documentary) (Rouch and Feld 2003). Having an anthropological film display important ideas should be foremost. When Rouch was challenged by someone who thought his films were “poorly” shot and edited, his response was that his critic was interested in belles vues. An example of Rouch’s idea is to be found in a film I screened, The Cows of Dolo Ken Paye, a film coproduced by anthropologist James Gibbs and filmmaker Marvin Silverman. As it was not well shot or edited, the film accidently changed direction when something unexpected happened. The anthropological information comes through loud and clear even though it is not a “good film” in the conventional sense of the word. John Marshall was the first US ethnographic filmmaker to gather international attention with The Hunters (1957). I screened some less wellknown films: Bitter Melons (1971), Debe’s Tantrum (1972), The Wasp Nest (1972), Playing with Scorpions (1972), A Rite and Passage (1972), !Kung Bushman Hunting Equipment (1972) and The Meat Fight (1974). In addition, I introduced Marshall’s filmic studies of the Pittsburgh Police, Inside Outside Station Nine (1970) and Investigation of a Hit and Run (1972). Tim Asch and Napoleon Chagnon are regarded as primary examples of how filmmakers and anthropologists work collaboratively. I screened their best-known Yanomamo films, The Feast (1970) and The Ax Fight (1975). Asch also produced some of the less well-known films we offered: Tapir Distribution (1975), A Man Called “Bee” (1974), New Tribes Mission (1975) and Ocamo is My Town (1974). At the last conference, Asch’s A Balinese Trance Séance (1979) was shown. Roger Sandall, a filmmaker with the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies produced films about Australian Aboriginal life. As the subjects of his films gained political power, the Aborigines were able to prevent some of these films from being shown to the uninitiated public. I was able to screen his films prior to these restrictions: Mulga Seed Ceremony (1967), Walbiri Ritual at Gunadari (1967), Camels and The Pitjantara (1969), Pintubi Revisit Taru Yaru (1970) and Gunabibi–An Aboriginal Fertility Cult (1968).

150

Chapter 6

Robert Gardner, who died in 2014, was a film artist who worked with several anthropologists and came into prominence with Dead Birds (1963). We screened two of his films, The Nuer (1971) and Rivers of Sand (1973). His films have generated more debate than any other ethnographic filmmaker (Ruby 1991, 3–17).

Fig. 6–2. During a coffee break at the 1968 COVA Conference. Denise O’Brien and Jay Ruby on the left and Karl Heider on the right. Photo: Jay Ruby ©.

David and Judith MacDougall were trained at UCLA’s Ethnographic Film Program. While David has no formal training in anthropology, he is regarded as perhaps the most successful autodidact and his writings have become an essential for those interested in ethnographic film (MacDougall 1998 and 2006). We screened some of their East African films, Nawi (1970), To Live With Herds (1974) and Kenya Boran (1974); two Turkana films, Lorang’s Way (1980), Wedding Camels (1980) and some Australian work, Waiting for Harry (1980), Good-bye Old Man (1977) and Takeover (1980). Asen Balicki was the anthropological consultant for the Netsilik Eskimo films. I screened his At the Caribou Crossing Place (1967) and At the Winter Sea Ice Camp (1967). The films became a cause célèbre for some US conservative politicians (Ruby 2005, 684–693).

Temple University’s Conferences on Visual Anthropology

151

The father of Japanese documentary, Junichi Ushiyama produced television series that included anthropological films as part of his “Wonderful World” series. He attended the conference in 1978 where Yasuchi Toyotomi’s The Yanomani Tribe in War and Peace and Women Warriors of the Amazon and Yasuko Ichioka’s The Trobriands, Island of Women were offered. The U.K.’s Granada Television sponsored The Disappearing World Series (1970-1991) where films were produced when an anthropologist who had recently completed his/her fieldwork worked with a film crew. Some of the resulting films were later sold to Odyssey, a US public television series. From the original series, I screened Brian Moser’s The Last of the Cuiva (1971) and Chris Curling and Melissa Llewelyn-Davies’ The Masai and Masai Women (1976). Odyssey only lasted two seasons, perhaps an indication that US audiences were not very interested in anthropology. However, Odyssey did cause John Marshall to produce N!ai: The Story of a !kung Woman screened in 1980. There have been a number of television series that purport to be about anthropology but are “exotic other” documentaries. In 1978 I screened three films from the BBC’s Tribal Eye TV Series with David Attenborough: Across The Frontiers, Behind the Mask and Sweat of the Sun. In the US, anthropological films seldom appeal to a wide audience. Barbara Myerhoff and Lynn Littman’s Number Our Days was shown at COVA in 1978 and received an Oscar as the best documentary in 1977. Jorge Prelorán was an Argentinian documentary filmmaker who was often assumed to be an anthropologist as his films deal with Argentinian folk life. We showed three of his films: Imaginero: The Image Man (1969), Arucanians of Ruca Choroy (1971) and The Araucanians of Ruca: Summer (1971).

Documentaries At every conference, I mixed ethnographic films with documentaries. In retrospect, I regret that inclusion as it perpetuated the confusion about the difference between documentaries and ethnographic/anthropological films. I have for some time argued that the terms “ethnographic or “anthropological” should be confined to films produced by professionallytrained ethnographers and anthropologists and not confused with documentaries (Ruby 2000). Examples of this problem can be seen in the “ethnographic-like” documentaries about US folk life by Les Blank–I screened two of these: Well-Spent Life (1971) and Chulas Fronteras (1976)–and California Reich (1975) by Walter Parks, a filmmaker trained

152

Chapter 6

in anthropology who became the president of Steven Sielberg’s Amblin Entertainment, and finally John Schott and E.J. Vaughn’s film, Deal (1974), a study of “Let’s Make A Deal.” Of the documentaries shown, the work of two makers seems most relevant. Frederick Wiseman learned to be a filmmaker while making his first film, Titticut Follies (1976) with Tim Asch as soundman and John Marshall as cinematographer. I screened four others: Hospital (1970), Essene (1972), Primate (1974) and High School (1968). Showing High School provided a moment of high drama. The film deals with Philadelphia’s Northeast High School. Some people in the film were unhappy with how Wiseman portrayed them and threatened legal action. A local newspaper article alerted people to an open screening that packed the auditorium with conference attendees, graduates from Northeast High School and lots of Philadelphians. I do not believe I was ever witness to such an animated discussion. Robert Drew formed a group of documentary filmmakers who were responsible for the creation of American Direct Cinema–Richard Leacock, D.A. Pennebaker, and the Maysles brothers. I was able to bring Drew to a conference in which he showed clips from some of his major films such as Primary (1960) and the Maysles’ Running Fence (1978). It is from these films that some ethnographic filmmakers have adopted their observational style.

Art/Avant garde/Experimental Films Artistic/experimental/avant garde films were added to the program beginning in 1976.7 Anthropologist Eric Michaels organised a session with videos made by artists who have worked with anthropologists: Woody and Steina Vasulka’s Codes of Electronic Imaging (1974), Nam June Paik’s Guadalcanal Requiem (1977) and Juan Downey’s Guahibos (1976). In addition, I wished to confront anthropologists with a genre independent of Hollywood and documentary practice in the hope they would understand that a truly alternative cinema was possible. These screenings included Standish Lawder’s Necrology and Dangling Participle in 1971. In 1974, Adolfas and Jonas Mekas attended the conference where 7

The relationship between anthropological and artistic filmmakers has been largely ignored; see Russell (1999), Ramey (2011) and Schnieder and Pasqualino (2014). Nevertheless, anthropologists have collaborated with film artists since the 1940s when Maya Deren studied with Gregory Bateson. They discussed working collaboratively on her film Divine Horsemen (screened in 1980). For a discussion of an anthropologist working with a video artist see also Michaels (1982).

Temple University’s Conferences on Visual Anthropology

153

I screened Going Home (1972) and Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1972). I also offered Caroline Leaf’s animated The Owl That Married the Goose (1971) based upon an Inuit legend, and anthropologically-trained film artist Chick Strand’s Cosas de mi Vida (1976) as well as Bruce Conner’s 5:10 to Dreamland (1976), and the Ant Farm’s Media Burn (1975) and The Eternal Frame (1972).

Topical Sessions The 1970s brought about a significant change in how media was produced and who could produce it. People who had traditionally been the subject of films became producers. This was made possible by the advent of video, which was less expensive and easier to use than 16 mm. Western ethnic and sexual minorities, the poor and women viewed work about themselves as inaccurate and condescending. They demanded the right to construct their own media and to critique what they regarded as misrepresentations. These new works were initially called “subject generated films.” Some anthropologists became interested in the research value of these films. One can look at home movies as a potential data about the makers. Richard Chalfen organised “The Visual Anthropology of Everyday Life: The Philadelphia Home Movie Festival” in 1976 to explore that potential. In the seventies, George Stoney was asked by the Canadian Film Board to establish the “Challenge for Change” program offering working-class people a chance to become directors. The hope was that “community television stations” would become an outlet for subject-generated works. I screened some of Stoney’s Canadian videos as well as those from Cliff Frazer’s New York Community Film Workshop, the Los Angeles Video Van Project, Appalshop and Southern Appalachian Video Ethnography Project from East Tennessee State University. A parallel and related shift occurred among non-Western peoples, labeled Indigenous Media (Ginsberg 2002). Films made by Navahos for Sol Worth (Gross and Ruby 2014) and John Adair’s study (Worth and Adair 1972) can be considered a prototype. At the 1968 festival, Worth showed the films and discussed the project. After Worth’s death, Richard Chalfen organised “A Session in Honor of Sol Worth” in 1978. Since 1974, Sarah Elder and Leonard Kamerling’s Alaska Native Heritage Film Project have produced work collaboratively with Native Americans. Several of these films were shown in the 1980s: At the Time of Whaling (1974) and On the Spring Ice (1975).

154

Chapter 6

In 1972, I organised a session titled, “A Native American Views The Filmmaker” in which Essie Parrish, a Kashia Pomo shaman, screened and discussed a sample of films made on her reservation. It was a rare opportunity to hear what the subjects of films about Native Americans thought. Protestant Christian missionaries often make films about non-western people. Since these films offer a view usually at odds with that of most anthropologists, I thought it might be interesting to screen some of them. Shorty Yeaworth, a prolific maker of missionary films, organised a session in 1978 where the following were offered: David Lebrun’s Tanka, W. Peter West’s Feet Upon the Mountains (1978) and Regions Beyond Missionary Union’s The Continuing Miracle that deals with the Dani of New Guinea, a group well known from Gardner’s Dead Birds.

Fig. 6–3. Larry Gross (left) and Jay Ruby (right) leading a discussion during COVA, 1974. “Exposing Yourself: Reflexive Films” session. Photo: Jay Ruby ©.

The advent of video and cable television in the 1970s created another radical transformation represented in several conferences: Alternative Media. This was a chance for media makers outside the production mainstream to create works and have them broadcast by community-based television stations. Given anthropology’s social mission of giving a voice to the voiceless, it seemed appropriate to explore this movement. Global Village in New York City was a pioneering organisation. I scheduled John

Temple University’s Conferences on Visual Anthropology

155

Reilly’s The Irish Tapes (1971), Julie Gustafson’s The Politics of Intimacy (1972) and Julie Gustafson and John Reilly’s Giving Birth: Four Portraits (1976), examples of this work along with videos from Jon Alpert’s Downtown Community Video Center, Grass Roots Television and the Raindance Foundation. As I was interested in making anthropologists more aware that the conventions of documentary realism caused audiences to believe in the “reality” of what they were seeing, I showed some “fake” documentaries and ethnofiction including Mitchell Block’s No Lies (1972), Roy’s Authentic Interview (ND), Ernie Fosselius and Andy Aaron’s Armageddon Crowd Scene, Take One (1979). To clearly demonstrate an audience’s need to suspend disbelief I offered Warren Bass and Steve Finkel’s Gino’s Pizza (1978)–a totally scripted/acted fiction/documentary that was reviewed in the Journal of American Folklore as if it was an authentic piece of American folklife (Duplantier 1979, 518–520). John Cox and John Papajani’s Eat the Sun (1975)–a hilarious sendup of a non-existent cult also won a prize in a religious film festival. Tim Wilson’s rare parody of anthropology, Rather Strange Tribe (1971), added one more example of how easy it is to look authentic. As my involvement in the importance of being reflexive grew, I organised “Exposing Yourself: Reflexive Films” in 1974 (Ruby 1980) (see Fig. 6–3) where the following were shown: Liane Brandon’s Betty Tells Her Story (1972), Adolfas Mekas’ Going Home (1972) and Jonas Mekas’ Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1971), Brian Moser’s Last of the Cuiva (1971), Joyce Chopra’s Joyce at 34 (1974), Miriam Weinstein’s Living With Peter (1973), We Get Married Twice (1974) and My Father the Doctor (1974), and Tom Palazzolo and Jeff Krienes’ Ricky and Rocky (1972). When cinema was invented, anthropologists saw it as a device to collect researchable data. In the 1970s, this interest in film as a research tool produced works that were reports on completed studies. I screened several: Microcultural Incidents in Ten Zoos (1969) by Ray Birdwhistell, film footage from Allan Lomax’s Choreometrics research and Allison and Marek Jablonko’s New Guinea films (1970-1980). Before the invention of media anthropology, the question of whether or not an anthropologist could study a fiction film to derive useful cultural information was rarely discussed in spite of Margaret Mead and her associates’ attempts (Mead and Metraux 1953). In 1971, I offered “The Anthropological Relevance of Fiction Film: A Screening of Ramparts of Clay (1971) by Jean-Louis Bertuccelli” followed by a discussion with

156

Chapter 6

Erving Goffman, June Nash and Denise O’Brien; and African filmmaker, Ousame Sembene’s Tauw (1970) to demonstrate the potential of this idea.

Symposia The advent of videotape caused some scholars to consider whether or not it offered a unique chance to gather pictorial data. Several sessions and panel discussions were devoted to this possibility. In 1971, there was “The Uses of Videotape for Anthropological Studies and the Study of Facial Expression”, followed the next year by “A Critical Approach to the use of Videotape for Social Science Research: Frankenstein meets His Monster” organised by Erving Goffman with Kaye Miller and Jerry Swatez, “The Nature of Evidence in Subject-Generated Data” with Red Burns, Howard Becker, and John Middleton, “A Discussion of Video: Potential and Problems in Social Science Research” with Irving Soloway and finally, “A Seminar: Analysis of Informant-Made Videotapes by the Kapelle of Africa” with Beryl Bellman.8 As 16 mm filmmaking was expensive and required skilled practitioners, the common assumption in the US was that ethnographic films were best made collaboratively with the anthropologist providing ethnographic knowledge and the filmmaker utilizing their technical skills. Napolean Chagnon and Tim Asch were regarded as one of the best of examples. In 1972 I was fortunate to have them present their ideas in “The Anthropologist, The Filmmaker and the Society They are Studying”.9

8

See details in: http://astro.temple.edu/~ruby/cova/symposia.html In addition, there were the following sessions: Oh What a Blow that Phantom Gave Me: The Anthropologist in the Electronic World by Edmund Carpenter 1972; The Use of Photography by Anthropologists–Lawrence Salzmann, Victor Lukas, and Ayse Saher 1972; A Seminar on the Anthropology of Dance including Stephanie Kreb’s The Communication of Thai Social Norms and Judith Blank’s The Fighting Dances of Crissa 1974; Life vs. Art: Interpretation of Visual Communication by Larry Gross 1976; A Discussion on the Teaching of Visual Anthropology Luncheon Talk: Teaching Visual Anthropology with Richard Chalfen and Jay Ruby 1976; 100 Years of Old Photographs: Social Structures and Sex Roles with Yannick Geffroy, Anne Ancelin Schutzenberger and Patrick Accola 1976; Narrowcasting: A Look at Cable Television in New York City with Karen Mooney 1978; Luncheon Talk: Independent Film and Video Distribution with Julia Reichert and Amalie Rothschild 1978; Luncheon Talk: The Funding of Independent Media Artists–Perrin Hurst Ireland and Sally Yerkovich 1978. 9

Temple University’s Conferences on Visual Anthropology

157

Workshops During the 1970s it was difficult for anthropologists to obtain technical training in image production. I thought it might be useful if we offered some workshops. They were designed to provide basic knowledge that would hopefully encourage anthropologists to seek further training. Among the workshops were: Basic Techniques of Motion Picture Production, Workshop for Video Virgins, Advanced Video Workshop and Super-8 mm Film. In addition, anthropologists seldom have the chance to learn anything about how to record sound in the field. We offered two workshops to explore this skill: Sound Recording for Anthropologists, and Audio Workshop for Fieldworkers. The potential for an anthropological photography has never been fully developed. Consequently, we scheduled A Workshop on Still Photography and A Workshop on Ethnographic Uses of Still Photography.

Technical Exhibits In 1971, we held our first technical exhibit aimed at anthropologists who undoubtedly had few chances to see this equipment. It was a “handson” event where participants could look and touch and watch representatives demonstrate and answer questions. Among the manufacturers on display were Arriflex and Éclair cameras, Nagra sound recorders, G. Splicer Corp and Pierce-Phelps, a Philadelphia company that sold video equipment. These exhibits continued until 1980.

Photographic Exhibits While anthropologists have been taking photographs since the technology was available, it was my contention that the medium was underutilized. Apart from Mead and Bateson’s classic 1942 Balinese Character there were few photographic ethnographies. Consequently, I added photographic exhibitions. We converted a classroom into an exhibit space by hanging sheets of insulation board–nothing fancy, but it worked. Lawrence Salzman’s Neighbors on the Block–a study of life in single room occupancy hotels in New York was the first. Like my selection of films, the photographs selected were from both anthropologists and documentarians. In an effort to stimulate a dialogue between photographers on display and people interested in their work, we started Gallery Talks and The Photographer’s Forum.

158

Chapter 6

Photographers were given thirty minutes to informally discuss their work, and documentary photographs were exhibited. With a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, I published, The Human Condition, a photographic exhibit catalog for COVA-1980 (Fig. 6–4.). After COVA 1980 was finished, the photo exhibit was moved to the Museum of Natural History in Los Angeles.

Fig. 6–4. 1980 Human Condition Catalog. The book complemented the photo exhibit at COVA. Photo: Jay Ruby ©.

Sculpture for Anthropology Robert Asher’s Mostly Americans, an exhibit of a work-in-progress, was displayed in 1980. It used sculpture as a medium to express certain anthropological observations.

Temple University’s Conferences on Visual Anthropology

159

A Few Final Words The period (1968-1980) saw a foundational change in how many US anthropologists understood the relationship between pictorial media and anthropology. I would like to think the conferences played a significant role in this change but I can offer no empirical data to support this contention and do not even know how one would go about designing research to explore the impact any film festival has had on the development of the films they display. The only responses I received to the conferences were a few reviews (Vogel 1978; Sturken 1980; Voelcker 1976; Mekas 1972). I asked some people who attended the conferences to write a brief note about their memories of the event.10 On a personal note, I see little to no real progress toward making film into an important medium for the communication of anthropological ideas. I have been asked to conclude this essay by commenting on the role ethnographic film festivals have played or will play in the future. I am afraid I have little insight into this question. It is my impression that most of the participants at the festivals I have attended were primarily filmmakers who see these events as places where they can market their films. The formal and informal discussions I have been party to are predominately about film and not anthropology. I see no evidence that these festivals have ever had any impact upon anthropology. Ethnographic film remains marginalized in socio-cultural anthropology. It is regarded as merely an audio-visual aid for teaching and not a medium for the transmission of anthropological insights. In the 1980s when written anthropology was experiencing a post-modern/interpretative/reflexive turn, none of those involved in this intellectual revolution made any reference to the films of French anthropologist Jean Rouch such as Chronicle of a Summer (1961) regarded by many as classic example of a reflexive ethnographic work (Clifford and Marcus 1986). As an anthropologist interested in the development of an anthropological cinema, I must conclude that ethnographic film festivals have not advanced this goal and that these events are more useful for filmmakers than for anthropologists. To conclude, I wish to make my current position clear as regards ethnographic film in general and these film festivals in particular by quoting at length something I wrote in 2011 and revised in 2015.

10

See details in: http://astro.temple.edu/~ruby/cova/memories.html

160

Chapter 6

Good-bye to all that For the past 40 plus years I have been an advocate of an anthropology of visual communication approach to Visual Anthropology. The position advocated was that Visual Anthropology should be the anthropological study of all visual and pictorial forms of culture and that the production of visual media (films, videos and stills) by anthropologists should be approached as a theoretical problem. Most importantly, Visual Anthropology should not be a fancy word for so-called ethnographic films that are often made by people with no anthropological training and who do not do ethnographic field work in preparation for producing their film. It is a concept first developed by Sol Worth and expanded upon by the two of us. We first formulated it at a National Science Foundation sponsored Summer Institute in Visual Anthropology. One result of this institute was the creation of the first professional organisation in the field (Society for the Anthropology of Visual Communication) and the first Visual Anthropology journal. My interests could be summarized in two phrases: how do images mean? And how can anthropologists develop a way to integrate images and words into a single coherent statement? Try as I may to convince others of the value of this approach, it was mostly ignored. As Bob Aibel, one of Worth’s former students, said recently, “we were preaching to a very small choir–ourselves, our students and a few friends. Everyone else didn’t want to hear about it.” In time, I found myself becoming the “Don Quixote of Visual Anthropology.” While I wrote a number of articles espousing my ideas, it was with Picturing Culture (2000) that I developed my argument in its fullest. Apparently I am a slow learner but finally in 2010 at VisCult in Finland and the American Anthropological Association meetings, I realized I was not Don Quixote, I was the anthropological equivalent of “Rodney Dangerfield.”11 It was time to quit wasting my time. As I found myself listening to the same tired ideas year in and year out and looking at the same kind of films over and over, I recalled something Sol Worth asserted: people do not re-invent the wheel, they invent the flat tire. In my case, I had been reading about and watching hundreds if not thousands of flat tires. So, in late November 2010, I resigned from both the American Anthropological Association and Society for Visual Anthropology and ended my subscriptions to all anthropological publications. It was my 11

Dangerfield was a comedian active in the 1960s and 1970s. His punch line was “I don’t get no respect.”

Temple University’s Conferences on Visual Anthropology

161

intention to turn my attention to the production of multi-media ethnographies of American society such as Oak Park Stories (DER). Recently I have become more of a cultural historian of art than an anthropologist. I will no longer critique manuscripts, write reviews or articles, give lectures about ethnographic film or attend those incredibly boring “ethnographic film festivals”–the golden arches of Visual Anthropology.

Works Cited Birdwhistell, Ray. 1970. Kinesics and Context. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Clifford, James, and George E. Marcus, eds. 1986. Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Los Angeles: University of California Press. De Heusch, Luc. 2007. “Jean Rouch and the Birth of Visual Anthropology: A Brief History of the Comité international du film ethnographique.” Visual Anthropology 20(5):365–386. De Valck, Marijke. 2007. Film Festivals. From European Geopolitics to Global Cinephilia. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Deren, Maya, and Gregory Bateson. 1980. “An Exchange of Letters between Maya Deren and Gregory Bateson.” October 14:16–20. Duplantier, Stephen. 1979. “Review of Gino’s Pizza.” The Journal of American Folklore, 92(366):518–520. Ginsburg, Faye, Lila Abu-Lughod, and Brian Larkin, eds. 2002. Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain. Berkeley: University of California Press. Grimshaw, Ana. 2001. The Ethnographer’s Eye. New York: Cambridge University Press. Gross, Larry, and Jay Ruby. 2014. The Complete Sol Worth. Los Angeles: Annenberg School Press. (Ebook). Henley, Paul. 2009. The Adventure of the Real: Jean Rouch and the craft of ethnographic cinema. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Jablonko, Allison. 1968. Dance and Daily Activities among the Maring People of New Guinea: A Cinematographic Analysis of Body Movement Style. Unpublished Dissertation, Columbia University. Loizos, Peter. 1980. “Television Production: Granada Television’s Disappearing World Series: An Appraisal.” American Anthropologist 82(3):573–594. MacDougall, David. 1998. Transcultural Cinema. Selected essays, edited

162

Chapter 6

by Lucien Taylor. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. —. 2001. “Colin Young, Ethnographic Film and Film Culture of the 1960s.” Visual Anthropology Review 17(2):81–88. —. 2006. The Corporeal Image: Film, Ethnography, and the Senses. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Marcus, Banks, and Jay Ruby, eds. 2011. Made To Be Seen: Perspectives on the History of Visual Anthropology. Chicago: University Chicago Press. Mead, Margaret, and Rhoda Metraux, eds. 1953. The Study of Culture at a Distance. Chicago: University of Chicago press. Mead, Margaret, and Gregory Bateson. 1942. Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis. New York: New York Academy of Science. Mekas, Jonas, ed. 1972. “Movie Journal, a Weekly column.” The Village Voice. Michaels, Eric. 1982. “How to Look at us Looking at the Yanomami Looking at Us.” In A Crack in the Mirror: Reflexive Perspectives in Anthropology, edited by Jay Ruby, 133–146. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Ortner, Sheri. 2013. Not Hollywood: Independent Film at the Twilight of the American Dream. Durham: Duke University Press. Ramey, Kathryn. 2011. “Productive Dissonance and Sensuous ImageMaking: The intertwining histories of Visual Anthropology and experimental film.” In Made To Be Seen, edited by Marcus Banks, and Jay Ruby, 256–287. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rouch, Jean, and Steve Feld. 2003. Cine-Ethnography. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Ruby, Jay. 1979. “The Aggie Will Come First: The Demystification of Robert Flaherty.” In Robert J. Flaherty–Photographer/Filmmaker, edited by Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, 67–74 and 94–96. Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery. —. 1980. “Exposing Yourself: Reflexivity, Anthropology and Film.” Semiotica, 3(1/2):153–179. —. ed. 1983. Robert J. Flaherty, A Biography. Originally written by Paul Rotha and edited by Jay Ruby. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. —. 1990. “The belly of the beast: Eric Michaels and the anthropology of visual communication.” Continuum: The Australian Journal of Media & Culture 3(2):32–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10304319009388165 —. 1991. “An Anthropological Critique of the Films of Robert Gardner.” Journal of Film and Video 43(4):3–17. —. 1995. “Out of Sync: The Cinema of Tim Asch.” Visual Anthropology

Temple University’s Conferences on Visual Anthropology

163

Review 11(1):19–37. —. 2000. Picturing Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. —. 2002. “The Professionalization of Visual Anthropology in the United States, The 1960s and 1970s.” Visual Anthropology Review 17(2):5–12. —. 2005. “Anthropology as a Subversive Art: A Review of Through These Eyes.” American Anthropologist 107(4):684–693. —. 2014. “The Role of Theory in Visual Anthropology–A Minority Report.” In “Where Is the Theory in Visual Anthropology? Discussion.” Visual Anthropology, 27(5):436–456. Russell, Catherine. 1999. Experimental Ethnography: The Work of Art in the Age of Video. Durham: Duke University Press. Schneider, Arnd, and Caterina Pasqualino. 2014.Experimental Film and Anthropology. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Stoller, Paul. 1992. The Cinematic Griot: The Ethnography of Jean Rouch. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sturken, Marita. 1980. “Film Tribe Powwows at Anthro Conference.” Afterimage, 7(10):4–5. Voelcker, Elsa. 1976. “Visual Anthropology meets in Philadelphia.” Afterimage. 3(10):3. Vogel, Amos. “1978- Independents Column.” Film Comment, August. Worth, Sol, and John Adair. 1972. Through Navaho Eyes. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

CHAPTER 7 MARGARET MEAD FILM FESTIVAL: FOUR DECADES OF WORLD PICTURE(S) NETA ALEXANDER

In a loaded conversation with Gregory Bateson, Margaret Mead described a particularly shocking scene from Robert Gardner’s Dead Birds (1963) as an exemplary model of observational cinema: You remember? The women (in Dead Birds) cut off a joint for every death that they mourn for, and they start when they are little girls, so that by the time they are grown women, they have no fingers. All the fine work is done by the men in that society […] because the men have fingers to do it with and the women have these stumps of hands. I knew about it, I had read about it, it had no meaning to me until I saw those pictures (Mead and Bateson 1977, 80. Emphasis added).

This statement should not come as a surprise to anyone familiar with Mead’s lifelong commitment to Visual Anthropology. Mead was one of the first anthropologists to recognize the importance and potential of “pictures” in what she called “a discipline of words” (1975, 7). With a Voice-of-God narration that accompanied her ethnographic films, Mead offered a didactic interpretation of the seemingly chaotic and unfamiliar behavior of indigenous communities, contending that “scientific documentation” can only be achieved once the anthropologist-turnedfilmmaker “treats the cameras in the field as recording instruments, not as devices for illustrating our theses” (qtd. in Jackins 1988, 162). It is ironic, then, that the Margaret Mead Film Festival (MMFF)– inaugurated in 1977 at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York as a tribute to Mead and her legacy–serves as an annual reminder that nothing can be more problematic than treating the ubiquitous and ever-shrinking cameras used by filmmakers as simple “recording devices.” In recent years, the festival’s most memorable films explored encounters of (at least) three kinds: between the West and “the rest,”

166

Chapter 7

between the filmmaker and her documented subjects, and between the film and its audience. From its beginning, the festival attracted a mixed audience of anthropologists, scholars, and the general public. This was in line with Mead’s own conceptualization of ethnographic filmmaking as, first and foremost, an educational device, rather than an artistic or aesthetic endeavor. Apart from producing ethnographic films herself and incorporating them in her lectures and seminars,1 she was also among the first academics to become a full-time “public intellectual.” She published a column in Redbook, had 62 television appearances in 20 years,2 and expressed her opinion on a variety of topics, from sexuality, education, and popular culture, to urban planning and the prospect of space colonies.3 Her efforts to make anthropology more accessible to the public, and to use the study of different cultures to develop new ways for raising children, creating a functioning society, and honing both men’s and women’s unique skills,4 made Mead one of the most well-known anthropologists of her time. As it often does, her growing popularity provoked waves of criticism during her lifetime, as well as after her death in 1978.5 In order to fully understand the nature of the festival bearing her name, this chapter will briefly map the historical, cultural, and economic circumstances that surrounded the launching of the festival by the AMNH 1 Mead shot many hours of footage throughout her career, resulting in ethnographic works such as Trance and Dance in Bali (1951) and The First Days in the Life of a New Guinea Baby (1952). 2 For an overview of Mead’s career as a public intellectual see Ginsburg 2003. 3 See, for example, Mead’s conversation with Rouch in his 1977 documentary Margaret Mead: Portrait by a Friend. 4 Due to the limited scope of this essay, I cannot fully explore the ever-changing relationship between Mead and feminist thinkers. As with most other scholars, her legacy has been interpreted in different ways. While some see her as a symbol of liberation and women’s empowerment (see, for example, feminist scholars like Eugenia Kaledin, Rosalind Rosenberg, and Elaine Showalter), others claim she promoted essentialist ideas about the differences between the sexes and the domestic role of women (most famously, this argument appears in Betty Friedan’s chapter on Mead in The Feminine Mystique). 5 One of the most piercing attacks on Mead was Derek Freeman’s Margaret Mead and Samoa published in 1983, five years after Mead’s death. While scholars were quick to dismiss Freeman’s critique of Mead’s method, the publication created a media scandal and “provided a heaven-sent opportunity for the press to rant against the ‘liberal feminist culture’ and ‘lifestyle experiments’ with which they newly identified Mead, conveniently forgetting its fervent eulogies of her of only half a decade earlier” (Di Leonardo 2001). For an overview of the Freeman scandal see also Lutkehaus 2008, 242-254.

Four Decades of the Margaret Mead Film Festival

167

to celebrate Mead’s 75th birthday, and its evolution in the decades that followed. Although the MMFF has evolved into an important showcase for ethnographic and documentary works, there is a lack of primary sources documenting the festival’s early days. This historical overview– which spans almost four decades–is therefore based on fieldwork including volunteering for the festival’s 36th edition, held October 17-20, 2013, as well as on interviews with prominent programmers, filmmakers, and anthropologists who have shaped the festival since its inception.6 By juxtaposing different historical narratives offered in the interviews with a first-hand experience of the festival, I follow a methodological approach that could be located within the relatively nascent field of anthropology of media.7 This, in turn, will serve to highlight how the MMFF has transformed from a scholarly gathering targeted primarily at anthropologists, into a communal celebration of cultural diversity shared by cinephiles, filmmakers and the general public.

Fig. 7–1. 2013 Margaret Mead Film Festival Opening Night screening of Miss Nikki and the Tiger Girls. Photo: courtesy of AMNH/R. Mickens. 6

This essay could not have been written without the help, generosity and support of Faye Ginsburg, Emilie de Brigard, Flo Stone, Jonathan Stack and Ariella BenDov, who shared their knowledge and experience with me. Their recollections and insights are the building blocks of this historical overview. 7 For an overview of the anthropology of media, as well as a survey of recent works in this field, see Ginsburg et al (2002).

168

Chapter 7

Launching a Tradition: “The Anthropologists were the Entertainment” As Elaine Charnov describes in an essay published in The Scholar and Feminist Online on the occasion of MMFF’s 25th anniversary, the initial plan had two main objectives: First, to honor “Mead’s pioneering work in the application of photography and filmmaking in fieldwork, and in the development of Visual Anthropology as a sub-discipline of the field of anthropology”; second, “as a way of attracting general audiences to come and think, debate and discuss a wide range of issues, based on the popularity of film as a form of media” (2003). Flo Stone, who initiated the idea for an ethnographic film festival in 1977, recalls that it took her several years to convince the museum directors to launch such an initiative. In a phone interview held in September 2014, Stone explained: .

I started a community festival called West-side Day back in the seventies, which drew 35,000 people every year. Following this success, I suggested very strongly a festival on cultural diversity and ethnographic films introduced and discussed by anthropologists. A few years after the education department at the AMNH rejected this idea, I met Mead in a conference and she mentioned the fact that she will celebrate her 75th birthday next year. The very next day I met with the AMNH’s director and suggested to celebrate Mead’s life-long career at the museum by initiating an ethnographic film festival that would be free and open to the public. Mead’s immediate enthusiasm was an enormous help in bringing this idea to life.

Stone’s vision included a public program presented by anthropologists: “The audiences were very diverse, and I insisted that every screening will be followed by Q&A and a discussion with a scholar or expert who studied the culture depicted in the film. We were looking for depth and quality, and we were screening films that were not available to the public before.” Emilie de Brigard, who served as the coordinator of the MMFF’s debut edition, revealed in email correspondence with the author in August 2014 that the initial motivation was heavily based on financial concerns: It did not start as a film festival. It was rather a giant scientific entertainment designed to draw attention to the Mead Fund, which AMNH was launching in an effort to pay for museum repositioning. New York was going through very bad years in the 1970’s – street crime made the city really unpleasant, police were laid off, budgets were broken, etc. The Metropolitan Museum was reinventing itself; AMNH was very run-down.

Four Decades of the Margaret Mead Film Festival

169

It was decided that the museum could be rebranded (that term was not in use then, of course) as an adult destination through events and a fundraising campaign to pay for updating exhibits. So Milbry Polk and Flo Stone initiated the idea to hold a birthday party for Mead in order to launch a national campaign and raise some millions, and Mead was in accord with this.

The result was surprisingly successful: 12,000 people attended the first festival. Apart from dozens of free screenings, the main attraction was the first New York retrospective of the works of Jean Rouch and his method of “shared anthropology,” including the seminal films Les Maîtres Fous (1955), Chronique d’un été (1961), and Jaguar (1967). As described by de Brigard, the festival turned out to be a much-talked-about cultural event: Crowds of people of all ages and backgrounds crammed the museum, which was not air-conditioned, on the weekend of September 13-14, 1977. I think they were attracted by a schedule we had distributed, on newsprint, which looked like a weekend TV schedule. The anthropologists were the entertainment. Each film screening was introduced by an expert with anthropological insight. All the visual anthropologists knew about the festival, and many of them were in it. The most enthusiastic part of the audience was composed of young adults interested in film […] In addition to the two auditoriums, the films were screened in the halls. As it turned out, this involved a lot of sitting on the floor, under the elephant and so forth. It was a “happening.”

The high attendance proved so impressive that the museum’s Office of Public Affairs signed the festival over to the Education Department to turn it into an annual tradition. According to de Brigard, the original plan was to fan out across the United States, but this did not happen as Mead became ill and died on November 15, 1978. The festival in New York, however, evolved into the longest-running premiere showcase for international documentaries in the country, receiving hundreds of submissions and screening dozens of films.

Building New Audiences for Visual Anthropology In order to better understand the uniqueness and newness of the MMFF, a brief overview of the field of Visual Anthropology is needed. As de Brigard reminds us, “until Mead and Bateson’s work of 1936-1938, the films made by anthropologists, though intrinsically valuable, were not original in their conception” (1975, 20). In other words, while Mead and Bateson were not the first anthropologists to incorporate a camera in their

170

Chapter 7

fieldwork, they were the first to fully explore how audio-visual recording devices can transform and revolutionize Anthropology. During the 1940s and 1950s, the circulation of ethnographic footage was mostly restricted to classrooms, lecture halls, and archives in several museums (where the films were rarely screened and many of them decomposed and became obsolete).8 Ethnographic films were thought of as didactic illustrations to be contextualized via a lecture or an introduction in order to avoid stereotypical readings of what was being shown.9 Anthropologists like Timothy Asch repeatedly argued that without a guiding hand, viewers might find strange cultures simply too strange, “primitive,” or barbaric–the very clichés the films were trying to avoid and problematize.10 This approach slowly changed throughout the 1960s and 1970s, when groundbreaking filmmakers such as Gardner, Rouch, David and Judith MacDougall, and Jon Marshall struggled to “reinvent anthropology” (Hymes, quoted in Ginsburg 1994, 9) by challenging the binaries of informants/anthropologists, emic/etic, Western/non-Western, monologue/ dialogue, and primitive/developed. The abundance of “dialogic,” “shared,” or “participatory” ethnography marked the beginning of what has become a growing subfield of Visual Anthropology: indigenous media-making. This development can be specifically traced back to 1966, when Sol Worth and John Adair famously asked a group of Navaho to make their own films, insisting that their training solely include basic technical aspects in order to avoid any “Western influences”.11 By the early 1970s, ethnographic films had varying styles, goals, lengths, and themes. However, aside from the occasional festival winner (such as the MacDougalls’ To Live with Herds, which won the Grand Prize at the 1974 Venice Film Festival), most works were shown to graduate students, professional scholars, or film archivists in frameworks such as university seminars, The Flaherty Seminar (established in 1955 and originally held as a small gathering on Robert Flaherty’s family farm

8

See de Brigard 1975, 17. Wilton Martínez developed the idea of “aberrant readings” and claimed that even students taking anthropology seminars are subject to misconceptions and stereotypical readings of ethnographic works. See Martínez 1990, 34–47. 10 For Asch’s unique philosophy of pedagogy and, more specifically, instruction of ethnographic films in the classroom, see Asch 1992, 196–205. 11 A similar effort was made by Edmund Carpenter in Papua New Guinea in 1975, as well as by other anthropologists working in the 1970s. For an overview of the development of shared anthropology see Ginsburg 1994, 5–15. 9

Four Decades of the Margaret Mead Film Festival

171

in Vermont),12 the Conferences on Visual Anthropology (CoVA) initiated by Jay Ruby,13 and several UNESCO round tables (de Brigard 1975, 35). As video cameras became ubiquitous and a growing number of ethnographic films produced on an annual basis, the idea for a film festival seemed suitable as a way to showcase the richness and diversity of the field. Although the festival was committed to “cross-cultural study,” in its early years it attracted mostly Euro-American anthropologists and filmmakers. In an interview by the author in July 2014, NYU anthropologist Faye Ginsburg, who worked as an intern during the festival’s early years and is currently serving as its consultant, recalls that, “in its early years the MMFF was not a generic documentary festival; it was attached to the scholarly work coming out of the field and it was much more similar to a professional academic conference.” Early screenings included a 1973 remake of Edward Curtis’ In the Land of Head Hunters (1914), as well as works by Mead, Rouch, Asch, Marshall, and Gardener. Again, a broader historical context can prove productive: when the MMFF was initiated, the discipline of anthropology was undergoing major transformations catalyzed by a series of loaded debates. Summarized by Ginsburg, these included: The end of the colonial era with assertions of self-determination by colonized peoples; the radicalization of young scholars in the 1960’s and replacing of positivist models of knowledge with more interpretive and politically self-conscious approaches; and a reconceptualization of “the native voice” as one that should be in more dialogue with anthropological interpretation (1994, 9).

In foregrounding questions of reflexivity, objectivity, and the complex relationship between anthropology and Western colonialism, the MMFF was inspired by Rouch’s regards comparés (compared views) conferences held in the Parisian Musée de l’Homme since 1978. True to his vision of shared anthropology, the French filmmaker invited both filmmakers and subjects (such as Yanomamo themselves) to watch and comment on the films together in an attempt to “decolonialize” representation. This form of collaborative approach to filmmaking was famously demonstrated in Chronique d’un été’s ending scene, where the film’s participants are documented while watching a preliminary rough cut by Rouch and Edgar 12

For an historical overview of The Flaherty Seminar’s formatting years see Zimmermann 2012. 13 For an analysis and discussion of CoVA and its influence see Jay Ruby’s chapter in this book.

172

Chapter 7

Morin.14 For the AMNH, however, the MMFF was an educational initiative targeted at the American public rather than at the non-Western documented subjects.

The 1980s and 1990s: The Talk of the Town After Mead’s death the festival went through multiple changes and became “more a film festival than a showcase for Visual Anthropology” (Ibid). This “festivalness” was manifested by expanding the academic discourse of lectures and post-screening debates into a series of nontheatrical events and initiatives that took place across town. Working for the festival during the 1980s under the guidance of anthropologist Malcolm J. Arth (who served as the chairman of the Education Department of the AMNH from 1970 till 1991), documentarian Jonathan Stack tried to transform the MMFF into a celebration of cultural diversity targeted at younger audiences, such as dance parties in the East Village, and dinner events based on a “global village” potluck. In an interview with the author, he recalled, “Another idea we had was to create connections between specific screenings to relevant communities in NYC. If we had a film shot in Cuba, for example, we would invite New York-based Cubans to the screening and organise a post-screening event.” What had started out as a limited-in-size educational initiative had evolved, by the mid-1980s, into one of the most successful ethnographic film festivals in the world. While the New York Film Festival, established in 1963, focused on works of fiction, the MMFF was one of the only annual celebrations of documentary and experimental works on the East Coast. As Stack asserts, “this led to a constant growth of the festival’s participants, audiences, and film submissions. In the early days programmers had to look for films themselves; in its second decade, however, the festival enjoyed an explosion of ethnographic and documentary works.” As one of the only American festivals dedicated to Visual Anthropology, the MMFF’s programmers were able to grow more selective. However, this changed radically over the next two decades. The 1990s and 2000s saw an explosion of specialized film festivals.15 As Ginsburg explains, “nowadays the MMFF has to compete against specialized festivals like DOC NYC, Reelabilities (NY Disabilities Film Festival), and many others.” 14

For a discussion of this scene see Henley 2009, 145–175. As described by Jeffrey Ruoff, “In recent decades, as art cinemas have closed, and as cities have explored new ways to enhance tourism and cultural exchange, more festivals have appeared every year. There are now several thousand throughout the world” (2012, 2). 15

Four Decades of the Margaret Mead Film Festival

173

Other major changes included a new focus on indigenous media, an annual National Traveling Film Festival initiated in 1992, 16 and a shift from theatrical screenings to special events such as Q & A, workshops, and music shows. Charnov, who served as the festival director from 1992 to 2008, recalls in a telephone interview that her main focus was “building a community spirit.” In order to achieve that goal, the festival’s duration was cut down from seven days to a weekend edition in the early 1990s. As Charnov explains, “we were trying to attract guests and anthropologists from around the world and thought, what can help them come and stay from beginning to end? We then figured out that it would be easier to create a feeling of community and engagement if the festival will run from Thursday till Sunday.” In the past twenty years this annual tradition takes place in late October or early November and runs for four days featuring, on average, between thirty to fifty screenings. Celebrating the festival’s 30th anniversary, the 2006 edition included 33 works, as well as a special program dedicated to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. This focus on New Orleans included the US premier of Spike Lee’s 255-minute long When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, which documented the disastrous impact of the natural and human disaster that unfolded since the hurricane made landfall on August 29, 2005. The following years included a program that focused on human-machine relations, expanding the idea of Visual Anthropology to include nascent fields of knowledge and technological developments.

Parties, Video Games and Installation: The Changing Face of the MMFF During the past decade the festival’s focus has shifted from ethnography to documentary filmmaking and multimedia installations and the sense of community was expanded to include as wide an audience as possible. As described by Ariella Ben-Dov, who served as the MMFF’s director from 2008 to 2012: I curated the Flaherty seminar and came from a background in documentary and experimental cinema. I was really interested in curating a series of films that allowed audiences not only to be exposed to different 16 The MMFF founded the National Traveling Film Festival “to move this media beyond the more privileged audiences of New York and bring it to universities, libraries, film centers, religious centers, […] since many of these documentaries resonate very differently when they circulate to other parts of the country” (Charnov 2003).

174

Chapter 7 cultures, but also to different media. Under my tenure we had interactive installations in the museum, such as kinetic sculptures and other special activities. The general idea was to integrate the festival within the larger framework of the museum. For example, when the museum dedicated an exhibition to food, we included films on culinary topics in our program.

A short description of the 36th edition of the festival held in October 2013–the first time the program was put together by a curatorial team of five people–can serve to demonstrate the extent of these changes.17Aside from 38 non-fiction works, the 2013 festival included a workshop showcasing a new videogame planned and designed by a team of Alaska Native storytellers and artists; parties held each night in different halls of the museum; a festive award-ceremony as part of the “Margaret Mead Filmmaker Award” initiated in 2010;18 and a screening of a re-edited 1923 ethnographic film originally titled The Shalako Ceremony at Zuni, New Mexico, which raised complex questions regarding authorship in an age of re-appropriation.

Fig. 7–2. All-female mariachi band playing on the closing night of the MMFF festival on October 2013. Photo: courtesy of AMNH/R. Mickens. 17 The next section is largely based on my festival review, originally published in Film Quarterly, vol. 67 (no. 1), 58–61. 18 Mead opposed the idea of giving out prizes to films or filmmakers. As Ginsburg explains, “she did not want to encourage any feeling of competition. She felt this was not the right spirit of the festival.”

Four Decades of the Margaret Mead Film Festival

175

These events can be seen as an attempt to stay relevant in a world of digital distribution platforms. Other examples were the Twitter updates projected on the walls of the entrance hall, and a performance by an allfemale mariachi band that turned a room full of dinosaur bones into an improvised concert hall. Still, in its fourth decade the MMFF faces many of the challenges that specialized film festivals are forced to acknowledge in the light of changing distribution models based on VOD, streaming websites, and online festivals. A different kind of challenge is the lingering tension between the West and the “rest.” Despite a multiplicity of funding sources and shooting locations, in most cases the filmmakers are Westerners, while the subjects are non-Westerners. While this fact may serve to reinforce the dangerous assumption that ethnography can never escape its colonial roots, the 2013 festival offered its audience a glimpse into a more complex and engaging future. A touching tribute to Dennis O’Rourke, an Australian documentarian who died in June 2013, included the short documentary Framing the Other, which was inspired by O’Rourke’s seminal work Cannibal Tours (1988). Shot in southern Ethiopia, the 25-minute film focuses on two women: a mother from the Mursi tribe, who wears her “lip plate” and decorates herself in order to charge money from tourists who want to take her picture; and a Dutch middle-aged woman who eagerly plans her visit to the Mursi village. The encounter between the two protagonists is an amusing illustration of how this kind of “cultural tourism” can go wrong. The Dutch lady aggressively asks the children and women to pose, and then tries to force them to say “Thank You,” while the Mursi woman feels betrayed when the enthusiastic tourist gives her a hug but then leaves “without even saying goodbye.” Cannibal Tours (1988) similarly exposes the complex nature of cultural exchange. The self-composed epigram that opens the film could have easily functioned as the MMFF’s tagline: “There is nothing so strange in a strange land as the stranger who comes to visit it.” Exploring this “strangeness,” O’Rourke interviewed indigenous people who lived near the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea. Although the images of bourgeois tourists sailing down the river echo Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the film reminds us that it might be more productive to think about the relations between the “exploited” and “exploiters” as a complex continuum rather than as a binary opposition. Alongside the screening of ethnographic films, the 2013 edition included a videogame workshop under the promising title “Firing Imagination”. Held on the second floor of the museum, it focused on the ground breaking new game Never Alone, which was developed in

176

Chapter 7

collaboration between the first indigenous-owned video game company, Upper One Games, and the American game developer E-Line Media. The game, in which an Inupiaq girl and her arctic fox navigate through Alaska while learning the oral history of the Cook Inlet Tribe, was planned and designed by a team of Alaska Native storytellers and artists. E-Line Media President Alan Gershenfeld enthusiastically explained why games are great educational tools: “Video games not only give children a sense of agency, they also provide them with a safe place to experiment and fail.” The video game workshop, nontheatrical events, and other creative efforts to attract an audience could not, however, hide the fact that the average age was well above forty. This was a testament to the challenges that specialized film festivals face in light of changing distribution models. With a $12 ticket price to MMFF films and, at home, endless visual content available for free, it may be that fascinating stories are simply not enough to entice young audiences to turn off their iPhones and watch a foreign film. As the 2013 edition of the MMFF clearly demonstrated, these changes could lead to a new focus on live events, interactive workshops, and an exploration of non-filmic aspects of Visual Anthropology (such as videogames, plastic art, performances, and so on).

Conclusions The festival is now curated and organised by a large team of filmmakers, anthropologists, museum workers, archivists, and graduate students who work as volunteers. As Ginsburg describes, “it is now a collective endeavor rather than a formation of a single omnipotent programmer.” If, as suggested by Mark Cousins, a film festival is a storytelling event that–much like a cinematic work–is based on a narrative structure, it seems that the MMFF’s story is now more diverse than ever. With experimental works screened alongside world premieres, and Oscarwinners such as the documentary The Blood of Yingzhou District (2006), or the animated short The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation (2005), one cannot come up with any clear-cut narrative aside from “cultural diversity.” The question of what the MMFF might look like in its fifth or sixth decade still awaits an answer. While it has radically changed through the years, the festival has remained true to the spirit of its founding mother, and to Mead’s commitment to the transformative potential of “pictures.” As a Mead citation appearing on the festival’s official website attests, “Pictures are held together by a way of looking that has grown out of anthropology, a science in which all peoples, however contrasted in

Four Decades of the Margaret Mead Film Festival

177

physique and culture, are seen as members of the same species, engaged in solving problems common to humanity.”

Works Cited Asch, Timothy. 1992. “The Ethics of Ethnographic Filmmaking.” In Film as Ethnography, edited by Peter I. Crawford and David Turton, 196– 205. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Barnouw, Erik. 1993. Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film, 2nd rev. ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. De Brigard, Emilie. 1975. “The History of Ethnographic Film.” In Principles of Visual Anthropology, edited by Paul Hockings, 13–43. Paris: Mouton Publishers. Charnov, Elaine. 2003. “The Margaret Mead Film and Media Festival.” The Scholar and Feminist Online, The Barnard Center for Research on Women. Accessed May 15, 2016. http://sfonline.barnard.edu/mead/charnov.htm Di Leonardo, Micaela. 2001. “Margaret Mead vs. Tony Soprano.” The Nation, May 21, 2001 issue. Henley, Paul. 2009. “Chronicle of a Violent Game.” In The Adventure of the Real: Jean Rouch and the Craft of Ethnographic Cinema, 145–175. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Jacknis, Ira. 1988. “Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson in Bali.” Cultural Anthropology 3(2):160–177. Ginsburg, Faye, Lila Abu-Lughod, and Brian Larkin, eds. 2002. Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ginsburg, Faye. 2003. “‘Now Watch this Very Carefully…’ The Ironies and Afterlife of Margaret Mead’s Visual Anthropology.” The Scholar and Feminist Online, The Barnard Center for Research on Women. Accessed May 15, 2016. http://sfonline.barnard.edu/mead/ginsburg.htm —. 1994. “Culture/ media: A (Mild) Polemic.” Anthropology Today 10(2):5–15. Lutkehaus, Nancy C. 2008. Margaret Mead: The Making of an American Icon. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Martínez, Wilton. 1990. “Critical Studies and Visual Anthropology: Aberrant vs. Anticipated Readings of Ethnographic Film.” Commission on Visual Anthropology Review (Spring number):34–47. Mead, Margaret, and Gregory Bateson. 1977. “On the Use of the Camera in Anthropology.” Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication

178

Chapter 7

4(2):80–83. Mead, Margaret. 1975. “Visual Anthropology in a Discipline of Words.” In Principles of Visual Anthropology, ed. Paul Hockings, 3–10. Paris: Mouton Publishers. Ruoff, Jeffrey, ed. 2012. Coming Soon to a Festival Near You: Programming Film Festivals. St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies Zimmermann, Patricia R. 2012. “The Robert Flaherty Film Seminar in the 1950s: Humanist and Poetic Activism.” In Film Festival Yearbook 4: Film Festivals and Activism, edited by Dina Iordanova, and Leshu Torchin, 175–189. St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies.

CHAPTER 8 THE NORDIC EYE REVISITED. NAFA, 1975 TO 2015 PETER I. CRAWFORD

When introducing NAFA (The Nordic Anthropological Film Association), for example at conferences and festivals, I often refer to it as Europe’s, if not the World’s, oldest specifically ethnographic film festival. Strictly speaking this is not entirely true, for a number of reasons. First of all, NAFA is actually not a film festival but, as the deciphering of the acronym indicates, an association. It has thus, since 1975,1 been an association of anthropology institutions,2 i. e. mainly university departments and museums, in the Nordic countries, which covers Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, and includes the more or less politically autonomous territories of Sàpmi, Aaland, Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland) and The Faroe Islands. Secondly, in Europe, Festival dei Popoli (see Ieverse, this volume) certainly started, with a considerable ethnographic film content, a few years before NAFA began organising festivals, although one may argue that Festival dei Popoli over time has not consistently been “ethnographic” in the same way that NAFA has. If one looks outside Europe there is no doubt that The Margaret Mead Film Festival beat NAFA to it by a few 1

This article is based on research I have carried out acting as NAFA’s more or less self-appointed historiographer, the aim of which is to write an illustrated book on the history of NAFA. The research has already unearthed the fact that we shall have to rewrite the history, for the simple reason that, although there is a founding document from 1975 (the only still living signatories of which, as this goes to print, are Per Rekdal and Lisbet Holtedahl in Norway and Mette Bovin in Denmark), I have discovered other documents, including financial accounts and an official stamp, proving that NAFA has been operating since 1972. 2 Which is not entirely true either, since institutional membership was replaced by individual membership in 1989, but institutional membership is being reintroduced in 2016 alongside individual membership.

180

Chapter 8

years, with Timothy Asch, at the University of Southern California, organising the first festival in 1976 to celebrate Mead’s 75th birthday, in honour of her pioneering role in introducing film in the service of anthropological research worldwide. Thirdly, and although other festivals also develop in time, not one NAFA festival has been the same. Right from the inception, as we shall see below, the NAFA International Ethnographic Film Festival has been held (almost) annually since 1979.3 The idea was that the festival would be organised by a local committee in a different location every year, initially one of the 20+ member institutions being the organiser. In this sense the NAFA festival is not a festival but many different festivals. Finally, and adding to the intrinsic diversity of the event, since 2001 the NAFA festival has expanded beyond its “Nordic” roots, the festival now having been held many times outside the Nordic countries, with plans even to organise it outside Europe in a not too distant future. So, this chapter will form a description and analysis of NAFA, although it is not a festival in the narrow sense, and will focus on what actually constitutes and defines NAFA. Fortunately the history and development of NAFA, and of Visual Anthropology in the Nordic countries in a wider sense, has been covered in other work,4 and NAFA’s other activities, such as the film archive, book series, and newsletter, will therefore only be covered here to the extent that they play a direct role in the history of the NAFA Festival.

The Early Years. A Festival Trying to Find its Feet, and Enabling Anthropologists and Filmmakers to Meet Until the first NAFA festival, held in Stockholm in 1979 at the National Museum of Ethnography (Etnografiska Museet), NAFA’s main activity had been to build up a 16 mm film archive, the main purpose of which was to make films available to anthropologists teaching at the increasing number of anthropology departments in Nordic universities and to museums using ethnographic films in public screening events. A very pragmatic issue, which triggered the idea to organise an annual festival, was to enable members of NAFA to view new ethnographic films, on the basis of which the annual meeting, which has always been held in conjunction with the festival, could decide on which films to purchase for 3 See the Appendix after this chapter for a comprehensive listing of NAFA festivals since 1979. I am grateful to my colleague and fellow NAFA festival organiser, Ditte Marie Seeberg, for her help in assisting my failing memory to update this list. 4 See, e.g., Lappalainen (1986), Ekström (1986; 1988), and Crawford (1993; 2007).

The Nordic Eye Revisited. NAFA, 1975 to 2015

181

the archive.5 At the time, the format screened was 16 mm “proper” (celluloid) film, meaning that it would have been a very costly affair to circulate all films among the members prior to the meeting. The number of films submitted, or usually in the early days invited, was quite limited, often no more than 6-10 films.6 The (increasing) cost of a 16 mm print meant that we could usually purchase only between one and three films, depending on the length and other matters. Right from the beginning NAFA tried to make sure that as many filmmakers as possible were actually present when their films were screened but unfortunately this idea often fell for financial reasons. Even more so then than today, there was a fairly rigid distinction between film as art and anthropology as an academic discipline, leading the organisation of such an event into a vulnerable balance act. If one obtained some funding, for example, for the “film” part of the event, it was almost immediately defined as not being scientific, thus hindering funding of the academic part of the event, and vice versa. This problem still seems to haunt ethnographic film festivals today, despite the fact that the divide between the world of art and academia is perhaps not quite as rigorously upheld, and that many years of experience have enabled organisers to navigate more efficiently among the sources of support. Despite these practical obstacles, NAFA, almost miraculously in some cases, managed to establish itself as a pioneering festival in bringing together filmmakers and other representatives of the film industry with social anthropologists and other academics. Right from the start the seed to success was presumably based on the film people feeling that they could learn something from the anthropologists, especially about how “to deal with people” and conduct fieldwork, whilst the anthropologists, many of whom explicitly expressed an interest in becoming filmmakers,7 were, at times perhaps even rather uncritically, sucking up all the knowledge and information they could from the film people, both concerning practical

5

It was stipulated in the statutes that films had to be seen by all members attending the annual meeting before making any decisions on purchases. 6 In this day and age of digital video, in which many people own their own relatively cheap and otherwise accessible recording device, we see a proliferation of the mere quantity of films being made. However, in the early days of NAFA, this number of ethnographic films, 6-10, is actually more or less what was globally produced per year. 7 With, at least initially, very few succeeding in a professional sense, most probably due to the conspicuous lack of training possibilities in Europe in general, and in the Nordic countries in particular.

182

Chapter 8

aspects of filmmaking and the more theoretical and conceptual ways of making, analysing, and discussing film(s).

Fig. 8–1. NAFA networking at the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI) Film Festival in Manchester in 1990. Knut Ekström (front left) and Peter I. Crawford (front right). The three gentlemen in the background are (left to right): Yasuhiro Omori, Paolo Chiozzi and Asen Balikci. Photo: Knud Fischer-Møller.

It soon became apparent that the early years of NAFA relied almost exclusively on what only became a buzzword slightly later: networking. One of the founding fathers, and a longstanding8 General Secretary, Heimo Lappalainen, who achieved almost mythical status while he was still alive, was an incredible networker; the networks played a pivotal role in the first decade or so of NAFA festivals. Assisted by this author, who became Assistant General Secretary whilst still a student, and by Knut Ekström, the NAFA Treasurer, who was one of the few anthropologists managing to establish himself professionally in the world of film as well,9 the access to networks widened even more. In those formative years 8

Until his far too early death in 1994. Knut, a born-and-bred Söder man, i.e. from the “Southside” of Stockholm, made a five-part series of feature-length documentaries about Söder, all of which are in the NAFA 16 mm archive, and in the Swedish Film Institute database (see www.sfi.se).

9

The Nordic Eye Revisited. NAFA, 1975 to 2015

183

personal relationships were established with a number of ethnographic filmmakers regarded as “pioneers”, such as David and Judith MacDougall, Jean Rouch, Asen Balikci, Ian Dunlop, Timothy Asch, Jorge Prelorán, John Marshall, Herb di Gioia, and Gary Kildea. However, one person from the realm of film probably had a more profound and lasting impact than anybody else. Colin Young, who by then had become the director of the National Film and Television School (NFTS) in the UK, had not only formed the philosophy behind so-called “observational cinema” (see, e.g., Young 1975 and Grimshaw and Ravetz 2009), but, together with Walter Goldschmidt, initiated the Ethnographic Film Program at the University of California in Los Angeles in 1966, forging the bonds between anthropology and documentary filmmaking. After becoming the director at NFTS he continued this by ensuring grants, through the Leverhulme Trust, to enable several academic anthropologists to train professionally as filmmakers at a time where there were no or very few possibilities to do so in Europe. Colin’s influence was enormous in the early years, exactly because he helped us build up the networks, introducing NAFA to such people as Peter Watkins, the maker of the BBC drama documentary The War Game (1965), and David MacDougall, who had taken part in the UCLA programme and was becoming one of the world’s most respected ethnographic filmmakers. Through Colin Young NAFA built up a close relationship with the NFTS lasting for many years, through which Colin, later joined by Herb di Gioia, who was the head of documentary, and some years later Toni de Bromhead, 10 who taught there, would bring their film students, 11 who would show their graduation films and other films. The resulting crosspollination of ideas, leaving aside the wonderful social encounters they also were, have inspired many Nordic anthropologists involved in ethnographic film and developing what later became known as Visual Anthropology.

10 Toni, who is also a trained anthropologist, later, based on this initial contact, published two books (1996 and 2014) with Intervention Press (www.intervention.dk), which by then had become the publisher of the NAFA book series. 11 Over the years these included Graham Johnston, Mark Brice, Molly Dineen, and two Nordic NFTS students, Anna Cnattingius from Sweden and Jon Jerstad from Norway (who later worked with the anthropologist, and founding mother of NAFA, as well as many years later the Visual Anthropology programme in Tromsø, Lisbet Holtedahl, on the TV film called Sultan’s Burden (1992), based on Lisbet’s anthropological research).

184

Chapter 8

However, such inspiration came not only from the Anglophone world. Since anthropologists and anthropology students in the Nordic countries had no access to film training, unless trying to embark on a full-time fouryear programme at one of the national film schools,12 those desperate to learn practical (and theoretical) hands-on filmmaking had to seek their fortune outside their countries. What may be described as a whole generation of Nordic ethnographic filmmakers, such as Perle Møhl, Knud Fischer-Møller, Berit Madsen, Anne-Mette Jørgensen, Ditte M. Seeberg, and Toril S. Jenssen, all of whom remain active in the field of ethnographic film and Visual Anthropology, were fortunate to be able to take part in training in the short courses provided by the Ateliers VARAN film school in Paris. In addition to this, VARAN, like the NFTS but a few years later, started to attend the NAFA festivals, bringing with them students and films.13 VARAN conducted film workshops and had activities all over the world, especially in so-called “Third World countries,” just like anthropologists, and again cooperation with a film school provided much needed input to the budding ethnographic film environment in the far North.

The Adolescence of NAFA Festivals. Film and Theory, and the Development of Visual Anthropology. The 1990s and Early 2000s The early festivals had thus been the meeting ground for anthropologists and filmmakers, the programmes mostly simply consisting of film screenings followed by discussions, and occasionally kinds of master classes. Some events were quite big but they were actually mostly rather small and very intimate, the Blidö festival in 1983, on a small island in the Stockholm archipelago, perhaps being the archetypical NAFA event, in which again some inspiring film people, in casu Colin Young and David MacDougall, were invited to teach us rather ignorant anthropologists how to speak intelligently about film. 12

Which, to my knowledge, only one fully trained anthropologist, Sten Rehder in Denmark, managed to do. 13 The first teachers from VARAN to become NAFA friends were Jacques D’Arthuys and Pierre Baudry, and later the two brothers, Severin and Vincent Blanchet, lent their support, the latter of whom became married to Perle Møhl, a Danish anthropologist and former VARAN student, who later became a teacher at VARAN, proving that it was a two-way exchange. NAFA at one point, with Heimo Lappalainen, ended up co-organising a VARAN/NAFA training workshop in Laos in the late 1980s.

The Nordic Eye Revisited. NAFA, 1975 to 2015

185

In the following 10-20 years a number of things affected the NAFA festivals. First of all a new kind of format for the event was emerging, probably first exemplified by the first time the festival was held in Denmark, at Aarhus University in 1984. The idea was to have a “festival” but combined with a more typically academic event, such as a seminar or symposium, often organised around a special theme, at that time, for more or less obvious reasons, “Greenland and the Arctic,” 14 which was then accompanied by special film screenings. This format is more or less the one that NAFA follows today (see below). The festival part “proper” remained an important component for the simple reason mentioned above, that films to be purchased for the archive had to be seen by the NAFA members. Secondly, it became clear over the years that despite the wonderful inputs provided by our film school network, most significantly still NFTS and VARAN, something was missing, something related more to “theory” and “academia”, maybe because very few of the filmmakers attending the festivals wrote anything about their films and filming,15 contributing to a more mainstream way of dealing with academic theory. Very little had been written at this time about “ethnographic film” but this was soon to change, with anthropologists increasingly showing an interest and starting to write about it, as well as some film theorists, rather than filmmakers, developing an interest in this phenomenon called ethnographic film. Bill Nichols is presumably the best example of the latter and was for that reason invited as the keynote speaker, something new in a NAFA context, to the event held in Oslo in 1991, which was called a “conference,” although there were also general film screenings of recent ethnographic films.16 A direct result of this, indicating how NAFA had become more academic (again), was that the idea to start a NAFA book series was launched, the first volume of which was published a few years later with important contributions by many, including both Bill Nichols and David MacDougall.17

14

This part of the event was curated by Poul B. Møller, another NAFA pioneer who died far too early (in 1995). 15 With David MacDougall, of course, being a notable exception. 16 Symptomatic of the point raised here, the “conference” was organised in cooperation with the Norwegian Film Institute, although Jan Ketil Simonsen, an anthropologist and another NAFA veteran, was the main organiser. 17 Actually this first volume to be published (Crawford and Simonsen 1992) was the second volume in the series (see www.intervention.dk).

186

Chapter 8

Fig. 8–2. NAFA’s Film selection. Orsi Veraart (front left) and Lotta Granbom (front right) working intensely at the final meeting of the NAFA Film Selection Committee 2015, held at the Granada Centre in Manchester in May. The gentleman in the background is another member, Tanel Saimre. Photo: Knud Fischer-Møller.

Finally, it was during this period that we started to experience the advent of video, which of course was to have a profound impact on the festival and screenings in various ways. One of the ways had to do with the technical aspects, for example the nightmare of having to deal with heavy parcels of 16 mm films, costing a fortune in shipping costs, being replaced by the nightmare of having to find ways of playing all the different video formats that were emerging, and initially getting used to what many of us considered an absolutely appalling image quality. But we soon discovered that the new technology might have some advantages too, first of all, perhaps, increasing accessibility. This meant, for example, that groups and individuals who had not been able to use film in their work, be it in developing countries or among indigenous groups, were now producing interesting material that we could showcase at NAFA festivals. Obvious example of this were films emanating from Terence Turner’s work with the Kayapó (Crawford 1995), Vincent Carrelli and Dominique Gallois’ pioneering “Video in the Villages” project in Brazil (Gallois and Carrelli 1995), and Asen Balikci and Mark Badger’s training of

The Nordic Eye Revisited. NAFA, 1975 to 2015

187

indigenous people in Siberia (Balikci and Badger 1995). The increased accessibility undoubtedly also played a role in the decisions to establish ethnographic film training within universities, and the setting up of socalled Visual Anthropology programmes, teaching both practical and theoretical image-making. All of a sudden we were receiving numerous films made by students, but no longer only students from film schools, but films from institutions such as the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology in Manchester or, some years later, our “own” Visual Anthropology programme in Tromsø.18

Reaching Maturity and Finding a Final Format? The NAFA Festival Today In recent years the NAFA festival may have found a more or less “standard” format, the roots of which we had already seen emerge in the 1980s. The annual event called The NAFA International Ethnographic Film Festival, either as the main title or a subtitle, continues to be held in a new location every year, and is now almost always accompanied by a more “academic” event such as a seminar, workshop, symposium or larger conference, as a rule thematically organised, in which case at least some of the film screenings will adhere to the theme, but there will always also be general film screenings. The organisational structure remains more or less the same as it has always been, i. e. that there is a local organiser that has offered or (increasingly) made a bid to organise the event, deciding whether they wish to have people from NAFA’s working committee 19 directly involved or not. Since the turn of the millennium there have been two main changes. Firstly, as mentioned in the introduction, the NAFA festival may now take place outside the Nordic countries, and has done so six times. The first time was in Cagliari (2001), the most recent case Warsaw (2015).20 The 18

The name of which was later changed to ‘Visual Cultural Studies’. There is now a second master’s programme in the Nordic countries, namely the Eye & Mind programme at Aarhus University in Denmark. 19 The name of the body that runs the day-to-day business of NAFA, usually consisting of a general secretary, an assistant general secretary, a treasurer, and a representative of the editors in charge of the NAFA newsletter (one of NAFA’s very important contributions to Visual Anthropology worldwide, providing comprehensive information on what’s going on), as well as a representative of the organiser of the next year’s festival. Since 2007 this committee has been supplemented by the chairperson of the annual film selection committee. 20 Again please see the Appendix at the end with a list of NAFA festivals.

188

Chapter 8

festival in Tartu in 2004 was interesting because it helped start what is now our “sister” festival, the annual World Culture Festival. This was not the first time NAFA had helped to give birth to a new festival, since this also happened in Joensuu in Finland in 2002, when the Viscult Festival was born there. Secondly, the actual selection of the increasing number of films being submitted has been systematized and followed the same organisational format since 2007. A selection committee, consisting of 5-6 NAFA members (all anthropologists and/or filmmakers), is set up, films being sent to 21 the chairman of the committee, who then organises their distribution to the other committee members. Each member assesses each film as part of an on-going process normally starting immediately after the previous festival before the committee meets physically, if funds are available for this, in order to make a final selection based on a master shortlist. Once a final shortlist is reached, the committee starts the actual programming, letting this influence the final selection, at this stage selecting films that fit each other well, which may be in several senses including, for example, whether they fit the theme of a seminar or workshop held in conjunction with the festival. In NAFA we thus believe we have finally found the more or less ideal format and way of organising our annual festival. However, and returning to our starting point, this is not entirely true, the main reason still being that each year we have new organisers, who, to be fair, may have ideas of their own. One thing that we do insist on, however, is that the organisers must guarantee a certain level of intimacy and social interaction that is conducive for both filmic and intellectual pleasure and stimulation, which in one way or another contributes to an anthropological understanding of the complex world that surrounds us, albeit we may almost have forgotten this thing called reality after sitting in front of the cinema screen for three to four days from morning until late evening. We also like to continue to see NAFA as an association, and festival, that inspires others to do similar things in other parts of the world. This is why we started moving activities outside the Nordic countries, and we have plans to soon organise a NAFA festival outside Europe, most possibly in Cameroon or Mali.22 Paul Henley, the Director of the Granada Centre in Manchester, once described Colin Young as the “maker of filmmakers,” before he himself was called the “ethnographic filmmaker-maker” (Flores 2009). Maybe the best way of describing NAFA is as the maker of ethnographic film festival makers. 21 22

But today 99 % are submitted online in electronic form. Where we have a network of former Visual Anthropology students.

The Nordic Eye Revisited. NAFA, 1975 to 2015

189

Works Cited Balikci, Asen, and Mark Badger. 1995. “A Visual Anthropology Seminar for the native peoples of Siberia and Alaska.” In Advocacy and Indigenous Filmmaking. Intervention, Nordic Papers in Critical Anthropology 1, edited by Philipsen, Hans Henrik and Birgitte Markussen, 39–54. Hoejbjerg: Intervention Press. Bromhead, Toni de. 2014. A filmmaker’s odyssey. Adventures in film and anthropology. Aarhus: Intervention Press. —. 1996. Looking Two Ways. Documentary Film’s Relationship with Reality and Cinema. Hoejbjerg: Intervention Press. Crawford, Peter I. 2007. “From the Arctic to the Pacific: Nordic Visual Anthropology, 1975-2005.” In Visual Anthropology Review 23(1):26 –37. —. 1995. “Nature and Advocacy in Ethnographic Film: The Case of Kayapó Imagery.” In Advocacy and Indigenous Filmmaking. Intervention, Nordic Papers in Critical Anthropology 1, edited by Hans Henrik Philipsen, and Birgitte Markussen, 7–22. Hoejbjerg: Intervention Press. —. 1993. “The Nordic Eye–Ethnographic Film in the Nordic Countries.” In The Nordic Eye, Proceedings from NAFA I, edited by Peter I, 1–24. Hoejbjerg: Intervention Press. Crawford, Peter I., and Jan K. Simonsen, eds. 1992. Ethnographic Film, Aesthetics and Narrative Traditions. The NAFA series II. Hoejbjerg: Intervention Press. Ekström, Knut. 1988. “Visual Anthropology in the Nordic countries. A look into the present, the future and the past.” Visual Anthropology, 1(2):39–45. —. 1986. “Visual Anthropology in the Nordic countries–An overview.” Antropologiska Studier 40/41:39–45. Flores, Carlos Y. 2009. “Reflections of an Ethnographic FilmmakerMaker: An Interview with Paul Henley, Director of the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology, University of Manchester.” American Anthropologist 111(1):93–108. Gallois, Dominique T. and Vincent Carrelli. 1995. “Video in the Villages: The Waiãpi Experience.” In Advocacy and Indigenous Filmmaking. Intervention, Nordic Papers in Critical Anthropology 1, edited by Philipsen, Hans Henrik and Birgitte Markussen, 23–37. Hoejbjerg: Intervention Press. Grimshaw, Anna and Amanda Ravetz. 2009. Observational Cinema. Anthropology, Film, and the Exploration of Social Life. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

190

Chapter 8

Lappalainen, Heimo. 1986. “Made in Finland!?” In Festival dei Popoli 1986, catalogue. Florence: Festival dei Popoli. Young, Colin. 1975. “Observational Cinema.” In Principles of Visual Anthropology, edited by Paul Hockings, 65–80. The Hague: Mouton Publishers.

Appendix: Table 8-1. List of annual NAFA festivals Year 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990* 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003*

Location Stockholm, Etnografiska Museet (Museum of Ethnography), Sweden. Helsinki, Arbetarinstitutet (The Workers’ Institute), Finland. Stockholm, Etnografiska Museet (Museum of Ethnography), Sweden. Oslo, Ethnographic Museum and University of Oslo, Norway. Blidö, Folkets Bio (local arts cinema), Sweden. Aarhus, University of Aarhus, Denmark. Jyväskylä, Finland. Copenhagen, The National Film School, Denmark. Tromsø, University of Tromsø, Norway. Biskops-Arnö, Nordiska Folkhögskola, Sweden. Viborg, Hald Hovedgård, Denmark. Aarhus, University of Aarhus, Denmark. Oslo, Norwegian Film Institute and the University of Oslo, Norway. Helsinki, University of Helsinki, Finland. Reykjavik, University of Iceland, Iceland. Stockholm, Etnografiska Museet (Museum of Ethnography), Sweden. Copenhagen, The National Museum, Denmark. Bergen, The University of Bergen, Norway. Helsinki, Orion Theater/University of Helsinki, Finland. Oslo, Ethnographic Museum and University of Oslo, Norway. Aarhus, University of Aarhus, Denmark. Tromsø, University of Tromsø, Norway. Cagliari, S’Iscandula, Sardinia/Italy. Joensuu, Viscult/University of Joensuu, Finland. Stockholm, Etnografiska Museet (Museum of Ethnography), Sweden.

The Nordic Eye Revisited. NAFA, 1975 to 2015

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017** 2018**

191

Tartu, Estonian National Museum, Estonia. Stockholm, Etnografiska Museet (Museum of Ethnography), Sweden. Bergen, The University of Bergen, Norway. Trondheim, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway. Ísafjörður, The Museum of Jón Sigurðsson, Iceland. Koper, University of Primorska, Slovenia. Aarhus, University of Aarhus, Denmark. St Andrews, University of St Andrews, Scotland. Tromsø, University of Tromsø, Norway. Bilbao, Alhóndiga Bilbao/HAU Taldea (University of the Basque Country), Basque Country. Ísafjörður, The University Center of the Westfjords, Iceland. Warzaw, University of Warzaw, Poland. Bergen, The University of Bergen, Norway. Aarhus, University of Aarhus/Moesgaard Museum, Denmark. Cluj, Romania.

*Internal meeting for NAFA members only **Upcoming conferences

CHAPTER 9 LES REGARDS COMPARÉS AND LE BILAN DU FILM ETHNOGRAPHIQUE: JEAN ROUCH’S INITIATIVES NADINE WANONO

In 1978 Jean Rouch decided to set up an innovative event to help strengthen links between academics, ethnographers and the media: Les Regards Comparés. He proposed comparing filmic documents produced in the same cultural area (Yanomami, Bushmen, Dogon, Aboriginal Australians) in order to better perceive the mise en scène of the filmmaker’s point of view. It was a challenging approach and a particularly interesting moment, which underlined the implicit rules of ethnographic film. A few years later, in 1982, Rouch conceived a festival specifically dedicated to ethnographic film to reinforce its importance in the academic sphere: Le Bilan du Film Ethnographique. He encouraged innovative approaches and fostered new styles among filmmakers, ethnographers and students in Visual Anthropology. By recalling the history of these two events from their creation until today, my objective is to discuss the role of these festivals in the academic landscape of this period, and also to describe the place and importance of funding in relation to the freedom of the Ethnographic Film Committee. This association is commonly called “the Committee”, and was founded by Rouch in 1953 (Gallois 2009) to encourage scholars trained in the social sciences to consider film as a possible means of expression and support for their research. Located at the heart of the Musée de l’Homme at Le Trocadéro, the Ethnographic Film Committee was a major hub for students, filmmakers and researchers, who came from all over the world to find inspiration and stimulation in their contacts with Rouch. As students we were able to freely exchange, discuss and argue with filmmakers like Ricky Leacock, John Marshall, Michel Brault and Colin Young. The tiny

194

Chapter 9

office welcomed all those interested in the broader field of film and ethnography and who wished to meet Rouch. We had the privilege of being part of this history as actors and witnesses. It was a space of liberty; the tensions between the museum’s rules aimed at preserving the past and the necessity of creating our own rules in relation to the present created a vivid pleasure among the young scholars who were members of this team. Accordingly, these two events were the continuation of this spirit instilled by Rouch and among the Visual Anthropology network already existing at that time.

Visual Anthropology at University and Beyond In 1969 Rouch, Enrico Fulchignoni1 and Claudine de France2 created a new kind of specialised course in cinema at the department of Social Sciences at Nanterre University, taking advantage of the atmosphere of liberation that surrounded the May 1968 revolution, which had started at the very same university. This first offer of training in Cinema and Documentaries in a French university served as an important foundation in the French academic system. In 1971 Rouch created a research centre, the Formation de recherches cinématographiques (FRC).3 In 1976 he founded a diploma (DEA) with a Production in Anthropological Cinema and Documentary option, and a PhD in Visual Anthropology. 4 This highly innovative diploma was recognised by both Paris I-La Sorbonne University and Paris X-Nanterre University. I was one of the first generation of students enrolled in this programme.5 1

Enrico Fulchignoni, 1913-1988, in charge of the Audiovisual at UNESCO and President of the International Council for Film, Television and Audiovisual Communication. 2 Claudine de France, former student of Leroi Gourhan and Jean Rouch took actively part in the creation of this program. In 1979, she published Pour une anthropologie visuelle, a milstone publication for French Visual anthropologists. 3 A course in cinematographic research which he directed until 1980, when Claudine de France took over the position. 4 Rouch created it in collaboration with historian Georges Albert Astre. 5 1977 was the first time I met Jean Rouch at the Ethnographic Film Committee. I wished to start a Visual Anthropology PhD under his guidance. From this first encounter, I started to go to the Museum on a regular basis to watch films, take classes on Saturday afternoons, meet people or help Rouch in his activities. Within this spirit I got the chance to translate all the Dogon interviews made with Amadingue, chief of the Mask for the series of films Rouch and Germaine Dieterlen produced on the Sigui, or to film in Super 8 mm the rehearsals of the performances for the feature film Dionysos (1984). The Committee was a central

Les Regards Comparés and Le Bilan du Film Ethnographique

195

In 1976 Rouch was promoted to the post of distinguished Director of Research at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS). In 1978 with Jean Michel Arnold 6 he transferred the L’homme regarde l’homme festival, previously organised in the suburbs of Paris, to the Bibliothèque public d’information (BPI)7 at the Centre Georges Pompidou, and the following year the event was renamed Cinéma du Réel (Festival International de Films Ethnographiques et Sociologiques). Rouch was simultaneously dealing with mainstream film festivals dedicated to documentary as a whole and the academic system regarding audiovisual material. In a letter addressed to the Belgian anthropologist and filmmaker Luc de Heusch regarding the creation of a meeting and an association between ethnographers and filmmakers from different countries, Rouch unveiled his vision: “We must be very prudent regarding all propositions if we want our young organisation to function” (De Heusch 2007, 368). He was aware of the need to “form an active nucleus able to escape from the habitual international sterility”. De Heusch depicts Rouch as “an anarchist at heart who showed his distrust of official bodies”, aware of the challenges created by this new course and relatively new discipline. The university was a key factor for Rouch in his work starting the process of democratisation of what was often perceived as a privilege: to become a filmmaker. His notion of shared anthropology was not just part of the implicit rules a filmmaker should follow with the protagonists involved; for Rouch it was also a way of life and an attitude towards the people he met. He was always deeply committed to the creation and elaboration of new tools. In 1973 Kodak and Fuji introduced the Super 8 mm sound camera, and young filmmakers started to use this format as a professional medium. The time had come to challenge the state monopoly on information. This also reflected the do-it-yourself craftsman side of Rouch as engineer. Tools were there to be transformed in order to capture and reveal life’s complexity, richness and poetry. The control and transformation of his tools was a key aspect of Rouch’s work. By inviting students to use the Super 8 mm, it was a real opportunity to free the means of expression. This new equipment and film stock challenged the place for all students. I was elected General Secretary of the Ethnographic Film Committee in 2012 and resigned a year later. 6 Jean Michel Arnold was from 1974 to 2001 the director of the Service d’ Etudes, de Réalisation, et de Diffusion de Documents Audio Visuel, which later became CNRS Images Medias. 7 Jacques Willmont, French filmmaker, who initiated the L’Homme regarde l’Homme Festival at the Maison des Arts et de la Culture de Créteil in 1974.

196

Chapter 9

economic system: 10 minutes of 16 mm, after being processed, cost around 1000 francs or 150 euros, while in Super 8 mm, 10mins cost 100 francs or 15 euros.

Les Regards Comparés Thus when in 1978 Rouch decided to set up a new platform called Les Regards Comparés,8 he was actually offering a concrete open space where students, ethnographers, sociologists, filmmakers, artists and nonspecialist audiences could share films produced in the same geographical or cultural area but from very distinctive points of view. He was prolonging the famous declaration of Leroi-Gourhan: The ethnographical label can apply to research film, scientific recording, public documentary, or films about exoticism. All fall under the name of travel film and milieu films shot without any scientific intention yet imbued with ethnologic value upon exportation... (Leroi-Gourhan 1948, 49).

Those categories highlight how the film milieu unconsciously harbours scientific values most evident in changing the viewer’s perspective. Even if for Sol Worth this classification could be perceived as tautological, because each film could be perceived in different ways depending on the conditions of the screening and the audience (Worth and Adair 1972), in the case of Les Regards Comparés, its appeal and richness came from the confrontation of different points of view over the course of a three-day event. Viewers were given the opportunity to watch films produced by television producers, travellers and ethnographers in a space-time continuum. Faye Ginsburg recalled it in these terms: The events brought together people from all over the world, including anthropologists, filmmakers, television executives, video artists, amateur movie makers, as well as people from the societies being viewed, to begin to see how different media agendas, as well as the culture/nationality and gender of producers, shape the images produced (Ginsburg 1995, 66).

8 The initiators of this event were J.M. Arnold (General Secretary of Scientific Audiovisual Encounter, director of Serddav and later of CNRSAV), Mariel Delorme (in charge of the manifestations at the Serddav and later of CNRSAV) and Jean Rouch (Research Director at CNRS, General Secretary of the Ethnographic Film Committee.

Les Regards Comparés and Le Bilan du Film Ethnographique

197

In 1978 the first Regards Comparés was organised under the presidency of Professors Georges Henry Rivière,9 Enrico Fulchignoni and Meyer Fortes. 10 Rouch advocated for collaborations with peers, and throughout his career he built up a tribe of friends all over the world who were invited as guests to the event. Rouch underlined the importance of human relationships at the core of any new initiative. The interest and value of any kind of new adventure initiated by Rouch relied on the personal values everyone invested in it. With these values in mind, the Yanomami were selected for the first edition because important audiovisual archives existed, but also because one of Rouch’s best friends was Tim Asch, who produced The Ax Fight (1975) about the Yanomami, a milestone film reference for all those involved in Visual Anthropology. For the second Regards Comparés, Rouch decided to invite his friend and colleague John Marshall, who had been involved with the Bushmen of Kalahari for many years. Rouch admired Marshall’s films such as A Joking Relationship (1962) and The Hunters (1957), and the topic was also relevant in terms of comparison, as many films have been produced about the Bushmen. It was a challenging approach and a unique moment, which underlined the implicit rules of the ethnographic film. This was the case with the film of Laurens van der Post, The Lost World of the Kalahari (1956), a six-part television documentary series. It was a perfect example of the television format, and included commentary, voice over, maps, nondiegetic music, tripod and artificial light. All these elements were perceived as a mise en scène imposed on the population involved in the filmic process. During these vivid discussions and debates around the ethnographic film, Rouch underlined the value of the voices of the people filmed in a broader sense. The ethnographic quality was closely linked to the perception of life and the relationship the filmmaker could establish with his subject. I always noticed how Rouch was deeply concerned by the feedback process as a key moment in the filming process.

9

Georges Henri Rivière 1897-1985. He founded the Musée des Arts et Traditions Populaires in Paris. In 1936 he reorganised with Paul Rivet the Musée Ethnographique du Trocadero, which became Le Musée de l’Homme. 10 Meyer Fortes 1906-1983. As an anthropologist he worked among the Ashanti and Tallensi in Ghana and spent most of his career at Cambridge University, where he was the William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology.

198

Chapter 9

Fig. 9–1. First page of the program of Les Regards Comparés, 1981.

Les Regards Comparés and Le Bilan du Film Ethnographique

199

That same year, the CNRS organised this event in the main cinema hall, and researchers from all over the world who were interested in the Bushmen filled the room. For students it was a key lecture in which the demonstration of ideas came naturally from the screen and also from the discussions.11 Historically, it was very resonant for a young scholar attending the event to listen to each specialist naming the Bushmen as theirs: “My Bushmen do things this way…”, “Mine are different…” 1978 was a turning point, and with the 1980s approaching fast, the discussion evolved along with the perception of the ethnographers and filmmakers towards the people with whom they shared their fieldwork. As Ginsburg explained: Yet, by juxtaposing these different but related kinds of cinematic perspectives on culture, one can create a kind of parallax effect; if harnessed analytically, these “slightly different angles of vision” can offer a fuller comprehension of the complexity of the social phenomenon we call culture and those media representations that self-consciously engage with it (Ginsburg 1995, 65).

She also underlined the importance of this dynamic of Shared Anthropology: in Jean Rouch’s longstanding commitment to and development of film as a vehicle for the creation of a “shared anthropology”, in research, in production, in exhibition, in pedagogy, and in social action. First and foremost is his concern that one’s knowledge about another culture be produced in a way that can be shared with members of that culture (Ginsburg 1995, 65).

As students we were privileged, as Rouch gave us the possibility to meet and exchange with Tim Asch, Colin Young, Bob Gardner, John Marshall, Raymond Depardon, Michel Brault and others. We were lucky enough to enjoy the Depardon film Une partie de campagne (1974), censored by the French government, or to discover Maya Deren’s experimental film Meditation on Violence (1948) on the big screen of the Cinémathèque Française. The diversity of the topics approached and the political engagement of the filmmakers expressed with such freedom created a singular atmosphere, and it was free of charge and open to all. 11 The French academic system invited us to present our ethnographic subject by developing a demonstration based on theoretical arguments. As a student, it was a really important moment because you could evaluate the quality of the film from the relationship built with the people filmed and the ways the filmmaker chose to present it. The interest for some films relied on the quality of the filmic narrative.

200

Chapter 9

The Saturday morning class at the Cinémathèque was a ritual in which everyone could take part. After the class, which was part of the DEA and PhD programmes, we shared lunch together and started lively discussions on films and projects, real or imaginary…

Fig. 9–2. Cover of the program of Les Regards Comparés, 2000. As a homage to Germaine Dieterlen, who passed away in 1999, the program focused again on the Dogon (as in the 1981 edition). The selection was conceived to give a wider scope of the films produced on the Dogon with an international and historical dimension. The Q&A sessions were conducted by Christopher W. Thompson (president of the Ethnographic Film Committee), Rogier Bedaux (Chief Curator of the Ethnology Museum of Leiden), Eric Huysecom and Anne Mayor (archeologists of University of Geneva), Marc Henri Piault (filmmaker and Senior Researcher at CNRS) and Nadine Wanono (filmmaker and senior Researcher at CNRS). Photo: Archives Nadine Wanono.

Les Regards Comparés and Le Bilan du Film Ethnographique

201

Le Bilan The fact that the Cinéma du Réel created in 1978 was rejecting films classified as ethnographic upset Rouch to the point that he decided to create his own festival. From the selection proposed by Cinéma du Réel it appeared that very often the technical quality, format and presence of a production company became decisive criteria. Ethnographic films with handheld camerawork, grainy pictures and low cost production were progressively disappearing from the main selection. So four years later, in 1982, Jean Rouch and Françoise Foucault12 set up the necessary framework for the event called Le Bilan. The main idea was to have the freedom to present films that did not necessarily meet the criteria for television classification or even for professional standards. During this period, students working on a PhD in Visual Anthropology were filming in Super 8, a format that was not recognised as a professional one. For Rouch, however, quality came from the ways of looking and establishing the relationship with the people being filmed, and from your ability to render this relationship on screen. Always sitting in the second row on the left side of the Musée de l’Homme, Rouch would admire the grain, the dust and the smell of the film. It was crucial to present films that did not fit the official format recognised by other festivals. He encouraged innovative approaches and fostered new styles among filmmakers, ethnographers and students in Visual Anthropology. Ivo Strecker’s The Leap across the Cattle, presented in 1979, is exemplary in this regard, as it was shot with a single camera, with no means, and Strecker succeeded in giving the audience a chance to perceive the challenging ritual for young boys to become a full member of Hamar society by undergoing symbolic transformations and leaping across a number of cattle. The Bilan was also a significant encounter for the Visual Anthropology network. As noted by Luc de Heusch (2007), we have to take into consideration the creation of the Comité International du Film Ethnographique et Sociologique13 to understand the links created between the European institutions around the year 1955 and the current Visual Anthropology network. Colleagues from the Institut für den Wissenschaftlichen Film in Göttingen, from the National Film and Television School and from Leiden University came with their students, or 12 Françoise Foucault worked with Jean Rouch for more than 30 years as his personal assistant. She initiated the Bilan and organised almost all the manifestations offered by the Ethnographic Film Committee. 13 The CIFES was created by UNESCO in 1952 and its aim was to create an international network of institutions or associations promoting ethnographic films.

202

Chapter 9

participated as filmmakers. Among them were Peter Crawford, Beate Englebrecht, Paul Henley, Heimo Lapapleilen and Dirk Nijland. One of the specificities of the Bilan was the funding process. As Rouch and Françoise Foucault were both paid by the CNRS, they dedicated their time to organising such events. The main cost was therefore receiving and sending back the prints. The Committee benefited from significant assistance from the diplomatic pouch,14 which was made accessible and ready to support such events in an informal way. The students, involved in a very easy-going way and on a voluntary basis, were also completely dedicated to the event. They were happy to help just for the pleasure of sharing such encounters. Sometimes the Committee was confronted with unexpected difficulties, and Philippe Lourdou15 and myself were once told, a day before the event, that we would have to manage the screenings and deal with the 35 mm, 16 mm or Super 8 mm projectors. It was all a great deal of fun and such happy memories: the singular feeling of being part of an informal team united by Rouch’s spirit and his insatiable desire to share knowledge, ways of life, and ways of building bridges between people from all over the world. Writing these lines in Paris in 2015, I really feel we should find within ourselves the means to re-inject into the world the marvellous utopian energy that Rouch shared with us. In 2008, most of the cultural events or manifestations organised by associations such as the Ethnographic Film Committee had to face financial constraints. In order to have a better identification and a better recognition for Le Bilan as a festival the Ethnographic Film Committee decided to change its name and it became the “Festival International Jean Rouch”. This change reaffirms the international dimension of the manifestation and his indefectible relation to his founder. Since then, the Festival International Jean Rouch is organised every year and has extended its scope by organising multiple events hors les murs. The festival has started new collaborations with institutions such as the Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée (Mucen) and organises projections at major cities all over France.

14 The diplomatic pouch is a service of the French Foreign Ministry which facilitates the exchange of films between cultural centres disseminated worldwide. This service was also dedicated to all mails or packages exchanges between the embassies. 15 Philippe Lourdou, former PhD student of Rouch, initiated his fieldwork among the Bozo, in Mali. After his PhD, he became a member of the Formation Recherche Cinématographique, directed by Claudine de France. He has been a member of the Ethnographic Film Committee since 1976.

Les Regards Comparés and Le Bilan du Film Ethnographique

203

Fig. 9–3. Poster of the Festival International Jean Rouch in 2011. For the first time, this event received funding from Suez giving an opportunity to the Ethnographic Film Committee to improve its communication work: one of the major improvements was a public campaign in the Parisian tube stations. Here at Les Gobelins station. Photo: Nadine Wanono.

Conclusion Rouch was profoundly interested in creating moments and spaces for exchanging ideas and creativity, offering opportunities to reinvent the world. Very often, events are held repeatedly over a period of years and are inevitably taken up by the official systems and integrated slowly into the norm. It is not a question of quality or originality but of social dynamics, and as soon as a platform becomes part of official programmes, it somehow loses its role as a pioneer. With the aim of keeping Rouch’s foundational spirit, the Festival International Jean Rouch is committed to open the ethnographic film festival to new formats. In 2012 as part of the Bilan a new section called Narrativités Singulières was created, in order to open the space for audiences questioning the linearity of the audiovisual medium (Wanono 2006) and for people dealing with programming languages as a tool of expression. The event was organised in a Digital Art Centre called Le Cube; it invites people concerned with this dynamic to break through the norms of the prevailing academic system and claim the key role of creation as a methodology, with films such as Phone Tapping (Hee Won Navi Lee, 2009), which experiments with time, technology and new aesthetic approaches.

204

Chapter 9

I can hear Rouch’s voice, saying one more time, “Cric? Crac!”16 as if he still provokes us and invites us to breathe new creative energies into our work and to tirelessly détourner or divert all new forms of constraints imposed by the current socioeconomic system.

Works Cited De France, Claudine, ed. 1979. Pour une anthropologie visuelle. Paris: Cahiers de l’Homme, Mouton Editeur and Ecoles des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. De Heusch, Luc. 2007. “Jean Rouch and the Birth of Visual Anthropology: A Brief History of the Comité international du film ethnographique.” Visual Anthropology 20(5):365–386. Gallois, Alice. 2009. “Ethnographic Cinema in France: The Committee of Ethnographic Film as an Instrument of Institutionalisation? (19501970).” 1895: Revue d’histoire du cinéma 58:80–109. Ginsburg, Faye. 1995. “The Parallax Effect: The Impact of Aboriginal Media on Ethnographic Film.” Visual Anthropology Review 11(2):64– 76. Lajos, Saghy. 1982. “Des regards comparés, III, manifestation organisée par le Comité international des Films de l’Homme, les 5, 6 et 7 mars 1981, au Musée de l’Homme, Palais de Chaillot, à Paris.” Revue française d’histoire d’outre-mer 69(255):149–151. Leroi-Gourhan, André. 1948. “Cinéma et sciences humaines: Le film ethnologique existe-t-il?” La revue de géographie humaine et d’ethnologie 3:42–51. Wanono, Nadine. 2004. “Le film, miroir sans tain de la société dogon?” Journal des Africanistes 71(1):83–91. —. 2006. “From Spatial Analysis to Virtual Wonder.” In Reflecting Visual Ethnography: Using the Camera in Anthropological Research, edited by Metje Postma and Peter Ian Crawford, 254–270. Højbjerg: Intervention Press and CNWS Publications. 16

Jean Rouch was very fond of sharing the phrase “Cric? Crac!” with friends and colleagues. The expression comes originally from West African and Caribbean traditional storytelling. “He often shared a version of this folktale as part of his workshops: ‘Two young twin sisers played a constant game in which one sister would say “cric?”–to which the other would say “Crac!.” In this way, the sisters would playfully affirm their connection with each other: “Cric?” (Are you there?) and “Crac!” (Yes, here I am); or “Cric?” (Are you ready?) and “Crac” (Yes, let’s go)’.” Quoted from DER homage to Jean Rouch: http://der.org/jeanrouch/content/index.php?id=crack

Les Regards Comparés and Le Bilan du Film Ethnographique

205

Worth, Sol, and John Adair. 1972. Through Navajo Eyes: An Exploration in Film Communication and Anthropology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

CHAPTER 10 THE FILM FESTIVAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE: A PERSONAL MEMOIR ON ITS THIRTIETH ANNIVERSARY PAUL HENLEY

The film festival of the Royal Anthropological Institute has been in existence since 1985. It has been a peripatetic event, moving from one host institution, usually a university, to another, mostly on a biennial basis. Like the RAI itself, it is aimed at those who are interested in archaeology as well as anthropology, and has been mostly directed by academics on a voluntary basis, working in collaboration with the staff of the RAI in London. The most recent edition of the festival took place in June 2015, at the Watershed, an arts cinema complex located in the refurbished harbourside area of Bristol docks, in the southwest of England. It was the 14th edition and consisted of the screening of some 60 films over the course of four days. Many of these films were in competition for one or more of eight different prizes, including an Audience Prize, while others were shown hors concours as part of thematic programmes devised by the organisers. In addition, there were a number of workshops and discussions on particular topics, including one on the potential of interactive documentary as a mode of ethnographic filmmaking, and another “making of” session on the recent television series The Tribe, played on Channel 4, on the Hamar pastoralists of Ethiopia, which had employed a fixed multicamera set-up to film their daily domestic life. However, in contrast to many previous editions of the festival, on this occasion there was no accompanying academic conference. By common consent, the quality and variety of the programme at Bristol were both excellent, continuing the high standards that the festival has achieved over the thirty years of its existence. So too were the

208

Chapter 10

technical facilities and the support of the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Bristol. Even so, this edition posed certain issues that have dogged the RAI Film Festival ever since its inception-as I know from personal experience, having been involved to some degree in every edition to date. Firstly, attendance at the screenings was disappointing: some of the films that would later be awarded prizes, and whose makers had come from a long way to support, played to small audiences. Secondly, some of the films selected for screening and even some of those awarded prizes provoked controversy since they had been made by filmmakers with neither debt nor allegiance to academic anthropology and without any prior prolonged ethnographic research. On what grounds therefore, some participants asked, had they been included in the programme of an ethnographic film festival?

On the “Ethnographicness” of the RAI Film Festival A broad range of practical factors may impact on attendance at any film festival, including location and transport facilities, the precise calendar dates, the cost of registration and accommodation, and the effectiveness of publicity-to name only the most obvious. Yet the quality and nature of the programme also has an effect and it is here that there is a relationship to be considered between the level of attendance and what, after Karl Heider, we might call the “ethnographicness” of the films on offer (Heider 1975, 46). The important point to take on board here is that “ethnographicness” is a relative rather than an absolute quality and as such can be applied to a broad range of films, some of which will be more ethnographic than others. The RAI has generally taken the view that if we were to restrict ourselves to films that are very strongly or obviously ethnographic in the sense that they have been made both by and for academic anthropologists and are based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, we would be unlikely to end up with a selection of films that was sufficiently strong either in number or in quality to sustain a stimulating festival with an international profile. Besides, to restrict ourselves in this way would be entirely contrary to the historical mission of the RAI, which, since its foundation in the nineteenth century, has been to act as a two-way bridge between the academic world and the broader public, not only providing a means whereby anthropologists and archaeologists can communicate their knowledge to non-academic audiences, but also a means of introducing ideas and interests from the outside world into the academy. Given this historical mission, it behoves us particularly to ask not only what

The Film Festival of the Royal Anthropological Institute

209

academics can do for ethnographic filmmaking by non-academics, but also what non-academic filmmakers can do for the practice of ethnography by academic anthropologists. Typically, the RAI festival now receives over 300 submissions for one or more of its prizes. In selecting amongst this vast field of entries, the RAI has tended to adopt a rather catholic definition of the term “ethnographic”. In common with the practice in contemporary academic anthropology generally, in this definition, “ethnography” is no longer considered merely synonymous with the culturally exotic. That may still be the most widespread popular view, but this was an association that became obsolete in the academic world at least 80 years ago when anthropologists began to carry out ethnographic studies on the streets of Chicago. In this more modern definition, ethnography, be it filmic or textual, is typically taken to involve the study or exploration of the customary and recurrent forms of social and cultural life, regardless of the degree of cultural exoticism entailed. It may involve an account of exceptional events, of a political, or ritual nature, for example, but in the unfolding of those events, customary relations, ideas and values will in the ideal case be invoked, even highlighted or brought to light when normally they remain hidden. An ethnographic film defined in this way will often also be about particular individuals, and may even constitute highly personalised portraits, but it will be through these individuals’ idiosyncratic life experiences that the film will offer a broader view onto the culture or society of which they are part. There is also a methodological and even an ethical dimension to this present-day definition of the ethnographic. In the ideal case, an ethnographic film will be based on the prolonged cohabitation of the filmmakers with the subjects and the film that emerges from this cohabitation will be one that is built upon the relationship of trust developed between subjects and filmmakers during this period. The resulting film will be at the very least non-judgemental, and may even be partisan in the sense that its aim will be to present the way of life of the subjects, not just as they understand it intellectually, morally or politically, but even, to the degree that the audiovisual medium allows it, as they experience it. In this way, an ethnographic film should be aiming to access what Bronislaw Malinowski, the original Ethnographer with a capital “E,” called the “subjective desire of feeling” and which he also pronounced, in those less gender-aware days, to be “the greatest reward which we can hope to obtain from the study of Man” (Malinowski 1932, 25).

210

Chapter 10

Fig. 10–1. Leading ethnographic filmmakers at the 2nd RAI festival in Manchester, September 1990. Filmmakers pose for a light-hearted portrait in front of a pink Cadillac at Granada Television Studios. From left to right, foreground: Jean Rouch, Herb di Gioia, David MacDougall and Colin Young; in the background, left, the Hungarian filmmaker, János Tari. Photo: with the kind permission of Knud Fischer-Møller.

In applying this definition of the ethnographic to the films submitted to the RAI festival, the selection committees have generally worked to the principle that it is not necessary to be an academic anthropologist to make a film that is ethnographic–though as with crazy people in some offices, it can certainly help. Nor is it necessary for a film to conform to the definition in every particular for it to be considered ethnographic: even if it deviates in some regards, its “ethnographicness” can still be sufficient for it to merit a place at the festival. It is also not necessary for films to conform to any particular style or genre: they can be observational, interview-based, commentary-led, archival or even fictional, and still manifest sufficient “ethnographicness” to be included. All subject matters are similarly possible. The upside of this broad definition of the ethnographic is that the RAI has generally had a very rich field of films from which to choose. The downside is that it is often very difficult to choose between them. How does one assess self-consciously cinematic works in the mould of Robert Gardner, with the more soberly observational films of the kind made by

The Film Festival of the Royal Anthropological Institute

211

David MacDougall? How does one compare a sophisticated documentary feature of the kind produced by Kim Longinotto with a much shorter film about, say, basket-weaving, that is based on extended firsthand field research but with a fraction of the budget, not to mention a relative absence of the technical film skills that Longinotto can call upon? This last comparison is complexified by the fact that the RAI film festival is supposed to cater to the needs not only of anthropologists but also archaeologists, many of whom have a particular interest in films about technology and “material culture”. Similarly, how does one balance the claims of archival films against those of ethnofictions, or the films made by students (which constitute a large proportion of the entries) against those made by more experienced filmmakers? And what should be the place of indigenous media producers? Should we also strive to find a place for art installations, websites and interactive documentaries, all of which pose logistical problems of exhibition? Over the course of its thirty-year history, the RAI festival has sought to come to terms with the diversity of the submissions that it receives in two related ways. Firstly, by the proliferation of prizes, so that there is now a prize for a broad range of different categories of film, thereby going some way towards avoiding invidious or absurd comparisons. Secondly, by the proliferation of strands, so that there are now usually at least three strands of film-screenings or more discussion-based events taking place simultaneously. But although these may sound like effective solutions, they merely replace one set of problems with another: not only do three strands disperse the audience, which historically has often been small enough anyway at the RAI festival, but at the same time, it increases the costs of running the festival-each prize has to be judged and the judges’ expenses paid, and each strand has to be accommodated in its own screening facility, thereby usually increasing room and equipment hire costs. In my personal view, the only way to square this particular circle is to increase the attendance substantially so that there is sufficient audience to fill every session adequately. But one of the longstanding obstacles to doing this has been the fact that historically the RAI festival has been a moveable feast, never remaining in the same location for more than two consecutive editions, thereby making it difficult both to build up a local audience and to develop a familiar brand that will attract people from afar. This mobility also increases the cost of running the festival over the longer term, since in every new location, a new infrastructure has to be devised and created.

212

Chapter 10

The Origins of the RAI Film Festival As it is presently constituted, the RAI FF represents the amalgamation of two previously existing events–a “one-off” film festival and a film prize competition–that have been subsequently overlain by all sorts of later accretions. The “one-off” film festival took place in September 1985 at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), which is part of the University of London. It was a “one-off” in the sense that it was originally conceived as an isolated event, rather than as the first of what would become a series of festivals. The intention was that it would be international in nature but that it would also reflect the range of ethnographic filmmaking initiatives taking place at that time in the UK. Over the course of three days, there were screenings of a number of relatively recent, mostly acclaimed, ethnographic films, which had been selected by the organisers and arranged around three themes: life crises, change and development, and cultural self-expression. The first day was chaired by Colin Young, then head of the National Film and Television School (NFTS) in the UK, and a leading supporter of ethnographic filmmaking, while the second and third days were chaired by the eminent filmmakers David MacDougall and Jean Rouch respectively. A generous grant from UNESCO enabled the organisers to keep the registration fee low and to invite a number of participants from what was then still known as the “Third World”. The programme of screenings was enhanced by a number of ancillary events, including a one-day pre-Festival conference focused on the use of film in multicultural educational contexts to combat racism. There were also a number of supporting events, well attended by the general public, at the National Film Theatre, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, the French Institute and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) in Piccadilly. The latter served as the location for a memorable double bill consisting of Jean Rouch’s bizarre paen to pre-industrial life, Dionysos (1984), and Robert Gardner’s about-to-be-released masterwork, Forest of Bliss (1986). Both filmmakers were present for the discussion afterwards but as the films, each in its own way, had mostly stunned or perplexed the audience, this proved to be rather fragmentary. This was still within the highwater period of the patronage of ethnographic filmmaking by British television, and the Festival was opened by Sir Denis Forman, CEO of Granada Television and godfather of the Disappearing World strand (Forman, 1985). With each film based on the field research of a consultant anthropologist, this strand had been

The Film Festival of the Royal Anthropological Institute

213

running since 19691 and had completed nine series by this point, representing 34 films (it would go on to produce a further 22 films in 7 series, finally ending in 1993). After a number of more thematic series broadcast in the late 1960s and 1970s, the BBC had recently set up a new unit at Bristol to produce the Worlds Apart strand, modelled on the Disappearing World formula. This strand had begun broadcasting in 1982 and was already into its second series. Meanwhile, Channel 4 had come on-stream and had signalled its intention to support ethnographic filmmaking, not only by broadcasting Nanook of the North (1922) on the centenary of the director Robert Flaherty’s birth in 1984, but also by commissioning films by the anthropologist-filmmakers Hugh Brody and Toni de Bromhead (for the latter, see de Bromhead 2014). The RAI itself had also played an important part in promoting ethnographic film during this period. In fact, it had supported ethnographic filmmaking since at least as far back as the early 1950s when it had provided the anthropologist Harry Powell with a camera that he used to shoot sequences of kula exchange in the Trobriand Islands. Later, in the 1960s, the RAI Film Committee had been formed. But the promotion of ethnographic filmmaking at the RAI had entered a new phase with the appointment of Jonathan Benthall as the Director in 1974. Under his editorship, RAIN, the newsletter of the RAI, began to carry regular reviews of the ethnographic films screened on television as well as more general comment pieces about ethnographic film. One of the thematic series that appeared on British television in the 1970s, Face Values (David Cordingley, 1978), was originally proposed to the BBC by a committee of the RAI chaired by Edmund Leach. Although it had featured the then royal patron of the RAI, Prince Charles, as an unlikely anchorman (which had at least ensured high viewing ratings), the series received what are euphemistically known as “mixed notices”. However, this did not deter the RAI from its continued support of ethnographic filmmaking. In the 1980s, this took a very different form in the shape of a scheme developed in collaboration with the National Film and Television School whereby, with the aid of funding from the Leverhulme Trust, a number of post-doctoral academic anthropologists were trained in practical filmmaking over the course of one or two years. This scheme, which I was very fortunate to be part of myself, was in full flow at the time of the first RAI Film Festival and the two of us then on the scheme, the enthnomusicologist John Baily and myself, were invited to show preliminary cuts of the films that we had made. 1

The first Disappearing World film was broadcast in May 1970, but work on the series had begun the previous year.

214

Chapter 10

Fig. 10–2. 6th RAI Festival at Goldsmith’s College, University of London, September 1998. From left to right: Guatemalan anthropologist filmmaker Carlos Flores, Paul Henley and Flores’s film partner, the indigenous Mayan director-cameraman, Mainor Pacay. The presence of Pacay at the Festival was made possible by the RAI Travel Bursary set up in memory of Harry Watt, one of the celebrated group of GPO filmmakers in the 1930s. Photo: with the kind permission of Ricardo Leizaola.

However, this first festival did not feature any sort of competitive element. The origins of this aspect of the festival lay in an entirely different initiative of the RAI Film Committee that predated the festival by a number of years. The first RAI Film Prize was awarded in 1980 to David and Judith MacDougall’s well-known film, The Wedding Camels (1977). Although a considerable number of films had been entered for this competition, only the prize-winning film had been screened publicly. The same procedure applied in 1982, when Kim Mckenzie’s film, Waiting for Harry (1980) won the prize. But in 1984, four shortlisted films were screened at the RAI’s headquarters, which were then still located in offices rented from the Royal Asiatic Society in Queen Anne Street. The judges’ decision to award the film to Gary Kildea’s film, Celso and Cora (1983), generated some controversy since a number of those present, including

The Film Festival of the Royal Anthropological Institute

215

myself, felt that while Celso and Cora had many merits, Melissa Llewelyn-Davies’ magnificent film, The Women’s Olamal (1984) had a better claim to be considered the best specifically ethnographic film in that year’s competition (Henley 1984). In 1986, the RAI Film Prize was supplemented by a second prize funded by Robert Gardner. This was named in honour of Basil Wright, who had been one of Grierson’s protegés in the celebrated GPO documentary film unit in the 1930s and whose work Gardner greatly admired, particularly his quasi-ethnographic film, Song of Ceylon (1934). This prize was to be awarded, Gardner stipulated, to a film “in the ethnographic tradition” that communicated “a concern for humanity" and took advantage of the “evocative faculty” of film to do so. This allowed for a sort of division of labour between the prizes: the Basil Wright Prize came to be adopted as a means of recognizing works, such as those of Gardner himself, or indeed Basil Wright, that exploited the aesthetic potential of film in an artistic or poetic manner, while the RAI Film Prize came to be reserved for more aesthetically realist films, typically concerned with social or political topics. The first recipient of the Basil Wright Prize was the Franco-Bulgarian director Gueorgui Balabanov, for his artistically constructed meditation on mortality (an appropriately Gardnerian theme) in the film Pomen (1979), while the RAI Prize that year was awarded to the more straightforwardly realist observational film, Two Ways of Justice (1985), which was one of Melissa Llewelyn-Davies’s Maasai Diary series broadcast on BBC2, and which contrasts the Maasai way of administering justice with that of the Kenyan state. These awards took place in the SOAS cinema in the presence of Basil Wright himself, whom I was delegated to look after. Sadly, however, Wright was by then rather infirm and seemed confused as to what he was doing there. He died the following year, aged 80, and was commemorated in an elegant obituary published by Gardner in the recently launched RAI journal, Anthropology Today (Gardner 1988). In 1988, the screening of the short-listed finalists, now for two prizes, moved out of London for the first time when it was hosted in Manchester by the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology. This had been established at the University of Manchester the previous year with myself as its director. The event was held at the Cornerhouse, a local arts cinema, and was attended by both academics and members of the general public. However, it seemed to us a great shame that we then had to return the eighty or so other films that had been submitted for these prizes from all over the world without ever showing them in public. It was out of this sense of lost opportunity that the idea of combining the prize screenings

216

Chapter 10

and the festival into a single event was born. Accordingly, we proposed to the RAI Film Committee that we would host a second edition of the film festival at Manchester that would also incorporate the 1990 edition of the film prize screenings. Although some members of the Committee had their doubts, our proposal was accepted. The RAI Film Festival had hit the road in more senses than one.

The Trajectory of the RAI Film Festival The 1990 edition of the festival was considerably more substantial than the first edition that had taken place five years beforehand. Over 350 people registered for the 1990 event, including many of the leading visual anthropologists and filmmakers of the day, from all over the world (Fig. 10–1). A large proportion of the attendees were students. Due to a bursary fund set up in memory of another of Grierson’s protegés, Harry Watt, the RAI was able to pay the airfares of a number of participants from the global South. It extended over five days, Monday to Friday, running from 9:00am to 11:00pm, and involved the screening of over 80 films as well as a conference at which there were some 60 presentations and various specialised workshops. A selection of papers from this conference was later edited by my Manchester colleagues, Peter Crawford and David Turton, into a volume that would become an important landmark in the literature of Visual Anthropology (Crawford and Turton 1992). The nine films shortlisted for the RAI and Basil Wright prizes were screened in a single strand over three evenings. The other two evenings were dedicated to a series of special events: a lecture named in honour of Sir Denis Forman and given by Peter Loizos, and the screening of recent works by the two leading monstres sacrés of ethnographic film: Ika Hands (1988) by Robert Gardner, and Jean Rouch’s backhanded ethnofictional tribute to the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution, Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité… et puis après? (1990). The latter was so recently released that it had not yet been subtitled into English, but Rouch himself was on hand to give a simultaneous translation in his celebrated Maurice Chevalier accent. During the day, there were two or more parallel strands consisting of conference presentations, non-competitive screenings (a sort of salon de refusés for films submitted for the two main prizes) and films shortlisted for two new prizes, one for Material Culture and Archaeology, and the other a Student Prize sponsored by JVC in the form of a then state-of-theart VHS video recorder. The 1990 edition established the general model for the RAI Film Festival, but it is one that subsequent editions have found difficult to

The Film Festival of the Royal Anthropological Institute

217

emulate. This is because in addition to its sheer novelty value and the general buzz about ethnographic filmmaking that existed in the UK at that time due to television patronage, the 1990 Festival benefitted from certain conditions that its successors have not enjoyed, at least not to anything like the same extent. Most importantly, the 1990 festival received substantial sponsorship from Granada Television both in the form of cash and in the use of its Studios, and also from the University of Manchester, partly in the form of cash, but more importantly in the form of entirely free facilities and excellent technical support. The University of Manchester also sponsored the event to a major degree in the sense that the three principal local academic organisers of the event–David Turton, Peter Crawford and myself–all dedicated several months of our time to the festival and were further supported by the secretarial staff of the Department of Anthropology. All this was done with the blessing of the then head of the department, Marilyn Strathern, since the festival was seen as an important way of putting Manchester “on the map” as far as Visual Anthropology was concerned. Although the festival certainly did contribute to this aim, it is very unlikely that at the present time-when the activities of all UK university academics are overshadowed by the need to produce outputs for research assessment exercises-that any head of department, whatever the strategic advantages, could readily agree to so much staff time being dedicated to the running of a film festival. For, sadly, as far as these research assessment exercises are concerned, a film festival counts for very little. But in the early 1990s, research assessment exercises still lay in the future, so in order to put into practice the lessons that we had learned from the 1990 edition, in 1992 we again offered to host a festival incorporating the film prize screenings at Manchester, thereby establishing the biennial rhythm that has persisted, with one brief hiccup, to this day. As 1992 was the year when the world was marking the 500th anniversary of the arrival of Columbus in America, films about the Native peoples of the Americas were prominent in the programme. It also featured two days of presentations and workshops aimed at a critical evaluation of the way in which Native Americans had been represented in Western media. A particular innovation of this edition of the festival, and one that has subsequently become a regular feature, was the offering of a Life Achievement Award. In fact, on this occasion, we made two such awards, one to Timothy Asch and the other to Brian Moser, both of whom had made distinguished contributions to ethnographic filmmaking about Native peoples of the Americas.

218

Chapter 10

A high point of this edition was the presence of three Native American filmmakers, which was made possible by a combination of grants from UNESCO and the Harry Watt fund. These filmmakers were Noemi Gualinga, a Canelos Quichua from Ecuador, and Mokuka and Tamok from Central Brazil, both of whom had worked with the late Terry Turner on the Kayapo Video Project. Turner himself was also present and gave that year’s Forman Lecture at the festival, using it to attack those who had suggested that the use of video technology by native peoples was merely another means by which these peoples were being subjugated to Western values and political control (Turner 1992). Although the 1992 event also took place over five days and required a great deal of effort to deliver, it was a significantly smaller event than its predecessor. Attendance was down by a third, and there were fewer international participants. There were also fewer films and far fewer conference presentations. As the 1990s progressed, this process of shrinkage would continue. The television patronage of ethnographic filmmaking in the UK dwindled over this decade, making it increasingly difficult to get sponsorship for the festival from that source. At the same time, as the neo-liberal agenda progressively invaded the life of universities, the charges that they made for the use of their facilities increased. Meanwhile, academics themselves became increasingly jealous of their time on account of the mounting obligation “to publish or perish.” In the face of these pressures, it became very much more of a challenge for the festival to balance its budget. It was only due to the remarkable self-sacrificing efforts of colleagues at the University of Kent that the festival was sustained through its fourth and fifth editions in 1994 and 1996, while in 1998, it was colleagues at Goldsmiths who took up the challenge. By now the festival had become an event of only three days, typically spread over a long weekend, with considerably lower attendance than had been the case in the early 1990s, and with far fewer international participants. At the same time, however, the number of films submitted for the prizes had increased as a result of the fact that, with the digital revolution, film production had become much cheaper. It was therefore getting increasingly difficult to squeeze a representative sample into the time available. At the SOAS festival in 2000, there were three concurrent strands of films throughout the three days, but there was no accompanying conference. In the early years of the millennium, the festival almost died but after a three-year hiatus, it was rescued from oblivion by the generosity of colleagues at Durham (this at least had the beneficial consequence of putting us out of phase with the equally biennial Göttingen

The Film Festival of the Royal Anthropological Institute

219

International Ethnographic Film Festival, which is similar in many regards to the RAI festival). In 2005, the ninth edition was hosted at Oxford where it was attached to the events celebrating the centenary of the teaching of anthropology at the university. Here the conference element of the festival was restored, with a two-day workshop on archives and the history of Visual Anthropology preceding the three days of screenings. But attendance at the festival itself remained relatively modest. Fig. 10–3. The Nepalese filmmaker, Dipesh Kharel at the 10th RAI Festival at Manchester in June 2007. He holds aloft the certificate indicating that he has won the Material Culture and Archaeology prize for his film, A Life with Slate. His participation at the festival was also made possible by the Harry Watt Bursary Photo: with the kind permission of Joceny Pinheiro.

For the tenth edition, in 2007, the festival returned for the third time to Manchester. Here, with the support of colleagues in the Drama department, we were able to recapture some of the scale of the earliest festivals with the aid of what was, in effect, the last hurrah of the sponsorship of ethnographic film by Granada Television. Although the Disappearing World series had itself disappeared in 1993, Granada Television was still supporting the Granada Centre in a modest fashion, including funding the Forman Lecture. The festival opened with what would prove to be the very last Forman Lecture, with Sir Denis himself sitting in the front row. This “lecture” actually consisted of an interview by Hugh Brody of the feature film director Kevin MacDonald.

220

Chapter 10

Over four days, some 76 films were screened, including 12 films as part of a “China Day.” The usual range of prizes was assigned, plus a new one, the Intangible Culture Prize for the best film on music, dance or performance. There were workshops on such topics as Visual Anthropology in Latin America, anthropology on television and the visualization of childhood. The end of the screenings also overlapped with the start of a major one and a half day conference, Beyond Text, organised by my Manchester colleagues Rupert Cox and Andrew Irving, in collaboration with Chris Wright of Goldsmiths College. This was dedicated to the exploration of the relationships between anthropological understanding, sensory perception and aesthetic practices, including filmmaking. A collection of papers from this conference, as well as a DVD, has been published very recently (Cox et al. 2016). In the course of the entire five days, over 500 people attended one or more sessions of the festival-conference, a figure that dwarfs even the numbers achieved at the 1990 festival.

The RAI Film Festival Facing the Future The momentum recaptured by the tenth festival has generally been sustained over the last four editions at Leeds Metropolitan University in 2009, University College London in 2011 (see Bishop 2012), Edinburgh in 2013 (the first time that the festival had been held outside England) and, most recently in Bristol in 2015. Both the quality and quantity of the films submitted for the prizes have improved steadily over this period, resulting in a progressively more elaborate programme. Several new prizes were added to list, including an Audience Prize in Leeds (2009) and the Richard Werbner Prize in London (2011), to be awarded to early career academic anthropologists for films that complement a textual ethnography. In 2015, as a one-off at Bristol, an Environmental Issues prize was also awarded. The continuing vigour of the festival during this period has been in large measure due to the sterling efforts of Susanne Hammacher, then the RAI Film Officer. In addition to playing a leading role in the management of the film prize screenings, she also helped to orchestrate a series of stimulating workshops running in parallel with the screenings and covering such diverse topics as participatory filmmaking with street children and community groups, archives and intellectual property rights, and interwar travelogues and colonial filmmaking. The Edinburgh edition (2013) also featured Factish Field, an art and anthropology “summer school” that ran alongside the festival.

The Film Festival of the Royal Anthropological Institute

221

Another development during this period represented a welcome return to the partnership with the Center for Visual Anthropology at the University of Southern California (USC) which had played such an important part in the success of the 1990 festival but which had subsequently lapsed. Re-established with the 2013 Festival, this partnership not only allows for the participation of colleagues from USC in the celebration of the festival in the UK, but afterwards, a selection of films from the festival are screened in Los Angeles. USC also make a generous contribution to the budget of the festival. However, with the arguable exception of the 12th Festival at the University College London (UCL) in 2011, which could draw on the entirely exceptional conditions of London, there was still a tendency during this period for there to be a mismatch between high quality of the programme and the size of the audience that the Festival was able to attract. As I write, this is the main challenge that we are confronting as we make preparations for the 15th RAI Film Festival, which will again take place at the Watershed in Bristol, in the spring of 2017. However, as the newly appointed director of the festival, I have every confidence that we will be able to meet this challenge. Indeed, we are already putting in place a series of formal partnerships with anthropology departments and film schools at a regional, national and international level that are aimed at ensuring not only a diverse and high quality programme, but also a substantial audience, a healthy balance sheet, and an organisational model that will carry the festival forward for at least another thirty years.

Works Cited Bishop, John. 2012. “Reflections on the 12th RAI International Festival of Ethnographic Films.” American Anthropologist 114(3):528–529. Cox, Rupert, Andrew Irving, and Christopher Wright, eds. 2016. Beyond Text: Critical Practices and Sensory Anthropology. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Crawford, Peter, and David Turton, eds. 1992. Film as Ethnography. Manchester: Manchester University Press. De Bromhead, Antoinette. 2014. A Filmmaker’s Odyssey: Adventures in Film and Anthropology. Højbjerg: Intervention Press. Forman, Denis. 1985. “International Festival of Ethnographic Film: Opening speech, 24 September.” Anthropology Today 1(6):2–4. Gardner, Robert. 1988. “Obituary: Basil Wright.” Anthropology Today 4(1):24. Heider, Karl. 1976. Ethnographic Film. Austin: University of Texas Press.

222

Chapter 10

Henley, Paul. 1984. “The 1984 RAI Film Prize.” RAIN 62:9–12. Loizos, Peter. 1992. “Admissible evidence? Film in anthropology.” In Film as Ethnography, edited by Peter I. Crawford and David Turton, 50–65. Manchester University Press. Malinowski, Bronislaw. [1922] 1932. Argonauts of the Western Pacific: an account of native enterprise and adventure in the archipelagos of Melanesian New Guinea. 2nd impression. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Turner, Terence. 1992. “Defiant images: the Kayapo appropriation of video.” Anthropology Today 8(6):5–16.

CHAPTER 11 25 YEARS OF BEELD VOOR BEELD FESTIVAL AND VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE NETHERLANDS EDDY APPELS1

In 2015 the Beeld voor Beeld festival celebrated its 25th edition, and its organising body, the Dutch Foundation for Visual Anthropology (SAVAN) celebrated its 25th anniversary. This chapter will look back at the developments in Visual Anthropology in the Netherlands during these 25 years, and at the present state and the future of the festival and its activities. It will especially focus on the position of Visual Anthropology in general and of the festival in particular in anthropology and in the wider cultural arena. Like the discipline itself, the festival and the other activities are sandwiched between these two spheres. 1989 was a landmark year for Visual Anthropology in the Netherlands. On March 6, the Dutch Foundation for Audio-Visual Anthropology (SAVAN) was founded in Leiden, as a tribute to and in honour of reaching the degree of Doctor by Dirk Nijland, then teacher of Ethnocinematography at the State University of Leiden. The following year, SAVAN organised the first Beeld voor Beeld festival, modelled after and inspired by the Bilan du Film Ethnographique in Paris. In that same year of 1989, the important international conference on the future of Visual Anthropology and Sociology, Eyes Across the Water, was held at the University of Amsterdam, organised by Robert BoonzaijerFlaes, the founder of the Visual Anthropology Department of the University of Amsterdam.

1

I would like to dedícate this chapter to visual anthropologist and filmmaker Steef Meyknecht, who taught Visual Ethnography in Leiden and was a member of my program committee. Steef passed away on November 21, 2015.

224

Chapter 11

Beeld voor Beeld started out as a small festival at the Museum of Ethnology in Rotterdam, showcasing Dutch audiovisual anthropological productions. Ethnographic filmmaking on a professional basis was introduced in the Netherlands by A.A. Gerbrands and others during the 1960s (Nijland 2002, 893). After two years in Rotterdam the festival moved to the Museum of Ethnology in Leiden, and then in the 1990s to the Tropentheater in Amsterdam, where it was held until the closure of the theatre in January 2013.

Amsterdam School versus Leiden School These two departments of Visual Anthropology, Leiden and Amsterdam, developed into different schools of teaching and practising Visual Anthropology, or, as it was called in Leiden, Ethnocinematography and later Visual Ethnography. These two schools slowly developed into rivals, where you either belonged to the Amsterdam School or the Leiden School. Besides methodological differences, this strife was also due to different personalities, not only the heads of department but also the staff of the two schools: whereas Leiden had a long tradition of thorough scientific methodologies greatly influenced by Jean Rouch and the methods of the French Structuralists, Amsterdam was much more a handson school where the students were taught to go out and record their fieldwork. This was also the method Rob Boonazjer-Flaes used in his films. Being a musician himself, he ventured out into faraway places to play music with his main characters, appearing in shots himself and thereby trying to provoke and discover similarities between different cultures. The Leiden School was much more focused on either the registration of rituals for scientific use or, later on, using the method of observational cinema, inspired by the French cinéma vérité of which Jean Rouch, perhaps wrongfully, was considered a practicioner. The different schools became symbolic of a certain type of Visual Anthropology and, by consequence, of visual anthropologists. Belonging to Leiden meant either being thorough and scientific, or dull and rigid, belonging to Amsterdam meant the opposite. The Amsterdam department had to close in 1992 due to budget cuts.2 2

Leiden titles include: Tobelo Marriage (1985, Dirk Nijland), Sacrifice of Serpents (1997, Dirk Nijland), Of Men and Mares (Metje Postma, 1998), Karspel II (1991, Ton Guiking and Steef Meyknecht), Boarded Up (2000, Steef Meyknecht). Films by Rob Boonzajer-Flaes include: Bleh (1983), Polka (1986) and Dor. Low is Better (1988), all with cameraman Maarten Rens. Together with acclaimed Dutch

25 Years of Beeld voor Beeld Festival

225

Science versus Documentary If we take a close look at the issues raised in the Eyes Across the Water conference in 1989, it is remarkable to see how little has changed over the last 25 years, and how few answers have been found to the urgent questions that have been facing Visual Anthropology. The main crisis of this discipline seems to be an identity crisis. In the book that was published after the first Eyes Across the Water conference we clearly see the difficult situation of Visual Anthropology being sandwiched between science and written anthropology on the one hand and mainstream documentary filmmaking on the other. In an article by famous filmmaker Colin Young, he describes how Jack Rollwagen, in a then recently published book, savages the work of a couple of decades of ethnographic filmmakers… arguing that their work, or at least their written comments on that work, is at best irrelevant to proper anthropological thinking (which has as its main goal the articulation of anthropological theory) and at worst is pernicious and harmful (Young 1989, 4).

This is clearly not a new phenomenon, as Young describes: “It’s a pity that 21 years after the first real meeting between filmmakers and anthropologists (UCLA. May 1968) the debate is still at such a primitive level” (Young 1989, 4). And in their introduction to the book Reflecting Visual Ethnography, Metje Postma and Peter Crawford state: In this era of electronic and digital communication media, which has facilitated a shift from text to the image in the public sphere, the academic world still predominantly communicates its findings through written texts. Within a discipline that relies on words to communicate its knowledge and theories, and also requests of its practitioners that they excel in theoretical skills, it remains a challenge to carve a niche that is based on full acceptance of the methodological and the anthropological contribution of ethnographic film and the representative skills of its makers (Postma and Crawford 2006, 1–2).

The fierce debate on the anthropological value and content of Robert Gardner’s Forest of Bliss is an early example of this discussion in anthropology and the reluctance in traditional anthropology to accept filmmaking as a scientific discipline. This film from 1985 provoked anthropological outrage. Hailed by documentary filmmakers and critics alike as a masterpiece of sound and image and a truly “cinematographic” filmmaker Johan van der Keuken he made Brass Unbound (1993).

226

Chapter 11

experience reaching out to all of the senses, it was severely criticised by many anthropologists. Quite a few renowned scholars, such as Jay Ruby, Jonathan Parry and Alexander Moore, condemned the film as being a purely artistic production, giving no cultural context on how to read the local culture and thereby exoticising and distancing the Benares death cult, making the film totally irrelevant to anthropology, despite its claim to be an anthropological film. Visual anthropologists such as David MacDougall, Edmund Carpenter and Peter Loizos thought it was an aesthetic masterpiece and one of the most important ethnographic films ever made. On the other hand, many ethnographic films and filmmakers are not taken seriously by mainstream documentary and documentary film festivals. The films made by David MacDougall, for instance, widely considered as one of the most important ethnographic filmmakers, rarely, if ever, make it to mainstream documentary film festivals such as the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (the biggest documentary film festival in the world), Hot Docs in Toronto or Tribeca. It is exactly in this arena of definitions and boundaries that anthropological film festivals find themselves. Some choose to lean heavily towards traditional academia (like Göttingen or the Royal Anthropological Institute Film Festival), some extend to open up to a wider audience (like the ASTRA film festival in Sibiu). Beeld voor Beeld started out as an academic film festival, and has slowly shifted towards a broader audience-oriented festival. This is also directly related to the venues where the festival was held: starting out in the Museum of Ethnography in Rotterdam from 1990 to 1992, then in the Museum of Ethnography in Leiden until 1996, followed by the Tropentheater, and from 2013 to 2015 housed in the prestigious landmark building of the EYE Film Institute in a fast booming part of the town, Amsterdam North.

Which Audience to Target? This is a trend that also relative outsiders to the festival have noticed. As Prins notes: Although I have not witnessed every edition of the festival myself, it seems to me that over the years a shift has been taking place from a more scientific programming and debate towards a more audience friendly attitude (Prins 2009).

25 Years of Beeld voor Beeld Festival

227

Fig. 11–1. Musician Joep Pelt improvising on silent movies during the 25th edition of the Beeld voor Beeld Festival. The films, dealing with the mining industry in the Netherlands, come from the archives of the EYE Fillm Museum and the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision. Photo: courtesy of M2015 Jaar van de Mijnen/Marlise Steeman.

Consequently, the description of the festival has also changed: from Ethnographic Film Festival to Festival of Visual Anthropology to Festival on Culture and Representation, and finally to Documentary Film Festival on Cultural Diversity. From 1996, when it moved to the Tropentheater, the festival opened up to the general public, due to the Tropentheater’s function in the cultural context of the Netherlands. Part of the Royal Tropical Institute together with, among others, the Tropenmuseum, it emerged from the ideals of the world of development aid, and was meant to promote non-western cultural expressions to a wider audience. Where the Museum showed objects and the material world of non-western peoples, the theatre was supposed to complement this setting by showing performing arts but also film, the immaterial cultural heritage part of the museum. The Beeld voor Beeld festival fit neatly into this task, taking into account that it did not orient itself solely to the academic world and especially to the world of anthropology. Over the years, the programming of the festival and the theatre increasingly coincided, by showing films before live music concerts or other performing arts. The academic world, especially the anthropologists who were not visual anthropologists, was

228

Chapter 11

not really interested in the films and the festival, at a time when the Amsterdam department of Visual Anthropology was closed down and the only place to study this sub-discipline, as many considered it, was Leiden. On January 1 2013, the Tropentheater had to close because of severe budget cuts. The Royal Tropical Institute, subsidised by the Ministry of Development Aid as a legacy of former colonial times and the follow-up to development aid, was forced by the Minister to severely cut its expenses. The government’s long-term plan was to stop subsidising culture (i.e. the Tropentheater) out of the Ministry of Development Aid, and to force the three ethnographic museums in the Netherlands (Museum of Ethnography in Leiden, Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam and the Africa Museum in Berg and Dal) to merge into one National Ethnographic Museum. The rest of the Royal Tropical Institute could survive with money from the Ministry, but would have to go out into the market to develop money-earning schemes for the institute. The staff of the Tropentheater were asked by the board of directors of the Royal Tropical Institute not to protest against a possible closure so as not to jeopardise future negotiations with the Ministry. Despite hopes that the theatre could survive with other means, it was closed on January 1 2013, leaving an enormous gap in the presentation of unknown or lesser-known forms of art from all over the world. In a climate of growing xenophobia and the rise of extreme rightwing parties that supported the government of the time, it comes as no surprise that few political parties tried to rescue the Tropentheater. The three museums finally merged in 2014 into what is now called The National Museum for World Cultures, with its main venue in Leiden. After the closure of the Tropentheater, Beeld voor Beeld had to move and with it the new successful monthly debate evening on Visual Anthropology, Media and Representation, called Cineblend. Additionally, the offices of the festival were in the building in Amsterdam-East, not coincidentally the part of Amsterdam with the highest percentage of immigrants and the largest amount of nationalities. Cineblend started out as a prolongation of the festival, and the format was modelled on the successful World Blend Café that was also held in the Tropenmuseum. The World Blend Café served as a network meeting for people working in the field of “world music”, a popular term encompassing more or less folk and non-Western music. Cineblend followed as a network meeting for different cultures and groups that feel misrepresented in the media. By using film and especially television the debates centre mainly around issues of representation, thereby clearly involving the different communities. The idea behind it is that anthropology should play a larger role in national and international debates

25 Years of Beeld voor Beeld Festival

229

on immigration and the multicultural society, giving a voice to groups that are not normally heard or feel that they are not heard. Cineblend soon began to make a name for itself, and became the one debate evening where representatives of the media and the people badly or misrepresented in the media met, discussed and more often than not collided. With an average of 120 visitors a night, it has proven to be not only an important addition to the festival but an important event that stands apart from the festival, and may even prove to be more successful than the festival. This raises the question whether an anthropological film festival is still a viable concept in 2015, or whether it should be replaced by other events that demand less infrastructure and preparation and are therefore much more able to debate current and urgent questions of representation from an anthropological point of view. This should be a point of discussion in Co-ordinating Anthropological Film Festivals in Europe (CAFFE), an informal organisation of several anthropological film festivals in Europe, founded in March 2006 and of which Beeld voor Beeld is the co-founder.3 CAFFE has been a joint initiative to try to coordinate the dates, venues and regulations of the different festivals, but despite quite a few meetings, the net result of the organisation is still very low. One of the main questions has been: which audience do we want to address? The debates on this issue show the difficult position between anthropology and the larger audience that most festivals find themselves in, and especially the different directions the festivals take as an answer: some try desperately to be a more integrated part of academia, whereas others direct themselves more to society at large, and are less interested in being part of the academic world. Since the closure of the Tropentheater, the Beeld voor Beeld festival has found as its new venue the EYE Film Institute, a huge and provocative building on the banks of the IJ River, and since its opening in 2012 one of the city’s most important tourist attractions. When it was apparent that the Tropentheater had to close in the near future, talks also began with the Museum of Ethnology in Leiden to see if the festival could be organised in the new National Museum for World Cultures. Although this would have been a logical choice given the festival’s origins and history, the choice was made by the festival’s director to organise it at EYE. The main reason for this decision was the wish to attract a larger and broader audience, one that is also interested in film and not only in other cultures, since the technical possibilities are infinitely better in Amsterdam than in Leiden. Visual Anthropology should not stay in the realm of good and thorough content and research without taking advantage of the esthetics and 3

See the minutes at http://www.anthropological-filmfestivals.eu/meetings.html

230

Chapter 11

possibilities of modern digital technology. There is no reason why anthropological film festivals should content themselves with bad video beamers and cheap DVD players, as if the quality of the image and sound is something real scientists should not be bothered with. The 4K projection and digital sound of EYE works incredibly well to transmit the worlds of images and sounds of different cultures, as, for instance, Robert Gardner’s Forest of Bliss, which was meant to be a corporeal experience of another culture, using sound and image as its transfer tools. The nasty debates that emanated about this film show how divided anthropologists and filmmakers still are on the use of film and its intrinsic qualities. Anthropological film festivals are still struggling with this divide between aesthetics and reality, between popularisation and science, between broader audiences and academia.

Fig. 11–2. Director Eddy Appels opens the 24th edition of the Beeld voor Beeld Festival at the EYE museum cinema. Photo: courtesy of the BvB Festival.

On the other hand, Beeld voor Beeld was one of the instigators of the yearly Adriaan Gerbrands Lecture, named after the unofficial founder of Visual Anthropology in the Netherlands at the University of Leiden. This unique lecture, organised by Beeld voor Beeld, the Department of Anthropology of Leiden University, The National Museum of World Cultures and the Museum of Antiquities, and funded by the Fund for Ethnology in Leiden, is directed towards a more academic audience, and is a way to maintain ties between the university, the museum and the festival.

25 Years of Beeld voor Beeld Festival

231

Every year a jury consisting of representatives of the named organisations chooses someone who has been important in the field of Visual Anthropology, visual or material culture. The lecture is held in the main hall of the Museum of Ethnology in Leiden and is organised either before the Beeld voor Beeld festival or as the closing event of an international conference on Visual Anthropology and material culture at the museum in Leiden. Moreover, the festival has extended its activities beyond the Netherlands, creating a branch on the other side of the Atlantic Sea. The Beeld voor Beeld festival in Bogotá, Colombia, thrived mainly on students. The festival was set up in 2008 by Jan-Willem Meurkens, the former producer of the festival in Amsterdam, as a cooperation between the Netherlands and Colombia, financed jointly by the Ministry of Culture of Colombia and the Embassy of the Netherlands, and held in the Cineclub of the Universidad Central. The festival was mainly geared towards the students of some of the major universities of Bogotá, many screenings being an integral part of the universities’ different curricula. Because of Bogotá’s sheer size, some screenings attracted more than 1,400 students at a time, and the total audience over five days was roughly 6,000 spectators. The Universidad Central started a film department in 2011, with over 140 students studying fiction or documentary, and most of these students had to attend the Beeld voor Beeld screenings. The film department is currently developing a diploma in Visual Anthropology. Unfortunately, the festival ceased to exist in 2015, due to budgetary cuts from the Universidad Central.

New Developments and the Future of the Festival Visual Anthropology in the Netherlands is experiencing a rapid growth. Leiden has developed a Master’s programme, the University of Amsterdam has, after years of teaching Visual Anthropology at a basic and purely theoretical level, begun a completely new curriculum with four teachers, and the University of Utrecht has just begun a new course in Visual Anthropology. All of these courses are extremely popular and attract huge numbers of students. It seems as if the popularity of Visual Anthropology is on the rise again, at least with the students. All three courses in Visual Anthropology cooperate with Beeld voor Beeld, and have made the festival required viewing for the students. This is the first time in the 25 years of its existence that there has been such close cooperation between the different departments and the festival. 

232

Chapter 11

Meanwhile, the festival faces new challenges. After two years at the EYE Film Institute, the festival is moving again. The combination of a relatively small festival and a huge commercial institution like EYE has not proved to be a very fortuitous one. The newest technological developments have proved to be a major problem for many beginning and low-budget filmmakers. Where technological developments should normally make things easier, here they complicate things, because of the high demands of EYE and other major film theatres. Digital Cinema Package (DCP) has become the screening norm, and for many filmmakers producing a DCP out of their material is simply too complicated and expensive (having a DCP made professionally normally comes down to around 1,000 euros). For normal classroom use films must be delivered on either DVD or Blu-ray or mp4 (HD264), making the postproduction of a finished film rather complicated for filmmakers who do not have the backing of a big production company or television station. The economic rationale of the EYE Film Institute has also proved to be an obstacle to long-lasting cooperation. Whereas all internal evaluations of the different departments of EYE (programming, loans, production, marketing) have proved to be extremely positive, in the end the economic laws decide. Beeld voor Beeld is an expensive festival with all the technical variations of the different formats, and it attracts a smaller crowd than, for example, the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam or the Buddhist Film Festival. With a total of around 1,800 visitors in five days, the festival has become too expensive for EYE, which has the burden of a great but very expensive building and a heavy overhead of nearly 260 employees. The building also has a rather elite feel, drawing millions of tourists for the building itself and many visitors for its cutting-edge exhibitions (fewer for its core business, the film screenings), but EYE does quite poorly in attracting a culturally diverse audience, which is clearly not one of its targets. This also made it difficult for Beeld voor Beeld, since the marketing of EYE is focused on a general audience and not aimed at specific groups. In 2016 the festival is still programming at EYE, but only two screenings, the rest taking place throughout the city and with different and new partners. Diversifying locations and venues, as well as dates and partners, is the next step. The festival will go out into the different neighbourhoods of Amsterdam and screen at local venues. It is also working together with other types of partners such as theatre groups, migrant organisations, visual artists, musicians and dancers. This will be the next step in trying to define a format and an audience other than academia.

25 Years of Beeld voor Beeld Festival

233

Works Cited Appels, Eddy. 1993. Travelling Images. Missionary Cinema and Visual Anthropology. Unpublished Master’s thesis, University of Amsterdam. Boonzajer Flaes, Robert, ed. 1989. Eyes Across the Water. The Amsterdam Conference on Visual Anthropology and Sociology. Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis. Boonzajer Flaes, Robert, and Douglas Harper, eds. 1989. Eyes Across the Water, Two. Essays on Visual Anthropology and Sociology. Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis. CAFFE. 2015. “CAFFE Meetings.” Anthropological-filmfestivals.eu. Accessed April 10, 2016. http://www.anthropological-filmfestivals.eu/ meetings.html Nijland, Dirk J. 2002. “A History of Ethnographic Film, Video and Multimedia in The Netherlands.” In Tales from Academia Part 2, edited by Han Vermeulen and Jean Kommers, 893–935. Saarbrücken: Verlag für Entwicklungspolitik Saarbrücken GmbH. Postma, Metje, and Peter I. Crawford, eds. 2006. Reflecting Visual Ethnography. Using the Camera in Anthropological Research. Hojbjerg and Leiden: Intervention Press and CNWS Publications. Prins, Janine, 2009. “Time to take off after twenty years in the nest?” Beeldvoorbeeld.nl. Accessed April 11, 2016. Young, Colin. 1989. “Ignorance or Modesty.” In Eyes Across the Water. The Amsterdam Conference on Visual Anthropology and Sociology, edited by Robert Boonzajer-Flaes and Douglas Harper, 4–9. Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis.

CHAPTER 12 ORGANISATIONAL CHALLENGES WHEN PROGRAMMING AN ETHNOGRAPHIC FILM FESTIVAL: LESSONS FROM GÖTTINGEN BEATE ENGELBRECHT

The Göttingen International Ethnographic Film Festival (GIEFF) was founded in 1993 with the intention of regularly examining what is going on in ethnographic filmmaking and neighbouring fields. Therefore, a call for films was made and spread widely. The following selection process always raised questions about ethnographicness inside and outside film, the academic component, and creative developments. Programming was always a very challenging task, the selection committee being drawn between different rationales, such as choosing big names and solid ethnographic films or selecting films from newcomers and innovative approaches, such as investigative films, reflective ones, or experimental ones. In general the committee was free in its decisions. However, financing an ethnographic film festival like GIEFF is extremely difficult, and this also influenced the programming in some ways. The festival is not recognised as an academic conference, nor is it a glittering film festival. Hence, through its history, GIEFF consistently pored over questions about the genre, aims and visions of ethnographic film itself and how to present it to “outsiders”.

Background: GIEFF and the Institute for Scientific Film The Göttingen International Ethnographic Film Festival (GIEFF)1 was founded and organised by the Institut für den Wissenschaftlichen Film 1

General information on the festival can be found on the festival webpage:

236

Chapter 12

(IWF, Institute for Scientific Film),2 which produced and collected films in the context of academic research.3 The IWF also managed an international scientific film collection called Encyclopaedia Cinematographica (EC), which was founded in 1952.4 The editorial board of this collection met once a year to review films from different institutions and decide which could be included in the EC collection. The EC had very strict rules concerning the making of these films: a film should cover only one topic at one time; it should also be “monothematic.” Processes would be divided into several topics so as to make possible the comparison between several steps. The concept was based on ideas from the natural and technical sciences. The EC collection comprised more than 3,000 films, half of them made by anthropologists. The decisive criterion for the acceptance of a film by the EC is its scientific importance: the aesthetic quality of the shots is not taken into account. … The main criterion is that a scientific ethnographic film documentation must satisfy the following requirements: unity of place, time, group and action or event, together with strict obedience to the chronology of the event in the final version of the film. Artificial manipulation in either shooting or cutting is not permitted. A scientific film also rules out the use of staged scenes (Fuchs 1988, 51).

In the 1980s a group of German anthropologists interested in ethnographic filming started to criticise the politics of the IWF in collecting only EC films and not taking the new ethnographic film production in other countries into account. At the 1992 EC meeting in Göttingen, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the EC in the form of a conference, the attending anthropologists5 urged the IWF to start a new collection of ethnographic films which would not follow EC standards but assemble films made in different ways. New topics require changes in the

http://www.gieff.de 2 For more information, see the German Wikipedia entry: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/IWF_Wissen_und_Medien. 3 Most of the projects were initiated by researchers working at universities and museums. Filming was part of their investigation and documentation methods. In the 1950s and 60s many researchers used a film camera in their anthropological fieldwork. 4 See also Wolf 1972; Fuchs 1988. For more information, see the German Wikipedia entry: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopaedia_Cinematographica 5 Among others: Rolf Brednich, Peter Fuchs, Adriaan Alexander Gerbrands, Allison Jablonko, Allan Lomax, Barbara Lüem, Kazuo Okada, Urs Ramseyer.

Organizational Challenges when Programming the Göttingen IEFF

237

filmmaking process and montage.6 At the end of the meeting the editorial committee of EC made the following decision: Due to the acquired findings at its annual meeting and its experiences, especially during the film evaluations, workshops and presentations at this year’s event, the RA (editorial committee) recommends the INSTITUTE FOR SCIENTIFIC FILM (IWF) parallel to the collection of monothematic film documents of the EC the installation of an international collection of media relevant for university teaching. This collection should be compiled after thorough evaluation from already existing and published, as well as newly brought in, media (EC editorial committee 8.10.1992).7

IWF anthropologists Rolf Husmann and Beate Engelbrecht realised that this recommendation allowed the implementation of a new ethnographic film collection that would reflect the new trends in ethnographic filmmaking worldwide. Immediately the question of how to select the films for the collection arose. The idea of setting up an ethnographic film festival was born as a strategy to obtain new film productions from everywhere through a call for submissions. In spring 1993 the setting up of the GIEFF was announced, and it was able to take place as early as September 1993.

Programming: Making New Trends in Ethnographic Film Visible From the start the question of how to select films for the festival was a crucial one. As the IWF (and EC) had been criticised so much because of its very narrow concept of scientific film, the organisers of the festival, Rolf Husmann and Beate Engelbrecht, wanted to have a selection committee which would be recognised as diverse and independent. As time was short, they asked six visual anthropologists and ethnographic filmmakers from six European countries8 each to propose five films for the pilot festival. The selection committee was very well acquainted with the discussions about the IWF and EC, and understood immediately our intentions. Coming from quite diverse backgrounds, they proposed some 6 Prominent examples have been David and Judith MacDougall’s Turkana Conversations, John Marshalls’s N!ai, The Story of a !Kung Woman, Hans-Ulrich Schlumpf’s Guber–Arbeit im Stein. 7 Original text in German. Translation by the author. 8 The selection committee members were: Peter I. Crawford (Aarhus), Colette Piault (Paris), Hans-Ulrich Schlumpf (Zürich), Rolf Brednich (Göttingen), Steve Meyknecht (Leiden) and János Tari (Budapest).

238

Chapter 12

outstanding films made over the previous few years. In the end, 23 films were screened, many of which would be called “classics” nowadays, such as Black Harvest (1991) by Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson, In and Out of Africa (1992) by Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Men in the Ring (1990) by Erich Langjahr, Taiga Nomads (1992) by Heimo Lappaleinen, and Umbruch (1987) by Hans-Ulrich Schlumpf.9

Fig. 12–1. Göttingen International Ethnographic Film Festival 2014–Award ceremony in Paulinerkirche. Photo by Theresa Sigmund / © GIEFF

The organisers had decided to organise the festival quickly after the EC editorial committee’s decision was made, so that the opportunity to set it up would not be missed. Therefore, the first festival took place in 1993. 9

Beigels Already (1992) by Debbie Shuter, Children of Wind, 7: Faithful Tradition (1991) by Martin Slivka, Chronique d’un village Tzotzil (1992) by Thierry Zeno, Chronique paysanne (1990) by Jacqueline Veuve, Conte et comptes de la cour (1993) by Eliane de Latour, Emerging (1990), Foutura–A Lobi Potter Tells Her Story (1993) by Klaus Schneider and Beate Engelbrecht, Grandma of Boats (1993) by Mark Soosaar, Ixok (1990) by Wilma Kiener and Dieter Matzka, La Musica e Quattro (1993) by Rosali Schweizer, Mizike Mama (1992) by Violaine de Villers, Room to Live (1992) by Simon Everson and Marian Stoica, Sertschawan (1992) by Beatrice Michel and Hans Stürm, Sultan’s Burden (1992) by Jon Jerstad and Lisbet Holtedahl, The Mursi: Nitha (1991) by Leslie Woodhead and David Turton, The Mursi: The Land is Bad (1991) by Leslie Woodhead and David Turton, The Resettlement (1992) by Viliam Poltikovic, Turnim Hed: Courtship and Music in Papua New Guinea (1992) by James Bates, Wo noch der Herrgott gilt (1992/1993) by Edmund Ballhaus.

Organizational Challenges when Programming the Göttingen IEFF

239

But because GIEFF clashed with another ethnographic film festival in Germany,10 the next festival had to take place in May 1994. So immediately after the 1993 festival, the call for films for the 1994 festival was sent out–at that time still by post. Programming started with the text for the call for films: The festival will be open to filmmakers as well as anthropologists in a wide sense of the term. It aims at screening new film productions made in a variety of styles and from as many different countries as possible. Organised as a Central European event, films from that area will be accepted with particular interest, so that the festival can successfully act as a forum for filmmakers and anthropologists from East and West. 11 Furthermore, special emphasis will be placed on students’ entries by organising a competition in which a “Students’ Award” is given to the best student film. Entries for this competition must be made by filmmakers who were students at the time of the film’s production (GIEFF call for film 1994).

The call did not change very much over the years, but it widened its focus to make submission from non-academic filmmakers more attractive: The festival promotes documentary cinema with a special emphasis on new films, videos or interactive media (published after 1.1.2013) dealing with sociocultural processes in the wide sense of the term. The festival is open to all filmmakers, but especially those having a background in anthropology, sociology, folklore, history, etc. It provides a great opportunity for an international exchange of ideas and co-operation in documentary filmmaking (GIEFF call for film 2016).

The 1993 selection committee advised the organisers to make some important changes: to set up a student film section and to award only a student film prize. Both pieces of advice substantially influenced the festival programming. As a result, GIEFF became one of the first festivals with a student film section. The student film competition has been the most interesting part of the festival until today. The decision not to give awards to professional filmmakers also provided the selection committee with the possibility of selecting films which might not be “the best” in terms of aesthetic, narrative and content, but which might give rise to important discussions. Additionally, they could select a wide variety of 10 Freiburger Film Forum – Africa/America/Asia/Oceania. http://www.freiburgerfilmforum.de/eng.html#/english/ 11 We still have one person from an Eastern European country in the selection committee, but the focus has changed towards films from the Global South in the last few years.

240

Chapter 12

films so as to give new incentives to the (young) filmmakers present at the festival.

Selection Criteria: Much Discussed and Never Fixed The festival was created with the aim of seeing what is going on in the world of ethnographic films and associated subjects. As we wanted to discover something new concerning content and montage, we decided not to have fixed criteria. The GIEFF selection committee is given only some general instructions. The festival is interested in:  Diversity: we want to have a wide variety of films.  Discovery: spectators should be able to discover new films and films which are not shown very often, especially those which are not screened in cinemas or on television.  Discussion: films that might give rise to discussions are welcomed.  Films from the Global South, indigenous and community filmmakers Concerning student films:  We want to show films from different ethnographic film schools,  We want to show films from (German) documentary film schools,  Some student films are so professionally made that the selection committee can take them out of the student film competition and move them to the main festival.

Selection Committee: International and Multi-disciplinary The selection committee meets for four days to select the films and decide on the programme. Of course, all members are very curious, and they all ask for possible criteria that would be simple, and make it easier to select the film. As organisers, we have thought about this problem again and again. But we do not want to prescribe anything, firstly because we are curious ourselves about what is going on, secondly because we want to show films which are out of the ordinary as far as filmmaking is concerned, and thirdly because we want to show more descriptive films which are made in the context of anthropological research as well as films which are looking for new ways to tell stories. The members of the selection committee work in teams of two, so not all members have seen all films. To make the task easier for the selection committee and to have a record of the selection process, we have developed an evaluation sheet in the form of multiple choices asking for an evaluation of the topic, the film structure and the technical quality, in

Organizational Challenges when Programming the Göttingen IEFF

241

addition to whether the film is definitely selected, might be selected, or is rejected. Additionally, we ask the selection committee teams to write down some remarks about the film. These remarks differ widely, but give a good insight into the variety of films submitted. Having some sort of transparency in the selection process does not mean that the selection is in any way objective. The teams are different, and the members of one team often do not agree about a film. They might even give a film to another team to watch. In certain ways, talking about the films helps the teams to develop selection criteria further.

Fig. 12–2. Göttingen International Ethnographic Film Festival 2016–Selection Committee Meeting. Janine Prins, Michael Westrich, Flavia Caviezel, Andreas Ackermann, Matti Bauer, Michaela Schäuble, Anja Dreschke, Frode Storaas, Anna Seegers-Krückeberg, Beate Engelbrecht, Torsten Näser, Nadja Valentincic Furlan. Photo: Robert Scheck / © GIEFF

Of course, the teams are torn between different emphases: should films of famous filmmakers be selected as they may attract spectators? Again and again teams have rejected films of renowned filmmakers, which gives the organisers a difficult time explaining this decision afterwards. Many excellent documentaries are submitted. What should the focus be? What should be prioritised? Is it the topic, the film narrative, the technical quality? There are the films of the Global South, which are not comparable to those of ethnographic filmmakers, and therefore we are interested in them. There might be technical problems due to low production means, but often they are extremely interesting. Additionally, the question of the equilibrium between the visual and the audio is raised. There is a huge

242

Chapter 12

amount of “talking head” films which we consider not so much to be films but edited text. But, of course such films are selected also for various reasons. It is not possible to develop simple criteria for the very complex decisions which have to be made. So when people ask us about our selection criteria, we always answer that we do not formulate any, but that the composition of the selection committee itself is what is important. We always invite experts from different countries which have different traditions in ethnographic film production. We always also invite experts in documentary filmmaking and/or film history to have a disparate look at the films submitted. Mostly we manage to have balanced gender participation. The members of a selection committee might be appointed twice in a row, but then new members are invited. Over the years this has given us the opportunity to invite younger people with different views, or to select the selection committee to meet also the requirements of the focal points (see below). Especially at the beginning the selection committee had fierce discussions about which films should be selected. Nowadays, the huge amount of films submitted not only prevents these discussions but also allows new ones.12 The number of films submitted is increasing constantly: in 1994 we started with 114 films, in 2002 there were 241, and in 2014 we had 484 submissions. We have had to enlarge the committee from time to time. The number of films we have been able to screen has not increased as much: in 1994 36 films were screened, in 1996 as many as 45, and in 2014 we presented 55 films and three multimedia productions. So the selection of the films becomes more difficult each time.

Programme Structure: Creative Student Films and Reflective Discussions When starting the selection process, a programme structure is communicated to the selection committee to help them organise their selection and decide on the programme, but changes are always possible. The organisers sometimes have a preference for one or two films, but in general the selection committee makes its decisions independently. The last day of the meeting, the selection committee and the organisers decide on the final programme together. 12

To receive more information about which films have been selected and who was a member of the selection committee, please visit the GIEFF website: http://www.gieff.de/programme-2002.html

Organizational Challenges when Programming the Göttingen IEFF

243

When we started the festival, we decided that we did not want to have parallel screenings. The spectators fully approved this, as discussions in the breaks were much more fruitful in this way. We also decided that we would discuss a film immediately after its screening. 55 films are the maximum we can screen, but only at the expense of the time for discussion. At the beginning we had 20 minutes per film, now we have only ten minutes. The festival starts on a Wednesday afternoon with the student film competition, which continues on the Thursday morning.13 The main festival starts in the afternoon, but as there are so many good student films, the selection committee might decide to also use part of the afternoon for student films, as happened in 2014.14 As the aim of the festival is to present a mixture of good visual ethnographies, films from the Global South, interesting documentaries and experimental films coming from an anthropological context, the structure of the programme is developed after the selection of the films is made. Very often, more films are selected than we are able to screen, so the discussion about the programme itself results in revisions to the selection. At this stage, the topics of the films, as well as the shooting locations, become more important. It is interesting to see that each year some new topics appear, such as gender, psychological problems and disability (2014), music (2012), and coping with global change (2010). Others are more consistent, such as cultural heritage and migration, as well as films about certain areas as East European countries, India and Africa.

Audience: Ethnographic Filmmakers Meeting Anthropology Students A crucial question is always what audience we are aiming for. For whom do we select the films? The audience has changed considerably over the years. At the beginning the festival was attended by ethnographic filmmakers and visual anthropologists from different countries. One reason was that at that time most films were available for screening only as 16 mm films. VHS copies were very unsatisfactory. To screen 16 mm films was a challenge, and a professional cinema was needed. Consequently, there were not so many ethnographic film festivals; one had to travel far to see the newest films in high quality and to meet other 13

The date of the festival always falls in the week of Ascension Day. In Germany this day is a holiday, so visitors are free to come. 14 See the 2014 programme: http://www.gieff.de/Programme2014.html

244

Chapter 12

filmmakers. This has changed dramatically over the years. Nowadays it is not very difficult to organise an ethnographic film festival, an ethnographic film week or something similar. It is easy to get DVDs of interesting films and to screen them. Many small festivals are organised by students at universities. For them, meeting each other and some filmmakers is more important than the quality of the screening itself. Therefore, the localities might be smaller, the screening facilities simpler, and the projected film versions mostly on DVD. Over the years, GIEFF has turned into a meeting point for young student ethnographic filmmakers, anthropology students interested in films, and professional filmmakers. Teachers at various German universities use the occasion to discuss new ethnographic films, to encourage their students to interview the filmmakers present, and to reflect on the event.15 This means for us that the programme should satisfy the interest of this young audience.

Financing: the Only Fly in the Ointment To organise a festival of the size of GIEFF with an open call for films and an elaborate selection process is costly. At the beginning GIEFF was in a very comfortable position, as it was organised by an institution–the IWF–which was very well equipped for such events. The institute had two cinemas and special staff to project the films. This was also very helpful when technological changes confronted us with new video formats. As the main organisers of the festival were employees of the IWF, they were paid for their activities. Additionally, we were able to obtain larger funds from the Film Foundation of Lower Saxony and a local bank. However, we still looked for more funds. Twice (in 2004 and 2006) we dropped the term “ethnographic” in the title of the festival in order to be accepted more as a documentary film festival, but this strategy failed, as we did not get more funding. Only the submissions were more diverse and the selection more difficult. The financing has changed slowly but very substantially over the years. The IWF was closed in December 2012, and GIEFF was turned into an association and made independent of the IWF. The film foundation no longer supports small (scientific) festivals, and the bank has reduced its contribution every year. 16 We have had to look for new sources. Since 15

See, for example, the report of students from Siegen University: http://www.mediengeschichte.uni-siegen.de/?p=4851 16 The film foundation has changed its orientation. Our festival is too academic in their eyes. The bank now prefers to support many events with small amounts of

Organizational Challenges when Programming the Göttingen IEFF

245

foundations which fund academic conferences would not accept our festival as an academic event, for only films are screened and discussed, and since the film foundations considered us to be too academic, we had to find new supporters outside academia and film circles. Given that GIEFF very often screens films which are produced in countries of the Global South or which treat topics related to social and cultural problems, we looked for organisations which fund projects in this context. In the applications we insist on a more content-oriented outline of the programme, which satisfies the goals of various foundations as well as ours. So we formulate some focal points which are not communicated on the website, but which play a role in the selection process. Some focal points are more consistent:  Filming cultural heritage: rapid social changes worldwide, which are also a consequence of people’s growing mobility, increasingly raise questions about the preservation of (intangible) cultural heritage, mainly among those staying at home, but also for those living in the diaspora.  Coping with migration: migration concerns us all. Therefore many (young) filmmakers are engaged in exploring the life situation of migrants, questions of belonging and identity, and the consequences for the society they live in.  Gender perspectives: gender plays a role in film production in two ways. On the one hand, there is the film director (very often hidden in the film), and on the other the protagonists of the films, who are very much present. Other focal points change, as research interests are always changing too: disability, discrimination and inclusion, crises and the consequences for the people, natural disasters and violent conflicts, or football– intercultural interaction worldwide. Additionally, at some festivals a further symposium or workshop was organised to benefit from the presence of the filmmakers.17 These events concentrated on the theoretical and methodological questions of ethnographic film productions. The topic of the conference also influenced the programming: films that were important for the conference discussions would be screened during the festival. Thus, the festival became more diverse, and during the conferences one could concentrate on conceptual and methodological debates. money. 17 For an overview, see: http://www.gieff.de/conference.html

246

Chapter 12

Outlook: New Trends Ask for New Directions Programming is for me the most interesting part of the festival. When making the applications for financial support we never really know which topics will be relevant in the end. Only when checking the submissions do we get an insight into what people are concerned with. Since we concentrate on films that come from academia, or which might be interesting for academia, the selection always also comprises an evaluation of current research trends. It is for this reason that the selection committee is so important, as they teach anthropology, sociology, and so on, and are interested themselves in new research topics. The same is true for the narrative and the montage of the films. These have changed substantially over the years, or rather one can observe a significant diversification. Students are very often looking for the right way of making a film. At the festival, they are confronted with many different ways to compose films, starting with the camerawork itself, continuing with the construction of a film, and finally the editing. Due to the technical changes and the evergrowing possibilities in editing and publishing, including multimedia performances, the variety becomes even more diverse each time. Nevertheless, those of the selection committee who have been in the business for a long time observe that the number of interesting films, of films with a solid academic background, or with sound investigation, or with appropriate montage, or with surprising narratives, is still not so numerous. Only the quantity of films that have to be previewed is increasing constantly, making the task of selection and programming more difficult each time. Therefore, a discussion about how we can cope in future with the rising number of submitted films has started among the members of the selection committee and the managing board of the GIEFF association, as well as about how to compose an interesting programme, and foster more intensive discussions. At the moment, we are tending to shift the festival more in an academic direction by giving more opportunities for discussion about the content of the films and the possibilities and conditions of filmmaking. But the advantage of an independent film festival is that we can always revise our decisions.

Organizational Challenges when Programming the Göttingen IEFF

247

Works Cited Engelbrecht, Beate. 1988. “Ethnological Filmmaking at the Institut für den Wissenschaftlichen Film (IWF) Göttingen.” Glasnik, Bulletin of Slovene Ethnological Society 28:28–39. Fuchs, Peter. 1988. “Ethnographic Films in the Encyclopaedia Cinematographica.” Glasnik, Bulletin of Slovene Ethnological Society 28:50–54. NN. 1993. “Ethnographic Film Festival.” IWF aktuell 22(March):16. Accessed June 5, 2016. http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/opus4/files/23064/1993-1IWFaktuell-22.pdf Schlumpf, Hans-Ulrich. 1979. Guber–Arbeit im Stein. Zürich: Ariane Film AG. Accessed June 5, 2016. http://www.film-schlumpf.ch/Evers/GUe/GUe.html Wolf, Gotthard. 1972. Encyclopaedia Cinematographica 1952-1972. Göttingen: IWF.

PART II: ETHNOGRAPHIES OF FILM FESTIVALS

PART II. INTRODUCTION ETHNOGRAPHIES OF FILM FESTIVALS: REFLECTIONS ON METHODOLOGY AIDA VALLEJO

Ethnomethodology has been at the core of methodological debates within film festival studies since the origin of this field, which is multidisciplinary in its very essence. Given the nature of film festivals as ephemeral and celebratory social encounters, anthropology can offer interesting tools to analyse them. Moreover, official festival histories and written records tend to differ from real live practices, or at least privilege information about specific festival aspects (such as the presence of films and filmmakers), leaving no trace of others (such as selection procedures, invitation policies or economic negotiations). 1 Ethnography’s focus on contemporary cultural practices and live events gives this field a privileged position for the study of film festivals. In this brief introduction, I propose a practical guide aimed at scholars without training in anthropology. I reflect on some of the possibilities that ethnographic methods can offer to film festival studies, focusing on key theoretical concepts and analytical approaches proposed by classic anthropology. Finally, I go deeper into the specificities of festival research when applying ethnographic methodologies.2

The Use of Ethnomethodologies in Film Festival Studies In a report about the seminal International Film Festival Workshop that took place at the University of St Andrews (Scotland) in 2009, William Brown reflected on the debate about how anthropological studies could 1

For a study of the editorial process behind the elaboration of the anniversary book of the 50th Thessaloniki International Film Festival, see Lee (2016). 2 I want to thank María Paz Peirano for her suggestions and comments on updated bibliography.

252

Part II. Introduction

help shed light on film festival analysis, given these events’ association with the creation of myth and spectacle: With regard to the study of film festivals, this myth factor poses problems: festivals will not divulge, or at least will seek to control, information about themselves (data about festivals is unavailable or at best misleading). This is not simply the revelation of the possible banality of film festivals (being at Cannes and not actually seeing any films), for even these (well-known) aspects of certain, perhaps all, film festivals are always already part of the mythology surrounding them. Rather, this is one of the demands of film festival scholarship: to expose, in the manner of anthropological studies, the very fabricated nature of these mythological and spectacular events, expositions that the events themselves will always resist or at the very least try to influence (2009, 219).

In his study of the Sundance Film Festival, Daniel Dayan highlighted the problems faced by anthropologists when using exclusively ethnographic methods to study media events. Given the traditional focus of this discipline on immaterial cultural heritage, Dayan struggled to acknowledge the importance of written sources for the study of festival operation (2000). As noted by Marijke De Valck in Film Festivals. From European Geopolitics to Global Cinephilia: Besides his observation that there were different groups of participants (audience, journalists, organisers, buyers etc.) at the festival, Dayan also realized that these groups were engaging in a definitional process, dominated by printed material. [...] Unexpectedly, he was forced to include reading in his methodology of observations and interviews. [...] Dayan argues for the recognition of a double festival: the visual and the written. He realized that, as ethnographer, he could no longer ignore the latter. The lesson for media scholars is obvious: If an ethnographer has to acknowledge a written component, the media scholar must not ignore the performative components (2007, 131).

This statement, which may sound obvious to anthropologists, is nevertheless something new for those academics studying film festivals, in the same way that looking at printed materials was new for an anthropologist. Breaking the boundaries between the two fields can therefore help improve our understanding of contemporary film cultures. Once anthropology has liberated itself from the constrictions of preindustrial societies as its sole object of study and media scholars have opened their minds to new qualitative methods, we can start to look at the possibilities of cross-fertilisation between disciplines.

Ethnographies of Film Festivals

253

What Can Anthropology Offer to the Study of Film Festivals? Many principles of anthropology can be used to improve our understanding of film festivals. From classic categorisations to contemporary critical standpoints, concepts and debates developed for decades within anthropology can answer research questions faced by scholars studying film festivals. In what follows, I offer a list of key contributions of anthropology that can be applied to the study of film festivals:

Contemporary Practices As Skadi Loist has argued in her account of various methodologies applied to film festival studies, the distinction between historical and contemporary approaches to the study of festival practices is directly related to the methods we choose. Qualitative methods, such as discourse analysis, interviews, participant observation or “(auto)ethnography” are therefore key to the immersion of the researcher in the festival, and to understanding its links to a particular spatial, temporal and cultural context (2016, 119). Ethnographic tools focused on the performance of cultural practices as they evolve, especially participant observation, are of paramount importance to studying present film festival practices that do not leave any written record. Chapters in this section give accounts of some of these practices, including festival information management (Dillard, this volume; Dickson, this volume), professional networking (Vallejo, this volume) or festival organisers’ strategies to avoid governmental censorship (Lichaa, this volume).

The Festival as “Total Social Fact” The multi-dimensional aspect of film festival operation has been highlighted by several scholars. Inspired by critic Kenneth Turan’s classification of festivals with business, geopolitical or aesthetic agendas (2002), De Valck’s monograph was the first academic account of the multiple aspects involved in film festival operation, including geopolitics, economic practices, media coverage and audiences (2007). This multifaceted aspect of film festivals is related to a classic concept of anthropology proposed by Marcel Mauss, the “total social fact” (1925), which proposes an inclusive understanding of a specific social or cultural practice in which many dimensions are involved (including economic,

254

Part II. Introduction

political, religious or cultural aspects). The festival can therefore be considered as a site of negotiation of diverse (and sometimes) opposed agendas, in which each participant’s task (programming, presenting the event, writing critical reviews or presenting a film) can–and actually does– have multiple purposes. This is directly related to Mauss’s study of reciprocity practices, further developed by Karl Polanyi (1957). Exchange dynamics developed by pre-capitalist societies can help better understand film festival operation, and especially its economic dimension, as it is the exchange of value, more than the exchange of money, that is at stake in film festival’s industrial, promotional and networking activities. Within film festival studies, Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts have been adopted to analyse the construction of symbolic value (see De Valck 2014; Burgess 2014).

Ethnography as a Writing Tool Ethnography is not only considered a methodology, but also an instrument to communicate the results of anthropological research (Hammersley and Atkinson 1983). As a highly self-critical discipline, anthropology has highlighted the nature of the academic written text as a construction, inscribing the voice and subjectivity of the ethnographer within it (Geertz 1973; Geertz 1988; Clifford and Marcus 1986). “Thick description” (Geertz 1973) is used to analyse particular cultural practices, establishing connections between institutions, people and their actions. New trends in media anthropology (Askew and Wilk 2002; Ginsburg et al. 2002; Rothenbuhler and Coman 2005) have highlighted the possibilities opened up by ethnography to gain new insight into contemporary media use and consumption. Ethnography has a highly evocative power to describe and analyse a cultural practice that occurs in a particular time and a particular place, and therefore appears as a proper tool to communicate academic research about film festivals. Festival reports sometimes use a similar rhetoric to that of ethnographies, but without the theoretical and analytical framework that characterises academic texts. Festival studies are highly influenced, and in many cases informed, by this journalistic genre, situated between the film critique and the chronicle (see Turan 2002). Academic studies of film festivals such as De Valck’s Film Festivals include this literary approach to introduce a case study in each chapter, offering an insider view of a festival activity. A self-conscious integration of ethnography as a tool for improving our descriptions and analysis of film festival operation, while starting to show its first attempts (Vallejo 2015; Dovey 2015; Lee 2016;

Ethnographies of Film Festivals

255

Peirano 2017; Dillard, this volume; Vallejo, this volume), is necessary, and can certainly increase our knowledge and understanding of film festival operation.

Cultural Circulation and Multi-Sited Ethnography Film festivals have been analysed both from a local perspective and as a global circuit of film circulation. From an international perspective, film festivals act as nodal points and sites of passage (De Valck 2007). Researching the global circulation of goods and people has been on the agenda of anthropology since its inception. The art world has been subject to a critical analysis of the cultural mediation involved in international traffic (Marcus and Meyers 1995), and multi-sited ethnography (Marcus 1995) has been proposed as a proper tool to follow cultural products and migrants. More recent works have highlighted the importance of addressing contemporary practices and institutions (Westbrook 2008), including international forces, connections and imaginations brought about by globalisation (Burawoy et al. 2000). The circulation of specific films through film festivals has been the focus of several studies, especially those devoted to specific national/regional cinemas (see, for example, Diawara 1994 for Africa; or Ostrowska 2014 for Polish cinema). Studies of the circulation of filmmakers are still rare (Vallejo 2015; Peirano 2017; Vallejo this volume), but can shed some light on programming practices and industrial partnerships that remain obscured by national discourses of film production and distribution.

Involvement and Positionality: Etic/Emic, Insider/Outsider One of the key methodological debates within anthropology refers to the positionality of the researcher in relation to his/her object of study. Ethnographers put themselves “in the shoes” of the people they study, using introspection to reflect on their own role. In doing so, the researcher him/herself becomes a tool of ethnographic research (Burawoy et al. 1991). In classic anthropology, the relationship of the researcher to the researched has been conceptualised through the distinction between emic and etic perspectives. While the “emic” approach adopts the point of view of our object of study, the “etic” approach adopts the perspective of the observer. Reflexivity has been a major concern among anthropologists (Davies 1998), who have distanced themselves from an academic omniscient disembodied rhetoric to adopt a first person approach to their studies. The

256

Part II. Introduction

insider/outsider view is of paramount importance in a discipline interested in cultural discourses and conceptualisations of the world, traditionally associated with different cosmologies that cultures adopt to understand the world around them. The position and relationship of the researcher is also a key aspect of film festival studies. This issue has been discussed at various workshops and academic encounters in the field (see Loist, forthcoming). The fact that many scholars also work for festivals as programmers or participate as jury members also contributes to the importance of reflecting on the goals and positioning of researchers, especially when the academic and festival agendas have opposing goals (see Dickson, this volume). This is even more evident in the realm of ethnographic film festivals, as many festivals have arisen within academia.

Roles and Rules Another important field of study that has been the focus of anthropology is that of social roles and rules that contribute to differentiating a given culture. Hortense Powdermaker’s study of film professionals in Hollywood (1950) is an illuminating example of how methodological and analytical interests from anthropology can be applied to studying contemporary film cultures.3 Powdermaker’s seminal work in media anthropology identifies both taboos and social (and professional) roles within this closed society: producers, filmmakers, scriptwriters, actors, and so on, giving an inside view of how people interacted in the “dream factory”. In his brief study of Sundance, Dayan also identifies different festival actors (organisers, journalists, films, sales agents, filmmakers, audience) and their different agendas. Film festival participants are categorised through a system of accreditation that grants or restricts access to different activities and venues, and therefore serves to manipulate social relationships that develop within it. Given the highly regulated nature of film festivals’ management of social interaction, the analysis of roles or rules of behaviour that develop within them is one of the most interesting aspects to understand their inner dynamics. As we see in Lichaa, Dillard and Vallejo’s chapters in this volume, identifying key persons and their roles is 3 More contemporary anthropological studies of film production contexts include Ganti (2012) (with an inside view of the contemporary Hindi film industry) and Ortner (2013) (who provides some ethnographies of the Sundance Film Festival in the context of the American independent film sphere).

Ethnographies of Film Festivals

257

an important task of film festival studies. Moreover, the analysis of their discourses and taboos and the managing of information (see Dillard, this volume) is paramount to understanding the influence of film festivals on contemporary film cultures.

Challenges and Specificities of Film Festival Studies As a discipline interested in cultural practices and their negotiation, anthropology has already encountered and reflected on many of the critical debates that film festival scholars are just starting to be confronted with. But while film festival studies can certainly be improved and enriched by the lessons of anthropology, the film festival as an object of study presents some specificities worthy of critical attention. First of all, as Dillard already notes in this volume, while in anthropology it is a common practice to keep informers’ identities anonymous, if film festival studies the names of social actors are in many cases relevant to the output of our research. Here scholars must try to maintain a balance. Reflection on the possible impact of our studies on the professional career of a given person, festival or institution is necessary to delineate the boundaries between what we know and what we can make public. Festival operation and interaction is built on long-term relationships of mutual trust, and if academia wants to find its own position in this field, the rules of collaboration must be set from the very beginning, and protocols and norms established that do not threaten any of the parties involved. Making this compatible with scholars’ independent and critical position is one of the main challenges of film festival studies. Secondly, questions of access and positionality are key for the success of our research. While anthropologists have historically approached “other” cultures, film festival scholars are usually insiders of the culture they aim to analyse. Reflection on the position assumed by the researcher in this context and a capacity to detach oneself from the object of study is another challenge worthy of attention. Finally, ethnography of film festivals can serve to unfold real practices as opposed to official regulations and discourses. When conducting ethnographic studies of film festivals, we see that there are some contradictions between what is on paper (documents created by festivals or other institutions) and the lived experience (see Vallejo 2014). In the same way that the roles mentioned in the end credits of a film do not always match the real tasks and division of labour actually implemented during its production (see Barbash and Castaing-Taylor, in MacDonald 2015, 390– 391), or the official budgets of films do not necessarily match the real

258

Part II. Introduction

monetary costs of production, in many cases there is a big gap between professional practices and the legal framework in which they develop. In opposition to classic media industries research that focuses on analysing audio-visual laws and institutional practices, collating that information with production outputs and statistics, we argue that ethnographic studies can offer more realistic data about the actual performance of film agents, and thus can complement or test statistics. Looking at these intersections and contradictions can therefore help us gain a better understanding of not only film festivals but also film cultures as a whole.

Works Cited Askew, Kelly M. and Richard R. Wilk. 2002. The Anthropology of Media: A Reader. Malden, MO: Blackwell. Bazin, André. [1955] 2009. “The Festival Viewed as a Religious Order.” In Dekalog 3: On Film Festivals, edited by Richard Porton, 13–19. London: Wallflower. Brown, William. 2009. “The Festival Syndrome: Report on the International Film Festival Workshop, University of St Andrews, 4 April 2009.” In Film Festival Yearbook 1: The Festival Circuit, edited by Dina Iordanova, and Ragan Rhyne, 216–225. St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies. Burawoy, Michael, Alice Burton, Ann Arnett Ferguson, Kathryn J. Fox, Joshua Gamson, Leslie Hurst, Nadine G. Julius, Charles Kurzman, Leslie Salzinger, Josepha Schiffman, and Shiori Ui, eds. 1991. Ethnography Unbound. Power and Resistance in the Modern Metropolis. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Burawoy, Michael, Joseph A. Blum, Sheba George, Zsuzsa Gille, Teresa Gowan, Lynne Haney, Maren Klawiter, Steven H. Lopez, Sean Ó Riain, and Millie Thayer, eds. 2000. Global Ethnography. Forces, Connections, and Imaginations in a Postmodern World. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Burgess, Diane. 2014. “Why Whistler Will Never be Sundance, and What This Tells Us About the Field of Cultural Production.” Canadian Journal of Film Studies/Revue Canadienne d’Études Cinématographiques 23(1):90–108. Clifford, James and George E. Marcus, eds. 1986. Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Davies, Charlotte A. 1998. Reflexive Ethnography: A Guide to Researching Selves and Others. New York: Routledge.

Ethnographies of Film Festivals

259

Dayan, Daniel. 2000. “Looking for Sundance: The Social Construction of a Film Festival.” In Moving Images, Cultures and the Mind, edited by Ib Bondebjerg, 43–52. Luton: University of Luton Press. De Valck, Marijke. 2007. Film Festivals. From European Geopolitics to Global Cinephilia. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. —. 2014. “Film Festivals, Bourdieu, and the Economization of Culture.” Canadian Journal of Film Studies/Revue Canadienne d’Études Cinématographiques 23(1):74–89. Diawara, Manthia. 1994. “On Tracking World Cinema: African Cinema at Film Festivals.” Public Culture 6(2):385–396. Dovey, Lindiwe. 2015. Curating Africa in the Age of Film Festivals: Film Festivals, Time, Resistance. London, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Ganti, Tejaswini. 2012. Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry. London: Duke University Press. Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. London: Fontana. —. 1988. Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Ginsburg, Faye, Lila Abu-Lughod, and Brian Larkin, eds. 2002. Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hammersley, Martyn, and Paul Atkinson. 1995. Ethnography: Principles in Practice, 2nd edition. London: Routledge. Lee, Toby. 2016. “Being There, Taking Place: Ethnography at the Film Festival.” In Film Festivals: History, Theory, Method, Practice, edited by Marijke de Valck, Brendan Kredell, and Skadi Loist, 122–137. London, New York: Routledge. Loist, Skadi. 2016. “Part III–Method: Introduction.” In Film Festivals: History, Theory, Method, Practice, edited by Marijke de Valck, Brendan Kredell, and Skadi Loist, 119–121. London, New York: Routledge. —. Forthcoming. “Film Festival Research Workshops: Debates on Methodology.” In Documentary Film Festivals, edited by Aida Vallejo and Ezra Winton. MacDonald, Scott. 2015. Avant-Doc: Intersections of Documentary and Avant-Garde Cinema. Oxford: Oxford University Press.. Marcus, George E. 1995. “Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography.” Annual Review of Anthropology 24:95–117. Marcus, George E., and Fred R. Meyers, eds. 1995. The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Art and Anthropology. Los Angeles: University of California Press.

260

Part II. Introduction

Mauss, Marcel. 1923. “Essai sur le don. Forme et raison de l’échange dans les sociétés archaïques.” L’Année sociologique 1:30–186. Ortner, Sherry B. 2013. Not Hollywood: Independent Film and the Twilight of the American Dream. London: Duke University Press. Ostrowska, Dorota. 2014. “Three Decades of Polish Films at the Venice and Cannes Film Festivals: The 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.” In Beyond the Border: Polish Cinema in a Transnational Context, edited by Ewa Mazierska and Michael Goddard, 77–94. Rochester, NY: Rochester University Press. Peirano, María Paz. 2017. “Film Mobilities: Circulation Practices, Local Policies, and the Construction of a ‘Newest Chilean Cinema’ in transnational Settings.” In Envisioning Networked Urban Mobilities: Mobility in the Arts. Towards a Dialogue between Art Studies, Cultural Policy, and Mobilities Research, edited by Aslak Kjaerulff, Sven Kesselring, Peter Peters, and Kevin Hannam. New York: Routledge. In press. Polanyi, Karl. 1957. “The Economy as Instituted Process.” In Trade and Market in the Early Empires, edited by Karlo Polanyi, Conrad M. Arensberg, and Harry W. Pearson, 241–270. Chicago: Gateway. Powdermaker, Hortense. 1950. Hollywood, the Dream Factory: An Anthropologist Looks at the Movie-Makers. Boston: Little, Brown. Rothenbuhler, Eric W., and Coman, Mihai, eds. 2005. Media Anthropology. London: Sage Publications. Turan, Kenneth. 2002. Sundance to Sarajevo: Film Festivals and the World They Made. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Vallejo, Aida. 2014. “Etnografías del cine: nuevas aproximaciones al estudio de festivales.” In Espacios de comunicación, edited by Itxaso Fernández-Astobiza, 1751–1763. Bilbao: Asociación Española de Investigación de la Comunicación. —. 2015. “Documentary Filmmakers on the Circuit. A Festival Career from Czech Dream to Czech Peace.” In Post-1990 Documentary. Reconfiguring Independence, edited by Camille Deprez, and Judith Pernin, 171–187. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Westbrook, David A. 2008. Navigators of the Contemporary: Why Ethnography Matters. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

CHAPTER 13 INSIDER/OUTSIDER POSITIONS AT GLASGOW FILM FESTIVAL: CHALLENGES, ISSUES AND OPPORTUNITIES IN INDUSTRY-PARTNERED ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH LESLEY-ANN DICKSON

In his seminal thesis, Julian Stringer calls for more ethnographic approaches to the study of film festivals (2003, 242).1 Stringer adds that the key to effective ethnographic inquiry is the researcher’s “access” to the particular festival of interest. Generally speaking, lack of access to objects/subjects of study can be deeply problematic for the researcher, resulting in tension between research aims and realistic methods. In contrast, access can allow the researcher to adopt methods that will “[bridge] the broad spaces between questions that [he/she/they] want[s] to answer, and the pragmatics and possibilities of [his/her/their] research” (Egan and Barker 2006). In the context of film festival research, one could argue that access is in fact critical due to the often exclusive nature of these events. Indeed within the growing field of film festival studies a tacit view has emerged which suggests that research that does not go “behind the velvet rope”–gaining access to insider information and materials–is blatantly recognisable to festival insiders (practitioners and scholars alike). 2 For practitioners in particular, there can be significant disparity 1 See Stringer, Julian. 2003. Regarding Film Festivals. PhD thesis. Indiana: Indiana University, Department of Comparative Literature. Although Stringer calls for an urgent need to redress the absence of ethnographic work on film festivals– on audiences in particular–his PhD thesis does not attempt to do this. 2 This question of “access” was raised at a workshop I attended at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies in Chicago in 2013. The workshop was entitled “Behind the Velvet Rope: Insider/Outsider Dilemmas for Film Festival Researchers.”

262

Chapter 13

between scholarly accounts of exhibitions and the actual practices taking place on the ground. Consequently, lack of access can lead to questions about the comprehension, depth and reliability of the work, which suggests a link between questions of access and questions of authenticity.3 Thus, research with access arguably emerges as the preferred methodological condition within film festival research. This chapter charts my experience of film festival research from a position behind the velvet rope. Between 2010 and 2013 I conducted ethnographic research at Glasgow Film Festival as part of an academic/industry collaborative project. Here, I reflexively present the methodological issues and opportunities I faced, with particular emphasis on the complexities of insider/outsider positioning. The chapter also addresses the challenges of conducting industry-partnered research in which both industry agendas (“operational usefulness”) and academic agendas (“intellectual contribution”) are in operation.

Industry-Partnered Research In 2010 I was recruited as a doctoral researcher by the University of Glasgow to work on an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) project entitled Film Festival and Cinema Audiences: An Investigation of Glasgow Film Festival Audiences and their relationship with Glasgow Film Theatre.4 The project was supported by the AHRC’s Collaborative Doctoral Award (CDA) scheme.5 A key distinction of these collaborative 3

Over the course of this research I have spoken informally with many festival practitioners (programmers, directors, marketers, founders) and, at times, there has been a sentiment that festival scholarship does not always reflect actual festival practices. 4 The final title of the thesis was Film Festival and Cinema Audiences: A study of exhibition practice and audience reception at Glasgow Film Festival. The project was first conceived at the Edinburgh International Film Audiences Conference (EIFAC) in 2009 during a conversation between Dr Karen Boyle (then Senior Lecturer, Theatre, Film and Television Studies, University of Glasgow) and Dr Emily Munro (Head of Learning, Glasgow Film Theatre). Discussing the relationship between cultural cinema audiences and film festivals audiences and how little is known about each in a contemporary context, together they designed this project, submitting a CDA proposal to AHRC that year. The project secured funding in 2010 and, following a panel interview, I took up the position of PhD candidate in October that year. Both Boyle and Munro supervised the project. 5 The CDA studentship scheme launched in 2005 in the UK and has since supported over five hundred PhD projects. The number of supported CDAs (in the UK) increased steadily between 2005 (41 awards) and 2011 (77 awards). However,

Insider/outsider Positions at Glasgow Film Festival

263

PhDs is the contractual partnering of a non-academic institution (organisation, company) with a higher education institution (HEI). In the case of my own research, Glasgow Film Festival/Theatre 6 and the University of Glasgow. For the CDA researcher, access is the key advantage of this kind of doctorate as they “[…] provide access to resources and materials, knowledge and expertise that may not otherwise have been available” (AHRC 2013). At this point it is useful to differentiate research that involves an unofficial connection between the researcher/s and the industry partner/s (e.g. a film festival) and research that is an official collaboration. Film festival researchers can, and do, approach events to request particular forms of access that are important for their research. For instance, a researcher may want access to screenings and, therefore, requires accreditation, tickets or festival passes. Festival data may be of vital importance and so access to box office systems, demographic data, archives and/or press catalogues may be required. For some research, access to practitioners themselves may be crucial in order to conduct staff interviews, surveys or focus groups. Likewise, a researcher may want to engage with festival audiences and may require access to audience data or channels for recruitment (newsletters, social media).7 Often these types of access are gained through informal connections with the festival and involve no investment from the festival. More importantly, in this situation the festival retains full control of access and can block/remove it at any point. In contrast, there are official research partnerships that are bound by contractual arrangements. These contractual partnerships–of which the CDA scheme is one–require the continued interaction and collaboration between a university, researcher and the partnering company or organisation. My research was situated within this contractual structure with the partnering festival providing both financial support and supplementary supervision; an industry expert formed part of the numbers began to fall in 2012 (69 awards) and in 2014 only 21 awards were approved. The decrease is arguably linked to the introduction of the Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) scheme, which was introduced in 2012 with the first cohort of studentships starting in 2013. See: http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/FundingOpportunities/Pages/Collaborative-Doctoral-Awards.aspx 6 Glasgow Film Festival began in 2005 and is hosted by Glasgow Film Theatre. For more information, see http://visitgff.glasgowfilm.org/ and/or http://www.glasgowfilm.org/theatre 7 Often researchers may already work for the film festival they wish to investigate and will gain informal access in this way.

264

Chapter 13

supervisory team throughout the project. Thus, access to festival texts, data, practitioners and audiences was granted from the outset and was contractually secure. However, as this chapter will go on to discuss, the formal collaborative structure of the project did not come without its challenges.

The Project: Glasgow Film Festival Glasgow Film Festival is a youth on the festival circuit. Launched in 2005, it was thought that the event would enhance Glasgow’s image as a vibrant cultural and creative international location (GFF 2004).8 However, the festival also had distinctively local aspirations. With a strong focus on the “local audience” it would cultivate a more eclectic film culture in Glasgow by harnessing and mixing patrons from the local multiplex, independent cinema and cross-arts center (its three core venues).9 Indeed, the festival defines itself as an open access “audience festival” that provides something for everyone from the “casual filmgoer to the diehard movie buff” (GFF 2007, 3). Certainly, tapping into different audience groups has served the festival well–in its mere eleven years the festival has gone from 6000 attendances (2005) to over 40,000 (2016) and is now the UK’s third-largest film festival, sitting just behind more established London International Film Festival (60 years old in 2016) and Edinburgh International Film Festival (70 years old in 2016). Year-on-year data suggests that the festival is in fact largely made up of a local audience (around 80% are from Glasgow or Greater Glasgow), which demonstrates a strong local devotion to the event. As such, the festival attributes its rapid success to its loyal local patronage and its ravenous appetite for film. It is this relationship between Glasgow Film Festival and its attending public that lay at the core of my research. In essence, I was concerned with festival people (audiences and practitioners alike) and their practices (decisions, motivations, behaviours) and experiences (pleasures, displeasures). That is to say that I was interested in the culture at Glasgow Film Festival: exhibition culture (decision-making practices, staffaudience relations) and film culture (the importance/role of the event in 8

Glasgow underwent cultural regeneration in the 1990s when it was European City of Culture in 1990. For more information on Glasgow as a cultural space see: Garcia, Beatriz. 2004. “Deconstructing the City of Culture: The Long-term Cultural Legacies of Glasgow 1990.” Urban Studies 42, 5-6: 841–68. 9 The multiplex was Cineworld (formerly the UGC), the independent cinema was Glasgow Film Theatre–a former arthouse built in the 1930s–, and the cross-arts centre was Centre for Contemporary Art.

Insider/outsider Positions at Glasgow Film Festival

265

audiences’ cultural lives). The dual focus on exhibition practices and audience practices meant that my methodology needed to allow for investigation of two categories of festival people: exhibitors/practitioners and spectators. As such, the view that “use of one method to assess a given phenomenon will inevitably yield biased and limited results” seemed plausible (Greene et al. 1989, 256). And so I adopted a mixed-method fieldwork design that involved focus groups (with audiences), elite interviews (with staff) and participant observation (of both).10 This essay zooms in on the latter–a three-year longitudinal ethnography of a festival and its attending public.11

Fig. 13–1. Glasgow Film Festival closing gala, 2013. The researcher (among the audience) adopts an insider position to conduct ethnographic research. Photo: courtesy of Glasgow Film Festival.

An Ethnographic Approach As I was new to ethnographic methods, it took some time to ease into the position of participant observer. A pressing concern was that the 10

In addition to these fieldwork methods, the project also involved quantitative box office analysis, archival research and content analysis. 11 Participant observation took place inside festival time (during the event) and outside festival time at the event’s hub venue, Glasgow Film Theatre.

266

Chapter 13

information being collected–snippets of conversations, notes on attendance (lone/group), descriptions of films (art-house, commercial, cross-over) and audience behaviours (walk outs, modes of appreciation)–were open-ended and anecdotal. Nevertheless, the value of ethnography to longitudinal film festival inquiry is the fact that, over time, these fragments of experiences, voices, people, and occurrences begin to mount into what we might think of as an anthology of observation. Also, while participant observation is fundamentally qualitative, there was often a quantitative element to my observations (for instance, numbers of people in screenings as well as the behaviours of those people), which “[improved] the level of description and objectivity of observation” (De Walt and De Walt 2011, 85).12 Nevertheless, participant observation did not come without its challenges. Indeed, scholars have long since considered the “oxymoronic” nature of the term itself because while "participation implies emotional involvement; observation requires detachment” (Paul 1953, 441). In her ethnographic study of the BBC, Georgina Born argues that “the task of the anthropologist is to experience the culture from within” thereby suggesting that involvement, and immersion, are critical (2004, 16). However, how immersed does one actually get and what position should the film festival researcher take? This question becomes more critical in the context of collaborative research where the risks of deep immersion are politicized further because of the closeness of the researcher and the researched. Thus, I was acutely aware of the risks of becoming too entrenched within the Glasgow Film organisation–becoming an adjunct festival practitioner– because it could potentially compromise my critical position. Indeed, Stringer has warned of the dangers of attachment and immersion in ethnographic film festival research, noting that participant observation can have “unpredictable value” because the researcher’s position as detached observer can become compromised (Stringer 2003, 242). There is a suggestion here that the researcher should be an outsider to the research setting. However, given Stringer’s point about the importance of “access” in ethnography (made earlier), this argument about attachment/detachment becomes problematic, inconsistent even. How can the researcher gain allimportant access without forming some sort of relationship with the festival in question? The researcher cannot. Access requires a “necessary connection” to the research setting, however close or distant that connection may be (Davies 1999, 7). Thus, I negotiated my necessary connection to Glasgow Film Festival through a process of reflexivity, 12

I had access to box office data and was, therefore, able to cross-reference my quantitative observations of audience attendance with ticket sales, which was also a way in which I improved the rigour of my observations.

Insider/outsider Positions at Glasgow Film Festival

267

engaging with the notion that the participant observer must skillfully flow in (to participate) and out (to reflect and understand) of the research setting: Participant observation involves immersing yourself in a culture and learning to remove yourself every day from that immersion so that you can intellectualize what you’ve seen and heard, put it into perspective and write about it convincingly. When it’s done right, participant observation turns fieldworkers into instruments of data collection and analysis (Bernard 2006, 344).

Of course, reflexive ethnography has also not been without its criticisms and complexities. Debates, for instance, have focused on the overlapping of ideas about reflexivity and objectivity (the assumption that one equals the other) or the problem of embedded narcissism in constructivist accounts (Davies 1999).13 For me, however, the true value of reflexive practice was that it encouraged continual awareness and expression of my connection to the festival, its practitioners and its audiences and allowed me to articulate moments and experiences within the “festival world” and reflect on those moments and experiences when outside of it. Moreover, reflexivity was particularly useful for me as I was conducting ethnographic research on both the organisation and the audience. That is to say that I was not adopting a singular position.

Both Insider and Outsider Indeed one of the most significant challenges I faced was that I was interested in more than one festival public–in my case, festival practitioners and festival audiences. On one hand, I was investigating exhibition practices at GFF, decision-making (programming), language (festival narratives, paratext, promotional rhetoric) and perceptions (of audiences); while on the other, I was concerned with the motivations, practices and pleasures of the festival audience. In this respect, I wanted to experience festival culture from two very different perspectives, and so experiencing “culture from within” was problematic and required a more fluid approach to positioning. That is to say, being a festival insider would mean distancing myself from the audience by becoming an audience outsider, whereas immersing myself as an audience insider would mean distancing myself from the organisation by becoming a festival outsider. Indeed, John Brewer notes that ethnographic researchers–as participant 13

For an overview of reflexivity in ethnographic research, see: Davies 1999, 3–25.

268

Chapter 13

observers–must play a double role in which they act as “part-insider and part-outsider […] simultaneously member and non-member” (Brewer 2000, 60). This double role required fluidity and an ability to remove myself from the research setting regularly to return to what I term the “critical core”–a nonaligned position where distanced, reflexive understanding could take place (see Fig. 13–2). Positioning was inextricably linked to space and the associative nature of particular locations and environments. In other words, festival sites were spaces of insider or outsider positioning, and so when I was in or around any festival spaces I would adopt one of these roles. However, once in the office or at home, I would attempt to reposition myself as neither. This nonaligned position might be likened to the role of “complete observer” in Gold’s (1958) typology of participant observational roles.14

Fig. 13–2. Diagram of insider/outsider positioning.

14

Gold (1958) suggests that ethnographers adopt one of four possible roles when conducting participant observation: participant as observer, observer as participant, complete participant or complete observer. The complete observer is distanced from the research setting and does not take part.

Insider/outsider Positions at Glasgow Film Festival

269

Festival Insider/Audience Outsider Questions concerning researcher positioning in ethnography have dominated debates about this mode of qualitative fieldwork. In particular, the extent to which researchers become insiders–often described using the problematic expression “going native”–has given rise to concerns about lack of critical distance. However, as noted in the introduction, insider status is arguably the preferred researcher position within film festival studies because it means that the research has benefited from access to some/many/all of the event’s assets (box office, internal documents, archives, practitioners, audiences, etc.). Indeed, the term “festival insider” has gained currency more broadly and is commonly used as promotional rhetoric. For instance, many festivals offer “Insider Guides” (Cannes, Sundance, New Orleans) and Sundance runs a volunteer programme that identifies participants as “festival insiders.” I took on the role of festival insider when observing the event from the exhibition viewpoint. This allowed me access to screenings, festival offices, projection rooms, archives, shared folders and funding applications, and I was fully trained on the box office system. Thus, I frequented the back rooms of the festival and viewed the festival and its audience, from the inside. A central challenge of industry-partnered research is that the work is expected to deliver two outcomes; “intellectual contribution” to the academy and “operational usefulness” to the industry affiliate. It was therefore important for me to problematize the collaborative nature of my research when in exhibition mode and to continually “question the nature of collaboration and compliance, given the potentially opposing interests and goals of the various partners” (Scheeres and Solomon 2000, 130). As noted, I managed my position by adopting a distinctively reflexive approach, which meant I reflected on how my data-set was being constructed and how my knowledge was gained–from whom was it communicated (“social actors”), in what way (“language”), in what situation/setting (“action”), and what information was perhaps being omitted, exaggerated or downplayed. While reflexivity does not fully resolve the problematic notion of objectivity or absolute researcher neutrality, it offered a useful way of scrutinizing and monitoring codependent relations between myself and the researched subjects and settings. Another challenge was visibility. Ethnography involves participating either “covertly or overtly in people’s lives for an extended period of time” (Hammersley and Atkinson 1995, 3). In most cases, ethnographers will make the decision to be either covert or overt in their position; however, given that my research was bound within an established collaborative

270

Chapter 13

arrangement, most of the senior staff working at the festival/venue were aware of my position as an academic researcher. Thus, when it came to institutional inquiry, I was mainly an “overt observer”. This meant that although I positioned myself as an insider, there was resistance. For some staff members I arguably remained an outsider and I felt a continued degree of caution from some practitioners throughout the research, which was limiting–particularly when it came to conducting interviews with practitioners.15 Thus, the degree to which I could fully immerse myself was to some extent narrowed by the overtness of my position as a researcher. Of course, the alternative position–to be a covert observer within a contractual, collaborative framework–would have been ethically problematic. Nevertheless, in the context of observing audiences, it was a plausible position.

Audience Insider/Festival Outsider Arguably one of the most important works within film festival studies is Daniel Dayan’s ethnography of Sundance (Dayan 2000). Dayan’s work is particularly instructive when considering the identities, practices and pleasures of festival audiences. Drawing on Erving Goffman’s (1974) “dramaturgical view of everyday life”, Dayan positions film festivals as “social constructions”, which require audiences to perform (behave and act) in ways that align with a festival’s set of rules and scripts: Those who came were collectively imbued culture, used to a certain type of discourse in capable of connecting aesthetic concerns and Sundance allowed observing an audience that identity and capable of articulating dissent or was a true public (Dayan 2000, 44).

15

with the values of shared their debates and dialogues, political choices. In a word was reflexively aware of its disagreement. The audience

Given the close relationship with Glasgow Film Festival, I did not encounter any instances whereby personnel refused to be interviewed. In fact, in the most part interviewees were very forthcoming. However, I did have an instance where a participant wanted to know more about the line of questioning prior to the meeting, which suggested a degree of wariness–something I picked up on from several staff members throughout the project. These instances formed part of my observational reflections.

Insider/outsider Positions at Glasgow Film Festival

271

GFF13, 8.20pm retrospective screening of Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)



Friday 22 February 2013 at The Tall Ship (maritime museum) Arrive at The Glenlee, berthed and alit. I walk along the port side and enter a small tourist room–a glass box–where I give my name to a person whom I think works for The Tall Ship as opposed to the film festival. […] We wait around for a bit, it is all very subdued.  We are led down to another level through a narrow stairwell. Here there is a small screen with Chiavari chairs set out in rows of around five. I take a seat and moments later a man sits down beside me. He is part of a group of around six or seven people and is dressed from head-to-toe in a shark costume. His face emerges from the jaws of the shark suit as if he has just been swallowed whole. He and his friends are chatting away before the film begins; this is clearly a social Friday night out for them. A female member of the party, sat behind me, has brought homemade cakes and passes them along her row and forward to friends in my row. All seats are occupied, holding around 50 people (I noticed earlier that the film had sold out). The projectionist, Malcolm, is sat high above us on some bulk at the back of the room. The hazy light from the projector is visible in the darkness but beams out above our heads.  There is no introduction before the film (there doesn’t seem to be any festival staff present). The film just starts, which feels a bit like the scene hasn’t been set. Nevertheless, the theme-tune is met by giggles; curiously it reminds me of the excited anxiety one collectively feels before a rollercoaster takes off. It is clear that this is an audience of Jaws fans. This is made clear when a famous line from the film–“you’re gonna need a bigger boat!”–is recited by the audience in synchrony with delivery onscreen. It triggers laughter. There are two middle-aged ladies behind me who seemed to have brought a picnic with them from Sainsburys. They rustle and crunch throughout the film. The film isn’t very loud and we’re all really close to one another, so it is very noisy, however, no one seems to bother. Feels a little like home viewing. When the film finishes there is no applause and it all feels a little awkward. The audience no longer seems connected as fans. It’s a bit like waking up after a great party with strangers. I can’t help feeling a little disappointed that there wasn’t a display of shared appreciation at the end of the film. It was a bit of an anticlimax after such a spirited screening. We all leave the boat, slowly, and disperse into the night. –        '

272

Chapter 13

Like Dayan, I approached audience observation in a covert manner as an audience insider. Unless directly asked, I did not disclose my position as a researcher when in insider mode. Becoming an audience member was, at first, a less complicated position to adopt. As an avid cinemagoer and festival enthusiastic, there was naturalness to this process. Nevertheless, the risks of immersion remained similar to those of festival insider positioning in terms of losing one’s critical distance. Similar concerns have been linked to Aca-Fandom where there is thought to be a danger of abandoning critical inquiry because of emotional and subjective investment in the object of study (Bogost 2010; Roach 2014). In her work on Aca-Fandom, Catherine Roach favors “observant participation” over “participant observation” noting that this enables researchers to “participate more deeply and more fully as insiders and then reflexively observe themselves as participants, as well as their own process of observation, along with the native cultural participants” (Roach 2014, 41). Thus, I placed myself as an audience member in the narrative of my fieldwork journal, writing the story of my experience and observations alongside observed activities of “native cultural participants” (see Fig. 13– 3). These observational accounts–or “thick descriptions” in Geertz’s terms (1973)–of audience habits, customs, behaviours and conversations were later analysed from the critical core position. This meant that I was able to observe myself as a participant, as well as the process of my observation. This often involved documenting, then analyzing, the atmosphere at screenings. For example, Glasgow Film Festival has a policy of introducing every screening. These introductions can be delivered by anyone from the festival directors themselves to student volunteers. Observation revealed that in instances where there was a brief or generic introduction offering little or no reference to the specifics of the film or the audience (often delivered by volunteers), the mood of the screening was significantly deflated (no clapping, lack of energy in the room). These ethnographic accounts were later put to the test during focus groups research (with audience members), which enabled me to explore the correlational aspects of my experiential observations with actual audience testimonies. Furthermore, becoming the audience allowed me to observe exhibition practices from the patron’s perspective. This was at times extremely revealing: for instance, these observations revealed differences in the level of paratext provided at film screenings according to festival spaces16, that 16

For instance, I attended a screening of Kramer vs. Kramer (Benton, 1979, US) at two festival venues (multiplex and independent cinema) during the 2011 festival. At the independent cinema screening, the introduction comprised of a lengthy

Insider/outsider Positions at Glasgow Film Festival

273

there was a hierarchical relationship between the festival program and festival venues, and that practitioners presented a code of etiquette or seriousness at film screenings. In this respect, the patron’s perspective allowed me to view the organisation–its processes and practices–from the outside looking in.

Final Thoughts This chapter has offered a reflexive overview of the ethnographic approach adopted for a recent piece of film festival research. What should be clear is that this research took place within an arrangement that meant no gatekeeping or access restrictions, which allowed for fluid researcher positioning and a multi-method approach. Focusing on participant observation, I have considered the challenges of working within industrypartnered research, addressing the potentially problematic co-dependence between the researcher and the researched, as well as questions of researcher immersion and distance. I suggest here that for film festival researchers the idea that there is a need for researcher “detachment” from the researched event is problematic given the vital importance of access. An immediate effect of gained access is the researcher’s connection with the festival in question–one cannot have one without the other. However, I argue that researcher positioning can be fluid and allow for insider and outsider modes depending on the aspect of the festival under examination. This is particularly effective when considering a film festival from more than one perspective. In agreement with Stringer, I suggest that there is a need for more ethnographic accounts of film festivals; however, I would emphasize the importance of ethnographic inquiry into festivals and their publics. Moreover, I make the case that industry-partnered projects on festivals and their publics are best served by reflexive methodological frameworks, which enable the researcher to continually problematize the research context and to include themselves within their observational narratives and ethnographic analysis. biography of Meryl Streep’s career and the significance of this particular film in shaping her success, which was presented by the festival director. However, as a multiplex audience member I was given no biographical detail. Instead, I was given a disclaimer about the quality of the print and advised that if I was dissatisfied then I could request a refund. This was suggestive of practitioner ideas about audiences across different cinematic sites. Thus, insider audience positioning was dually purposeful in that it was not only revealing in terms of the audience, but also contributed to my understanding of exhibitor practices and processes.

274

Chapter 13

Works Cited AHRC. 2014. “Collaborative Doctoral Awards.” ahrc.ac.uk. Accessed 24 March, 2014. http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/Funding-Opportunities/Pages/ Collaborative-Doctoral-Awards.aspx Bernard, H. Russell. 2006. Research Methods in Anthropology: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches. Oxford: Altamira Press. Bogost, Ian. 2010. “Against Aca-Fandom.” bogost.com. Accessed 21 October, 2010. http://bogost.com/writing/blog/against_aca-fandom/ Born, Georgina. 2004. Uncertain Vision: Birt, Dyke and the Reinvention of the BBC. London: Secker and Warburg. Brewer, John. 2000. Ethnography: Understanding Social Research. England: Open University Press. Davies, Charlotte A. 1999. Reflexive Ethnography: A Guide to Researching Selves and Others. London: Routledge. Dayan, Daniel. 2000. “Looking for Sundance: The Social Construction of a Film Festival.” In Moving Images, Cultures and the Mind, edited by Ib Bondebjerg, 43–52. Luton: University of Luton Press. De Walt, Billie R., and De Walt, Kathleen, M. 2011. Participant Observation: A Guide for Fieldworkers. Plymouth: Altamira Press. Egan, Kate and Barker, Martin. 2006. “Rings around the World: Notes on the Challenges, Problems and Possibilities of International Audience Projects.” Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies 3(2):online. Elliot, Phillip. 1972. The Making of a Television Series: A Case Study in the Sociology of Culture. London: Constable. Garcia, Beatriz. 2004. “Deconstructing the City of Culture: The Long-term Cultural Legacies of Glasgow 1990.” Urban Studies 42(5/6):841–68. Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. London: Fontana. Geraghty, Christine. 1998. “Audiences and “Ethnography: questions of practice.” In The Television Studies Book, edited by Christine Geraghty, and David Lusted, 141–57. London: Arnold. GFF. 2004. Cinezone Proposal, document one. [Internal document]. —. 2007. Glasgow Film Festival Programme 2007. Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. Gold, R.L. 1958. “Roles in Sociological Field Observations.” Social Forces 36:217–23. Gray, Ann. 2003. Research practice for cultural studies: ethnographic methods and lived cultures. London: Sage. Greene, Jennifer, Valerie J. Caracelli, and Wendy F. Graham. 1989.

Insider/outsider Positions at Glasgow Film Festival

275

“Toward a conceptual framework for mixed-method evaluation designs.” Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis 11(3): 255–74. Hammersley, Martyn, and Paul Atkinson. 1995. Ethnography: Principles in Practice (second edition). London: Routledge. Morley, David. 2006. “Unanswered Questions in Audience Research.” The Communication Review 9(2):101–121. Paul, Benjamin D. 1953. “Interview Techniques and Field Relationships.” In Anthropology Today, edited by A.L. Kroeber, 420–51. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Roach, Catherine. 2014. “Going Native: Aca-Fandom and Deep Participant Observation in Popular Romance Studies.” Mosaic: Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 47(2):33–49. Scheeres, Hermine, and Nicky Solomon. 2000. “Whose text? Methodological dilemmas in collaborative research practice.” In Culture and Text, edited by in Alison Lee and Cate Poynton, 114–31. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. Stringer, Julian. 2003. Regarding Film Festivals. Unpublished PhD thesis. Indiana: Indiana University, Department of Comparative Literature.

CHAPTER 14 TRAVELLING THE CIRCUIT: A MULTI-SITED ETHNOGRAPHY OF DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVALS IN EUROPE AIDA VALLEJO

Film festivals have been categorised as circuits of film dissemination (Elsaesser 2005; De Valck 2007).1 Nevertheless, their role as networks for the circulation of people remain under-researched. 2 The mobility of professionals from festival to festival and from country to country, is a key aspect of festival operation. Film festivals are by essence ephemeral encounters, and yet there is continuity in the social relationships established within them. They act as nodal points where film professionals (be they producers, filmmakers, academics, critics, programmers or festival directors) come together year after year and exchange information. This chapter focuses on the importance of the social dimension of film festivals for the development of documentary cultures. I argue that documentary festivals have become key social encounters for the formation of a cultural elite. As demonstrated by the ethnographic description presented in this chapter, those professionals who started to visit international documentary film festivals in the 1990s constitute a social group of decision-makers based on long-term relationships. They have created a festival circuit sustained to a great extent by transnational connections (Hannerz 1996), and built international networks of collaboration based on reciprocity practices (Mauss 1925), expanding the festival model from country to country through Europe (and beyond). 1

Film Festival expert Dina Iordanova has questioned the interconnectedness of the circuit and its capacity to serve as a platform for film distribution (2009). Nevertheless, she has suggested more recently that this applies more to major film festivals, while parallel circuits, such as that specialising in documentary, appear as a much more connected network (2014). 2 See Vallejo (2015) and Peirano (2017).

278

Chapter 14

This chapter is based on a multi-sited ethnography (Marcus 1995) conducted at several documentary film festivals in Europe between 2002 and 2015.3 It focuses on professionals who travel from festival to festival, and traces their personal trajectories through the years. In my study, I have combined participant observation with interviews, film viewing and text analysis of printed and online materials. In what follows, I offer a thick description (Geertz 1973) of some of these encounters (see Lee 2016). Through selected micro-ethnographies of my festival visits, I reconstruct the development of social networks established on the circuit since the end of the 1990s and expanded throughout the 2000s, when documentary film festivals proliferated.

From Festival to Festival: Encounters on the Circuit Since 2002 I have attended documentary film festivals regularly, first as a student and then as a researcher. In 2007 I started a PhD in film studies that aimed to draw a cartography of documentary film festivals in Europe. The relevance of festivals’ social dimension appeared evident and required new tools of analysis (Dayan 2000). I therefore decided to study anthropology parallel to the development of my fieldwork, incorporating ethnography into my methodology. The usual research trajectory in film studies would imply moving from the centre to the periphery (that is, from the most important festivals in Northwest Europe to the South and East). Nevertheless, I decided to start investigating Eastern European events instead, getting to know local professionals and following their encounters from festival to festival. The following micro-ethnographic descriptions look at international connections established since the 1990s in the documentary festival circuit. I focus on key persons who have been active in the internationalisation of the festival circuit, and reflect on the cooperative (or competitive) strategies developed among them. 3

This essay is part of a larger ethnographic and historical study of documentary film festivals in Europe. Research was supported by the Training Programme for Researchers of the Department of Education, Universities and Research of the Government of the Basque Country, the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness [grant number CSO2014-52750-P]: “Transnational relations in Spanish-American digital cinema: the cases of Spain, Mexico, and Argentina”, and the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU): ikerFESTS research project [EHUA16/31]. I want to thank all professionals who provided me access to the festivals and shared their knowledge and experiences during my fieldwork.

A Multi-sited Ethnograhy of Documentary Film Festivals in Europe

279

Bilbao (Basque Country, Spain), November 2002 November 2002. As a student at the University of the Basque Country I visit Zinebi (International Festival of Documentary and Short Film of Bilbao). At the Museum of Fine Arts a parallel industry activity is presented by European Documentary Network (EDN) director Tue Steen Müller. He talks about documentary production conditions in Europe, funding opportunities, and strategies to present documentary projects at international pitching forums.4 EDN is an institution for the promotion of European documentary based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Since 1999 they have gathered information about the documentary industry and organised training workshops to promote co-productions in Europe. Stefano Tealdi, from the Stefilm Italy production company (and chair of the EDN) copresents the session, using his co-production Porto Marghera–Venice: The Story of a Lethal Deception (Paolo Bonaldi, 2002) as a case study. Tealdi talks about the production and distribution strategies used to develop his documentary, which was presented at the Venice International Film Festival. Tealdi’s discourse is that of the entrepreneur businessman who tries to find a position in the European audiovisual space, which at this point is just a project. This rhetoric resonates in all workshops and seminars I will attend in subsequent years at diverse documentary film festivals. Most of these events are co-organised by the EDN and funded by the MEDIA programme of the European Union, an institution that will play a major role in the development of these international connections. Both Müller and Tealdi will become tutors of these workshops in future years, becoming part of a cultural elite that uses documentary festivals as their working space.

Jilhava (Czech Republic), October 2008 It’s Sunday, the third day of the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival. A point of reference for Eastern and Central European documentary, the festival gathers professionals from the region, who come to exchange information, get new titles for television broadcasting or festival programming, learn new management and funding models and (if time allows) watch a couple of films.

4

Pitching forums consist of public presentations of films in development to a panel of experts and commissioning editors, in order to get funding (pre-sales, coproductions, etc.) to finish them (see Vallejo 2014).

280

Chapter 14

Fig. 14–1. East European Forum pitching session during Jihlava IDFF 2008. Tue Steen Müller (standing on the left), is the tutor of the Ex Oriente Film workshop, where directors and producers learn the rules of European coproduction and prepare their project presentations for this pitching forum. Photo: Institute of Documentary Film.

At the recently renovated Dukla cinema, the Doc Alliance project is presented. This initiative, conceived by festival director Marek Hovorka in his travels throughout the international festival circuit, is born out of the cooperation between five festivals: CPH:DOX, Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival; DOK Leipzig, International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film; Jilhava IDFF; Planete Doc Review (later renamed Docs Against Gravity Film Festival, Warsaw); and Visions du Réel, Festival International de cinéma Nyon. Hovorka has visited several documentary film festivals since he created his own when he was only 17 years old. Inspired by the atmosphere of freedom brought about by the fall of the Soviet Bloc in 1989, he created Jihlava IDFF, and subsequently attended many other events, such as the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). As he recalls, it was at IDFA that he realised what it meant to be an international festival. Hovorka travelled to Amsterdam following the advice of Russian filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky, and there met important documentary figures and representatives from other festivals. These encounters served as an

A Multi-sited Ethnograhy of Documentary Film Festivals in Europe

281

inspiration to internationalise Jihlava IDFF, and to establish professional connections that would last for decades. In the centre of Jihlava the Horácké theatre hosts the East European Forum (Fig.14–1). Presented by Andrea Prenghyová, director of the Institute of Documentary Film (IDF) Prague, this pitching session is modelled after international workshops and pitching fora she has attended in recent years. It was thanks to Stefano Tealdi that Prenghyová (together with Filip Remunda) started the first pitching forum in collaboration with Jihlava IDFF in 2000. At that time, both were young students of FAMU film academy (where Hovorka had already started studying). As Prenghyová remembers, they had been searching on the Internet for funding possibilities for their documentaries, and found a workshop in Bardonecchia (Italy), at that time organised by Tealdi. They convinced him to bring four commissioning editors to the Czech Republic to organise the first documentary pitching forum in the country, and eight years later the young students are internationally renowned professionals, invited by festivals and international co-production workshops worldwide.

Zagreb (Croatia), February 2009 The Studenski Centar (student centre) in the centre of Croatia’s capital city hosts the fifth edition of the Zagrebdox International Documentary Film Festival. Among its guests I find Irena Taskovski, a young entrepreneur who created Taskovski Films Ltd. in 2003, a distribution company specialising in films from Eastern Europe. A regular attendee of festivals in this region, she attends them in search of films for her catalogue, but given her expertise in documentary distribution, she also offers specialised seminars for professionals. EDN representatives Tue Steen Müller and Cecilia Lindin are also present, in their capacity as leaders and tutors of the co-production workshop and pitching forum organised by the festival since 2006. Zagrebdox seems to have become a hot spot for documentary filmmakers from former Yugoslavia, especially those interested in securing funding for future projects. Nenad Puhovski, founder and director of the festival Zagrebdox since 2005, is an experienced festival traveller. In 1996 he presented his own film project at the prestigious IDFA pitching forum, and received the IDFA’s Jan Vrijman Fund, which helped to start his own festival and economically supported it from its inception in 2005 until 2007. The influence of IDFA in Zagrebdox’s programming practices is evident. Like other festival directors, Puhovski visits Amsterdam every year in search of

282

Chapter 14

both films and contacts. The international networks of collaboration and mutual influences are key to not only the success of the event itself but also the recognition of professional trajectories. This same year Puvovski received the EDN award for his contribution to documentary culture.

Jilhava (Czech Republic), October 2009 One year after my first visit to Jihlava, I find myself again in the Moravian town, attending the 13th edition of the Czech documentary festival. It’s 9 a.m. and I attend the “breakfast with producers” taking place in a downtown hotel. Only accessible to “industry accreditation” holders, these events are organised by the festival to serve as a bridge between Western and Eastern European professionals, promoting international cooperation. The festival strategy is clear: to invite Western European producers and commissioning editors (usually from public broadcasters), distributors and fund representatives to show professionals working in Eastern Europe how to search for external funding. At this breakfast we find, on one side, representatives of public television channels from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bosnia and Macedonia, and on the other, representatives from Northeastern Europe (mostly from Germany and France). These professionals will participate in the pitching forum that will take place in the following days as potential buyers and/or co-producers. Müller, who is the tutor of the co-production workshop and moderator of the pitching forum, accompanies the young participants of the Ex Oriente Film workshop in its final stage to sell their projects: the East European Forum. We find other old acquaintances such as Irena Taskovski, Andrea Prenghyová (director of Prague IDF, which organises both the workshop and the pitching forum) and two representatives of Agitprop (a Bulgarian production company led by Martichka Bozhilova) presenting its new feature-length documentary project: The Last Black Sea Pirates and Sir Norman Foster. Anna Stoeva, producer at Agitprop, tells me that Bozhilova could not attend Jihlava because she is visiting the DOK Leipzig documentary festival at the moment. The overlapping in dates of Jihlava IDFF and DOK Leipzig, both important hubs for Eastern and Central European documentary, sometimes appears as a problem, as one of the keys for the international success of the festivals is the presence of relevant documentary professionals. Bozhilova is an old member of this network who started participating in international co-production forums such as the East European Forum in Jihlava, IDFA Forum in 2002 and Berlinale Talent Campus in 2003 with

A Multi-sited Ethnograhy of Documentary Film Festivals in Europe

283

the film Georgi and the Butterflies (Ƚɟɨɪɝɢ ɢ ɩɟɩɟɪɭɞɢɬɟ, 2004, Andrey Paounov)–awarded at IDFA–; or the Discovery Campus in 2004 with the film The Mosquito Problem & Other Stories (ɉɪɨɛɥɟɦɴɬ ɫ ɤɨɦɚɪɢɬɟ ɢ ɞɪɭɝɢ ɢɫɬɨɪɢɢ, 2007). Four years later, at DocPoint–Helsinki Documentary Festival in Finland, DOK Leipzig head of administration Christiane Whilhelm will tell me that both festivals created a collaborative initiative, to drive industry professionals by bus from Germany to the Czech Republic, so that they could attend both events. At night, at Jihlava’s central Gustav Mahler Hotel (where jury members and special guests are hosted by the festival), the farewell party takes place. With a glass of wine and something to eat in their hands, guests gather in groups, which are organised by countries or sectors (commissioning editors, documentary makers, students). As time passes, representatives from different regions and professions mix together and chat, debating future projects and setting the roots for new networks of collaboration.

Thessaloniki (Greece), March 2010 It’s Monday, 15 March 2010. Facing Aristotle Square from the window of the café of the Olympion Theatre, I have a look at the “who’s who” provided by the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival (a list of professionals, including their email addresses and the dates they will attend). Among the attendees I find Bulgarian producer Martichka Bozhilova, who is working on her new project: the creation of the Balkan Documentary Center (BDC). At our meeting she tells me that the BDC started working just a month ago, with a development workshop and an online database with information about production companies and professionals from the Balkan region: “The idea comes from our own experience. We want to focus on the professionalization and on funding strategies aimed at the international market (co-productions and distribution).” Bozhilova talks about the festivals which serve as points of reference for Balkan cinema: “For the competition of regional productions Dokufest in Prizren (Kosovo) and Sarajevo International Film Festival are very important (although Sarajevo does not specialise in documentary); as a place for meeting local professionals Prizren, Sarajevo and Zagreb are also essential. Prizren usually hosts about 100 international guests–it’s impressive! Not only from the Balkans, but from everywhere.” The next morning, in the excursion to the archaeological site of Vergina organised by the festival, I meet again Miriam Šimková,

284

Chapter 14

coordinator of the Czech East Silver Market organised in collaboration with Jihlava IDFF. She smiles at me: “You’re carrying Jihlava’s bag.” Free advertising is undoubtedly always welcome and an identity symbol that serves to identify those who belong to “the gang”. She is together with Barbara Orlicz, who works for the Krakow Film Foundation, created in 2003, which organises the Krakow Film Festival in Poland. Šimková and Orlicz already know each other well, and they talk in Polish and Czech respectively, without the need of English (the usual official international language at documentary festivals in Europe). On the bus Orlicz tells me about their Polish Docs initiative, which promotes the circulation of Polish films at international film festivals, like here in Thessaloniki, where we find a special section and a retrospective dedicated to Polish filmmakers, including the projection of Andrzej Fidyk’s Battu’s Bioscope (1998), which follows a mobile cinema through remote Indian areas where cinema is presented to indigenous people for the first time in their lives. Back at the Olympion Theatre café, Necati Sönmez, co-director of the young Documentarist Istanbul Documentary Days festival tells me about the context of documentary production and exhibition in Turkey. Like other festival founders in the region, he also started as a documentary filmmaker. Sönmez also works as a critic, which allows him to travel regularly to festivals around the world. In the process he creates professional networks and watches films that will be included in his own festival’s programme.

Istanbul (Turkey), June 2010 Three months have passed since our encounter in Thessaloniki when I meet again Necati Sönmez and Martichka Bozhilova in Istanbul, at the third edition of Documentarist IDFF. At Akbank Sanat art centre in the Beyo÷lu cultural district, I attend a roundtable entitled Documentary Filmmakers in the Balkans. Speakers include Dimitri Eipides (director of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival in Greece), Martichka Bozhilova (director of the BDC in Bulgaria), Veton Nurkollari (director of Dokufest in Kosovo) and Rada Šešiü (programmer of the documentary section of Sarajevo International Film Festival, Bosnia-Herzegovina). Emel Çelebi, co-director of Documentarist, moderates the debate (see Fig. 14–2). Panel members have been invited by Necati Sönmez, co-director of the festival, who last March was himself a guest invited by the Thessaloniki festival. Now it is Thessaloniki’s director who has been invited by Sönmez, together with other professionals met on the festival circuit.

A Multi-sited Ethnograhy of Documentary Film Festivals in Europe

285

Fig. 14–2. “Documentary Filmmakers in the Balkans” roundtable during the 2010 Documentarist IDFF. From lef to right: filmmaker Julio Soto, Rada Šešiü, Martichka Bozhilova, Veton Nurkollari, Dimitri Eipides and Emel Çelebi. Photo: Aida Vallejo.

Although speakers in the roundtable highlight their diverse origins, many of them have a close relationship. After many years meeting at festivals and workshops, Šešiü and Bozhilova have became partners, and Šešiü participates in one of the first BDC activities, serving as a tutor for their workshop. In future years, they will join forces to expand BDC’s impact in the region, collaborating with, among others, Sarajevo IFF. In her talk, Šešiü mentions interesting sources for financing films and explains the successful performance of the recently created Croatian Audiovisual Centre, an example that local filmmakers in the audience take as a possible model to be implemented in Turkey. Šešiü, who is based in Utrecht, the Netherlands, visits Croatia regularly. She has lent me a DVD of her film Room with a View (1997), and as she has to leave soon, she suggests that I give it back to filmmaker Oliver Sertiü at our next festival stop: Dokufest Kosovo. Šešiü will be working at Sarajevo IFF, but she will meet her colleague afterwards in Croatia. The coming together of professionals follows a pattern of reciprocity, and the Documentarist directors Emel Çelebi and Necati Sönmez will be special guests at Veton Nurkollari’s festival in Kosovo, which takes place in two months.

286

Chapter 14

Prizren (Kosovo), August 2010 Following the advice of several professionals I have met on the festival circuit, I decide to visit Dokufest International Documentary and Short Film Festival. At this ninth edition, the festival organises for the first time a workshop devoted to the development of new documentary projects, organised in collaboration with the Balkan Documentary Centre (see Fig. 14–3). It’s Friday, 6 August, 2010. In the old Hamam of the city of Prizren the BDC Workshop celebrates its last stage. Led by Bulgarian Martichka Bozhilova, the workshop is modelled after similar Western European events: intensive gatherings throughout the year taking place in different countries, where they work on creative, production or distribution aspects of a film. As Bozhilova prepares herself for the next session, one of the participants points at her T-shirt, which reads “Looking for Funding”. Martichka smiles: “I bought it at Sundance.” It certainly seems very appropriate for today’s class, dedicated to funding, where she explains how to write proposals and budgets for films aiming at co-production.

Fig. 14–3. Balkan Documentary Center workshop participants gather during the 2010 edition of Dokufest Kosovo. Projects from different Balkan countries participate in the workshop, including Macedonia, Turkey or Bosnia-Herzegovina. Photo: Aida Vallejo.

A Multi-sited Ethnograhy of Documentary Film Festivals in Europe

287

Despite the numerous guests attending Dokufest, industry representatives are not present. Therefore, the pitching presentation at the BDC workshop is more a rehearsal than a real tool for funding. Filmmakers are nevertheless very well represented, especially those from former Yugoslavia. Every night they gather on crowded terraces in the old town, exchanging information about the latest changes on the festival circuit. Croatian Oliver Sertiü (to whom I return Rada Šešiü’s DVD) tells me that Zagrebdox’s director Nenad Puhovski has decided to change the main festival venue to a shopping mall, a controversial decision for local documentary professionals. Meanwhile, young festival visitors go in the opposite direction, towards the festival campsite. Artistic director of Dokufest Veton Nurkollari explains that he came up with the idea to create this site beside the river when he visited Jihlava, where they provide space in the schools’ gyms as cheap accommodation for young audiences.

Jihlava (Czech Republic), October 2011 Two years after my previous visit to Jihlava IDFF, I find myself in a meeting of festival representatives from several countries. Aware of the importance of international professional networking for the sustainability of the circuit, festival director Marek Hovorka has organised the second edition of his Film Festival Identity Workshop, with the aim of exchanging information among festival organisers. In a context of economic crisis that is steadily affecting funding models for cultural events worldwide, festival organisers talk about budgets and audience statistics, programming strategies, premiere policies and the communication possibilities opened up by new social media, including Facebook or YouTube. Among the panel members we find representatives from FIDMarseille (France) (which recently joined Doc Alliance), as well as other festival programmers and directors from Docaviv (Israel), Ann Arbor Film Festival (US), and Venice IFF. Some of them are “the usual suspects” of documentary film festivals in Europe. Jihlava’s workshop is a strategy for inviting key figures with whom the festival has built long-term collaborative relationships, which vary from informal relationships to legal partnerships. Sean Farnel (former Director of Programming of Hot Docs Documentary Film Festival in Canada) is a good example of the first, as he works freelance in several capacities (tutor, advisor, programmer, jury, etc.), collaborating with different events worldwide. On the other hand, official partnerships, such as the aforementioned Doc Alliance project

288

Chapter 14

presented in 2008, allow (or force) festival directors and programmers to come together and visit each other’s events regularly. Another tool used by festivals to maintain and nurture their international connections is the formation of juries. This year I have been invited to serve on the jury of the regional section “Between the Seas”, a selection of documentaries from Eastern and Central Europe. Juries themselves usually become a social cluster during the festival, and the festival guest services guide us through the projections. Sharing a whole week together not only serves to exchange opinions about films, but also to create or strengthen relationships among us. Other jury members include Necati Sönmez, whom I met in Istanbul, Italian producer Paolo Benzi, and the dean of the Czech Film Academy FAMU, Pavel Jech. While in Istanbul I didn’t have much time to talk to Necati (who was busy with the organisation of the festival) the participation as a jury offers a much more relaxed atmosphere to exchange information. Having assumed other roles in previous festivals, I realise that being part of a jury puts you in a more isolated situation than that of critics, filmmakers or the common audience, who can come together and freely comment on the films they have seen. While Necati and myself have a similar agenda, Benzi is busy participating in industry events and Jech has to work back in Prague and misses the first festival days. These dynamics are typical of festival operation, where the locals are those who find it more difficult to deepen their professional relationships due to their agendas which are not restricted to festival participation.

Amsterdam (Netherlands), November 2015 It’s Wednesday, 18 November 2015, and the Pathé Tuschinski theatre is hosting the opening ceremony of the 28th edition of IDFA. Director Ally Derks pays tribute to the victims of the recent Paris attacks and the French ambassador takes advantage of the stage to defend French government’s position, while promoting French documentaries in the programme. Considered by many professionals as the most important documentary festival in the world, anyone who is anyone in the documentary film world will be in Amsterdam this week. With 2,427 accredited professionals attending, the festival is, more than anything else, a necessary meeting point to update information and exchange knowledge. Many of the film festival directors or renowned producers from Europe started their international career here, such as Bulgarian Martichka Bozhilova, who I meet at the Docs for Sale documentary market, or Croatian Nenad

A Multi-sited Ethnograhy of Documentary Film Festivals in Europe

289

Puhovski, who participates in the EDN gathering, where many members of the audience behave in a familiar way, as they have known each other for years. Throughout the multiple festival activities, and mostly at those labelled as “industry sections” (including the pitching forum, the market, industry talks and parties) professionals make the most of their personal contacts, making deals and working on future projects. Given the importance of socialising, the festival is very active in promoting networking, including the “guests meet guests” meetings at Café de Jaren, the Filmmakers’ Breakfasts, sponsored parties and industry talks. The “guests meet guests” is one of the most successful, where a noisy crowd of accredited professionals get to know new people, and where I find many of the European festival directors and programmers that I have met in previous years. At the Filmmakers’ Breakfasts I meet filmmakers who have participated at several international co-production workshops, such as Slovak Diana Fabiánová, who participated in Jihlava’s East European Forum in 2007. She tells me about Andrea Prenghyová’s new initiative: DOK.Incubator workshop, in which she is participating with her new film project. During the Master and Talent industry talk, Victor Kossakovsky reflects on his participation in festivals through the years and how he met people such as Tue Steen Müller (present in the audience) who have become old friends. A filmmaker who owes his reputation to IDFA, Kossakovksy is also presenting his new film project at the international pitching forum and will receive a special mention for his last film Varicella.5 He is probably one of the filmmakers with which the festival has built the longest and most stable relationship. Discovered by IDFA in 1993 with The Belovs (which won the main competition award), Kossakovsky has subsequently been a regular attendee as filmmaker, tutor, jury member or speaker: a clear example of the importance of festival participation for the continuity of documentary careers. 6 Aware of the patterns that regulate international documentary production and distribution, it is not only filmmakers but also programmers, festival directors, producers and other industry players who organise their agendas to maintain the necessary social connections that sustain and nurture creative industries.

5

In the IDFA Kids & Docs Competition. In 1998 he received a special award for Pavel and Lyalya–A Jerusalem Romance, and in 2000 served as a member of the jury. 6

290

Chapter 14

Conclusions Understanding the festival ecosystem as a circuit (Elsaesser 2005; De Valck 2007) serves to better explain the dynamics of circulation of both films and professionals. Festival representatives and filmmakers travel from event to event in search of films for their own programmes or funders for new productions (see Vallejo 2015). This is even clearer in the documentary realm, where there is a cultural elite of “usual suspects” who have gathered together at these events for the last ten years. During the festival, they experience a brief but intensive encounter, creating a sense of community, with shared routines and rituals, in what Bazin compared to a “religious order” (1955). Despite the fact that personal social connections are key for the creation of creative and economic partnerships, as well as for the circulation of specialised knowledge (including which films have been made or are being developed), little attention has been paid to this key aspect of the development of creative industries. Since programmers and festival directors and funders travel from festival to festival in search of new projects, it is not surprising that those actors who participate in these social encounters increase the possibilities for their films to be exhibited at film festivals, and to have a subsequent commercial distribution (see Ambrós 2009). As María Paz Peirano rightfully points out in her study of Chilean filmmakers’ performance in the international festival circuit (2017), this is especially true for peripheral cinemas. Absence from these social encounters therefore negatively affects the circulation of these films, as well as the recognition of their authors. Professionals in the periphery have learnt the rules and important sites of passage, and IDFA is certainly a major one for documentary. Moreover, travelling the circuit also helps professionals identify programming trends and differentiated festival identities. Each festival presents different ways of understanding the documentary genre itself, thematic interests or geopolitical scope. Although cosmopolitan in essence, this elite of documentary professionals builds its relationships around different common grounds, whether linguistic closeness, geopolitical articulations or thematic concerns. Interestingly, although the national somehow loses relevance in this festival context, geopolitical identities, such as the Baltic states, the Balkans or former Yugoslavia, still appear as an effective tool to find a position on the international circuit. Participation in these social encounters is also subject to economic constraints, as they involve a significant investment of time and money. Festivals have different tools to moderate and/or influence which

A Multi-sited Ethnograhy of Documentary Film Festivals in Europe

291

participants they attract, including accreditation policies, invitation practices or collaborative initiatives. Accreditation serves not only as a source of income for (some) festivals, but also as an instrument to manipulate and social control delimiting who can meet who or promoting specific relationships (for example, critics and filmmakers, or producers and funders). In this regard, informal gatherings, such as parties, lunches or excursions, which require an invitation dependent on the types of festival accreditation, are paramount for the festival’s manipulation of social relationships. Invitation practices mainly affect jury members, pitching forum prospective funders, as well as tutors and speakers for workshops and seminars. Festivals tend to favour awarded filmmakers and festival representatives and big film funds and broadcasters representatives among their guests. Finally, collaborative initiatives such as Doc Alliance provide festivals with more official institutional frameworks to maintain their relationships, which also facilitates the funding of these gatherings. All this creates reciprocity dynamics in which festivals keep long-term relationships with both individuals and other events and institutions, nurturing a community of documentary professionals who depend on these relationships to successfully develop their work. Although competition is certainly one of the driving forces behind film festivals (through awards, premiere policies or international festival positioning), we see that cooperation is still a major driving force behind documentary film festival organisation. The social aspect of these events (and their active policies in promoting its development) highlights the importance of embodied experiences of interaction in the digital age. This chapter underlines the need to make these relationships the object of academic inquiry, and as proposed by recent studies devoted to film festivals (Lee 2016), advocates for ethnography and thick description as tools that help find coherence and establish connections in the fragmented reality that is the festival experience.

Works Cited Ambrós, Jordi. 2009. “Financiación y difusión: mercados y festivales de documental.” In Doc 21: Panorama del reciente cine documental en España, coordinated by Inmaculada Sánchez and Marta Díaz. Gerona: Luces de Gálibo. Bazin, André. [1955] 2009. “The Festival Viewed as a Religious Order.” In Dekalog 3: On Film Festivals, edited by Richard Porton, 13–19. London: Wallflower. Dayan Daniel. 2000. “Looking for Sundance: The Social Construction of a

292

Chapter 14

Film Festival.” In Moving Images, Culture and the Mind, edited by Ib Bondebjerg, 43–52. Luton: University of Luton Press. De Valck, Marijke. 2007. Film Festivals: From European Geopolitics to Global Cinephilia. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Elsaesser, Thomas. 2005. European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. Hannerz, Ulf. 1996. Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places. London: Routledge. Iordanova, Dina. 2009. “The Film Festival Circuit.” In Film Festival Yearbook 1: The Festival Circuit, edited by Dina Iordanova with Ragan Rhyne, 23–39. St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies. —. 2014. “Circuits of Global Film Culture: Festivals and Stakeholders” (keynote). Film Festival Cartographies Symposium. University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in collaboration with Ozu Film Festival (Modena, 20 November 2014). Lee, Toby. 2016. “Being There, Taking Place: Ethnography at the Film Festival.” In Film Festivals: History, Theory, Method, Practice, edited by Marijke de Valck, Brendan Kredell, and Skadi Loist, 122–137. Abingdon: Routledge. Marcus, George E. 1995. “Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography.” Annual Review of Anthropology 24:95–117. Mauss, Marcel. 1923. “Essai sur le don forme et raison de l’échange dans les sociétés archaïques.” L’Année sociologique (1896/1897-1924/1925) 1:30–186. Peirano, María Paz. 2017. “Film Mobilities: Circulation Practices, Local Policies, and the Construction of a ‘Newest Chilean Cinema’ in transnational Settings.” In Envisioning Networked Urban Mobilities: Mobility in the Arts. Towards a Dialogue between Art Studies, Cultural Policy, and Mobilities Research, edited by Aslak Kjaerulff, Sven Kesselring, Peter Peters, and Kevin Hannam. New York: Routledge. In press. Vallejo, Aida. 2014. “Industry Sections. Documentary Film Festivals between Production and Distribution.” Iluminace. Journal of Film Theory, History, and Aesthetics 26(1):65–82. —. 2015. “Documentary Filmmakers on the Circuit. A Festival Career from Czech Dream to Czech Peace.” In Post-1990 Documentary. Reconfiguring Independence, edited by Camille Deprez, and Judith Pernin, 171–187. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

CHAPTER 15 A COMMUNITY AT THE MARGINS: AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF CHINESE INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVALS FLORA LICHAA

As part of my PhD project on Chinese independent documentary film, I was led to participate in independent film festivals, which were the only platforms for watching independent films and meeting the directors and the main stakeholders involved in film production, diffusion and criticism. At the first festival I attended, I participated in screenings and forums where filmmakers discussed their practices and interacted with the audience. Some even brought an early cut of their film to listen to the audience’s feedback before editing a final version. It dawned on me that these ephemeral gatherings played a major role for indie filmmakers, allowing them to share their experiences and evaluate their work. I therefore decided to conduct an ethnographic field study from 2009 to 2013 (which included interviews, participant observation, the collection of films and written documents produced by this community), and to incorporate this study into my dissertation. In this paper, I intend to describe the organisational features of these small-scale events, and show how common difficulties caused by the Chinese authoritarian regime contributed to gather the main actors together in a community taking shape at the festivals.

Creation and Characteristics of the Independent Film Festival Sphere A few clarifications should be made on what we define as “independence” with regards to films and festivals. The 1990s saw the appearance of “independent cinema” (duli dianying) in mainland China, categorising films made outside the film and television industry governed

294

Chapter 15

by criteria of state censorship and business requirements favouring a culture of entertainment. This definition is no longer valid, as some of these films have since been granted the approval of the Film Bureau1 and can thus be officially distributed. Besides, the borders between “governmental” (guanfang) and “non-governmental” or “independent” (minjian or duli) have become blurred with the development of private film production houses outside state-owned studios and television channels since the 2000s. Yet independent filmmakers still use the concept as a self-identification, to qualify films made individually, self-financed or supported by domestic or foreign foundations and private companies. Initially, the existence of these films was limited to tapes circulating from hand to hand and screenings at foreign festivals. At the beginning of the 2000s public screenings of Chinese indie films were held in film clubs that blossomed in China’s major cities. The most influential of them, the Practice Society, was launched by students from the Beijing Film Academy (BFA) who wished to promote an alternative film culture, stimulated by the unprecedented diversity of foreign films accessible in their country on VCD and DVD. In 2001 the collaboration of several film clubs led by the Practice Society gave birth to the first independent film festival: the First Unrestricted New Image Film Festival (Zhang 2007, 3640). The event, which took place at the BFA, was shut down by the police a few days after the opening because it was not registered with the relevant authority, but the films selected were able to travel during the following months to Shenyang, Xi’an, Hangzhou and other cities. This inspired the participants to create non-profit organisations dedicated to the setting up of independent film festivals. These festivals were built up over the years, but the first editions were often reduced to the bare minimum: no website, catalogue or fixed screening locations. To sustain their events and attract the interest of film lovers, filmmakers, programmers and critics, the organisers tried to progressively extend their team, improve their organisational methods, and find regular screening venues and stable sources of funding. Festivals that displayed a commitment to keeping abreast of the latest independent film productions eventually became accepted as major events. Others faded 1

The Film Bureau is part of the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT). One of its main functions is to issue permission visas for film shoots, diffusion and export. The films that fail to get the visa or do not apply for it cannot be shown on Chinese television or in commercial cinemas. In the Chinese territory, they can only circulate in independent film festivals. Some of these films received the approval from the Film Bureau a few years later, after having circulated in foreign film festivals.

An Ethnography of Chinese Independent Film Festivals

295

shortly after they were born, sometimes to be reborn in another place and form or disappear completely. About thirty independent film festivals are now identified in mainland China, of which the principal ones are listed below: Table 15-1. The main Independent Film Festivals in mainland China English name Beijing Independent Film Festival Beijing Queer Film Festival China Documentary Film Festival China Independent Film Festival

Abbre. BIFF

Year 2006

BQFF

2001

CDFF

2004

CIFF

2004

Chongqing Independent Film and Video Film Festival Crossing Festival May Festival Yunnan Multiculture Visual Festival

CIFVF

2007

Yunfest

2005 2006 2003

Key persons Zhu Rikun Li Xianting Cui Zi’en Yang Yang Zhu Rikun Li Xianting Cao Kai Zhang Yaxuan Zhang Xianmin Ying Liang

Location Songzhuang

Wu Wenguang Wu Wenguang Guo Jing He Yuan Yi Sicheng

Beijing Beijing Kunming

Beijing Songzhuang Songzhuang Nanjing

Chongqing

These festivals consist of screenings, forums and sometimes workshops, held over a period of between five and ten days, throughout the day and sometimes lasting late into the night, in different venues: universities, libraries, galleries or art museums, commercial or noncommercial private film theatres. Screenings are often followed by Q&A sessions in the presence of the directors, while specific issues are discussed more formally in forums. Some organisers have also created additional programmes, such as the CIFVF’s Work in Progress, inspired by the pitch competition panels such as the Jeonju Digital Project of Jeonju International Film Festival (JIFF) (CIFVF 2011, 132), where Ying Liang came to present his feature film The Other Half (♵₏◙/Ling yi ban, 2006) in 2007, or the Creative Co-Funding of Indie Films held at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, where Ying Liang was present for the screening of his short film Condolences (㏿桽/Wei wen, 2009) in 2010. The Work in Progress programme differs slightly from the pitch competition panels mentioned above, as it targets the audience instead of

296

Chapter 15

the producers: it aims to give the opportunity to several Chinese indie filmmakers chosen by the selection committee to showcase their ongoing projects to an audience which can contribute to the financing of their favourites (CIFVF 2011, 132). Furthermore, most festivals have created modest prizes to reward the films selected by the audience or by a jury appointed by the organisers. In the evening, participants can meet over a drink in a café or in the organisation’s premises.

Little Networks around Key Persons Each festival is headed by one or several key person(s) who founded the event or arrived soon after its creation, all of whom are related to the indie film realm in different ways. Zhu Rikun is a close friend of several independent filmmakers, and his associate Li Xianting is a contemporary art critic and curator. Both willing to support indie films, they started to run China Documentary FF and Beijing Independent FF after being introduced by the independent filmmaker Wang Bing, who is known for his documentary West of the Tracks (材導◉Tie xi qu, 2003). Cui Zi’en is an important spokesman of the LGBT community who also makes films. He founded the BQFF with Yang Yang, who was at the time holding film screenings at Beijing University, where she was studying. Cao Kai, video artist and curator living in Nanjing, was seeking help to select indie films and hold screenings. So began his collaboration with Zhang Yaxuan, a film critic who participated regularly in the screenings held by the Practice Society. She ended their collaboration after two years for personal reasons, and was replaced by Zhang Xianmin, a professor at Beijing Film Academy and film critic originally from Nanjing, who was often invited to present screenings during the time of the Practice Society. Ying Liang and Wu Wenguang are both independent filmmakers. Yi Sicheng and He Yuan were studying at Kunming University, where they organised a film club. They were in contact with Guo Jing, a researcher in Visual Anthropology, who wanted to show the ethnographic film projects his research centre was carrying out.2 Guo Jing, He Yuan and some others thus started the festival, 2 The Yunfest festival is configured in two separate sections. The first section, organised by He Yuan and Yi Sicheng, includes Chinese independent documentaries, and is usually held at the Yunnan Provincial Library. The second section, organised by Guo Jing, takes place at Kunming University. The programme focuses on Visual Anthropology projects conducted by social organisations or institutional research centres (including the centre of which Guo Jing is a member). Although Visual Anthropology is underdeveloped in China,

An Ethnography of Chinese Independent Film Festivals

297

and Yi Sicheng came back after several years of study in Germany and joined them for the third edition. These key figures play a decisive role in deciding the main artistic and organisational orientations concerning the festivals. Firstly, the events are often located in their places of origin and/or residence: Chongqing is the hometown of Ying Liang’s girlfriend; Guo Jing, Yi Sicheng and He Yuan are from Yunnan province; Zhu Rikun completed his studies at Beijing University and then retreated to Songzhuang (an artists’ village situated an hour’s drive from the capital which is subject to strict supervision by the authorities), to cite but a few examples. Secondly, the financial resources and screening venues are reliant on personal networks which have been established in their places of origin/residence/work. For instance, BIFF and CDFF were held initially in the private film theatre of the Fanhall Studio, a company created by Zhu Rikun, and in Songzhuang Art Museum, where Li Xianting was the director. Both events were financed by Chinese artists thanks to the involvement of Li Xianting, who created an eponymous foundation to raise funding. The first edition of Yunfest took place in Yunnan Provincial Museum, of which Guo Jing was the curator. The case of Beijing Queer FF is somewhat different because they change venues for each edition as if they were waging “guerrilla warfare” against the government, to use their own words (Yang 2012). The first edition was held at Beijing University, and the third in Songzhuang (Cornell 2011) thanks to the help of Zhu Rikun, whom Yang Yang met when they were both studying at Beijing University. Thirdly, the editorial choices are decided according to their different understanding of independence. Zhu Rikun was willing to support creation by providing a space for regular exchanges for indie filmmakers. He refused to practice self-censorship, and defends radical film programmes, including experimental shorts or politically sensitive documentaries. In a completely different way, Wu Wenguang advocates the writing of an unofficial history through documentary filmmaking. His latest project, the Folk Memory Project, focuses on the stories of old peasants who suffered during the Great Famine (1959-1962). The organisation he developed aims at training beginner filmmakers, providing advice, equipment, accommodation and a monthly income. During the May Festival and the Crossing Festival, foreign filmmakers are often invited to participate in workshops, during which they comment on the works in progress. In a Kunming University is particularly active in this area, due to the large number of ethnic minorities living in the province. The projects presented during the festival are not limited, however, to the Yunnan province.

298

Chapter 15

final example, Ying Liang expressed the desire to create links with local residents in order to develop their interest in alternative forms of films and raise public awareness of the characteristics of this region. With this in mind, the 2010 CIFVF included a selection of films on the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, and a debate in the presence of a psychologist who volunteered to help the victims.

Fig. 15–1. Q&A at the 9th edition of the Beijing Independent Film Festival (2012). The picture shows a Q&A after a film screening that took place in the Li Xianting foundation’s offices in Songzhuang (an artist village close to Beijing), which have been converted into a private screening venue. Wang Hongwei, one of the organisers of BIFF, who is on the right with his back to the camera, is asking questions to the Chinese independent director who is standing next to him. We can see here the difficulties faced by Chinese independent film festivals to organise their events in publicly accessible places, as the Chinese government tries to maintain tight control over the public sphere. Photo: Shelly Kraicer ©.

In summary, the festivals draw strength from the strong commitment of their founder-organisers, whose importance is also a source of weakness, putting the whole event at risk if they can no longer perform their duties. Ying Liang, for example, was forbidden residence in Chinese territory following the screening of his feature film When Night Falls (㒠执㦘幬尐 広Wo hai you hua yao shuo, 2012) at Jeonju IFF. The film is based on the true story of a man who shot six police officers after being assaulted by security forces in Shanghai. Ying Liang now lives in Hong Kong, and the

An Ethnography of Chinese Independent Film Festivals

299

organising team is struggling to keep the festival going without him. Zhu Rikun voluntarily withdrew, weary of assuming the delicate position of interlocutor between the organising team, the filmmakers and the government. His departure put the continuation of the event in jeopardy, and finally led to a restructuring of the team. Their absence, whether forced or voluntary, made the festivals even more vulnerable, but most of them were able to continue after a period of indecision. Chinese independent film festivals thus rely on the personal resources and networks of key persons who can change during the life of the event. The characteristics described above show that Chinese and western small-scale film festivals are relatively similar. The main difference lies in the Chinese authoritarian regime, which exerts more or less influence on the configuration of events. It is noteworthy that this influence grew during my field study: the 2009-2013 period corresponds to a tightening of Chinese government control over independent festivals. Extended contact with the independent film sphere allowed me to observe the increasing marginalisation of this community, which resulted in a gradual retreat towards private spaces, often located on the outskirts of big cities. I also noticed a change in atmosphere during the festivals: participants paid more attention to the difficulties associated with the political situation than to issues related to films. These observations do not claim to understand the motivations and strategies of the Chinese government, but highlight how festivals have built a strong network to deal with the situation. The next section aims at presenting the result of my observations.

What it Means to be “Independent”: Festivals as Places of Community and Belonging Despite the differences between festivals, the organisers share a sense of belonging to a single entity which was gradually built around a network of people involved in the activities to varying degrees, coming into contact more or less regularly, particularly during the festivals that punctuate the year. There, the invited filmmakers meet a regular group of researchers, programmers, students and people from the world of media. In addition, the small number of independent films produced each year (about one hundred, of which fewer than fifty stand by their quality) does not allow a sufficient renewal of programming among the different events. As a consequence, the different festivals present very similar film programmes and invite the same filmmakers to attend the Q&As. This suggests that a core group of people, who know each other well, is present at the different festivals. The excitement generated by these regular community gatherings

300

Chapter 15

transforms the screening venues into informal “think tanks” where technical, aesthetic and ethical issues are discussed. A controversy raised during a festival continues in papers posted on the Internet or in conversations relayed on microblogs (such as Sina Weibo), then becomes the main theme of the forum during the next festival, and so on. Recurrent discussions reveal the widely agreed issues, as well as the contradictions and areas of tension. It is noteworthy that the points of agreement and disagreement sometimes overlap. For example, everyone agrees that independent documentaries must respect ethical standards in order to differentiate themselves from mainstream productions. However, the nature of the ethical standards and their implementation can give rise to debates. The definition of “independent cinema”, which has not been set by any manifesto, slowly takes shape through these successive interactions. Hence, the events do not evolve in isolation from each other, and it is not uncommon that difficulties lead to mutual support between festivals. For instance, in 2011 a group of filmmakers along with Zhang Xianmin held a sale of their films on DVD and other creations such as drawings and photographs to address the lack of financial resources of the Chongqing festival (CIFVF). This network is not structured, since no association brings together lovers of independent cinema. This is a spontaneous grouping whose size and configuration depend on the individual circles of each member. In case of threat of cancellation by the authorities, the organisers only communicate the venues and dates of the event to trustworthy persons, that is to say, the invited filmmakers and regular audience members. This reflects the implicit trust between members of the group: we share common values, and it is unthinkable that any of us would compromise the upcoming festival. These shared values actually refer to a shared “target” that is none other than the government and all its emanations. To clarify this point, we have to return to the time when the Practice Society was unable to obtain authorisation from the Beijing Bureau of Culture, as some of the films that were to be screened did not fit the rules of state censorship. Subsequently, independent film festivals failed to register with the administration or did not even try, and now operate illegally. We therefore note that the political situation plays a key role in the construction of this community, which had no other choice but to grow in the shadow of the mainstream trend imposed by the government. This explains why many filmmakers, film critics and members of the audience are very critical of the Chinese party-state’s policy. The members of this independent community identify the target for criticism as the limitations imposed, which are mainly political and

An Ethnography of Chinese Independent Film Festivals

301

financial. First, the name of the festival cannot bear the Chinese word dianyingjie (festival), which implies that the event has to be registered with the administration (Berry 2010). For this reason, the organisers use alternatives like yingzhan (film exhibition) or jiaoliu zhou (exchange week). Moreover, some festivals prefer to mention the word minjian (popular, non-governmental) rather than duli (independent), which seems too radical and can thus draw the government’s attention. Festivals also face many political restrictions, such as the difficulty of screening films that are deemed too “sensitive”, especially when the film relates events that took place near the location of the festival. One can cite the example of Wang Yunlong and Han Yi’s documentary To Justify Bu Qinfu (执◫䛃 䓅 ⅴ 初 ⃌ Huan Bu Qinfu yi meili, 2011). The film relates Wang Yunlong’s investigation into the death of one of his former comrades in arms during the Cultural Revolution. The director argues that she was killed by the Chinese Communist Party for expressing her political opinions. The film was screened at the 2011 China Independent FF in Nanjing. During an informal discussion I had with Cao Kai (one of the organisers of the CIFF) during the festival, he pointed out that the film is politically sensitive because it deals with the period of the Cultural Revolution. It was programmed in Nanjing because the city is far enough away from the Yunnan province in which the reported events occurred. But he added that it would certainly not have been screened at the Yunfest festival, which is held in the capital of Yunnan province. Conversely, the CIFF cannot show Hu Jie’s documentaries on the Cultural Revolution, since the independent filmmaker lives in Nanjing. Moreover, government pressures related to the film selection can lead to the cancellation of screenings or of the entire festival. To give an example, Zhu Rikun was forced to cancel the screening of Karamay (⏚㕘 䘪∬Kelamayi, Xu Xing, 2010), initially programmed for the 2010 China Documentary FF, following threats from the Chinese authorities. In this documentary, Xu Xin shows the testimony of parents who lost children in a fire in a community hall in 1994, and who blame the local officials for the accident. In other cases, the Chinese authorities forced some festivals to organise editions in a reduced configuration. In 2009, the organisers held a small edition of the Yunfest in Dali, a city located at 250 km from Kunming. In 2012 and 2013 Beijing Independent FF’s opening ceremony was interrupted by the authorities, and the screenings were then held in Li Xianting Foundation’s premises, instead of in Songzhuang Art Museum and in Fanhall Studio’s private cinema. Some festivals, such as the 2013

302

Chapter 15

Yunfest and the 2014 BIFF, were also entirely cancelled. In general, the authorities send threats to the organisers prior to the festival, and then come to the opening ceremony, cut the electricity and disperse the participants. But recently, their response seems to have hardened, as shown by the last edition of BIFF, which was to be held in August 2014: it was shut down by the police, who confiscated all the equipment including hard drives. Political limitations also cause financial problems, the difficulty of finding a venue with good screening conditions and organising a festival with a small team of volunteers, plus difficulties in raising enough money within non-profit organisations, partly because of the inability to sell admission tickets without the permission of the Film Bureau, and so on. These difficulties are often seen as obstacles to the proper implementation of festivals, the form being influenced in different ways. The choice of location can be affected, sometimes forcing the organisers to retreat to the geographic margins, particularly in the outlying areas of Beijing, or to find new venues every year. The choice of programming can also be affected, leading some programmers to practice self-censorship, or deliberately select films they consider too sensitive, to assert their noncompliance with censorship. Zhu Rikun is the programmer who best illustrates the refusal to comply with the rules of state censorship. He selected films that he knew were politically sensitive. This was the case for Wang Wo’s documentary Zheteng (㔧名, 2010 , programmed at the 2010 China Documentary FF. The film is a montage of excerpts of television and Internet news. As the director states in the festival’s catalogue, the film aims at questioning the degree of accuracy of information circulating on the official diffusion channels: “The intention of this movie is merely to use lies to speak a word of truth.” By screening this film, Zhu Rikun wanted to express his support to the filmmaker.

Conclusions These constraints thus define the range of possibilities for the organisers and independent filmmakers, who have no choice but to reach an understanding, and support each other in order to create a cohesive network maintained by the determination of strong personalities. In this respect, the festivals represent benchmarks that give shape and direction to this independent film community, delineating a space of their own which is, however, pushed to the margins of society. Even if most of the filmmakers evolve in this confined space disconnected from the international circuit, Chinese independent festivals

An Ethnography of Chinese Independent Film Festivals

303

are not completely closed in on themselves: foreign researchers and programmers regularly attend screenings, and some Chinese directors are sometimes invited to foreign universities and festivals to present their work. These foreign points of reference do not have the power to change the conditions of filmmaking and distribution in China, but they provide valuable support to these filmmakers, and allow them to take some distance from their living and working environment. I thus argue that Chinese independent film festivals hold two essential functions for indie filmmakers: the possibility of identifying themselves with a domestic community united over common difficulties, and the possibility of showing their films and getting in contact with foreign intermediaries who may allow some of them to get out of their isolation.

Works Cited Berry, Chris. 2010. “When is a film festival not a festival?: The 6th China Independent Film Festival.” Senses of Cinema. Accessed May 17, 2010. http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2009/festival-reports/when-is-a-filmfestival-not-a-festival-the-6th-china-independent-film-festival/. CIFVF. 2011. Chongqing Independent Film & Video Festival 2011, catalogue. Chongqing: CIFVF. Cornell, Christen. 2011. “The 5th Beijing Queer Film Festival, interview with Yang Yang.” Artspace China. Accessed August 22, 2014. http://blogs.usyd.edu.au/artspacechina/2011/06/the_5th_beijing_queer _film_fes.html. Yang, Yang. 2012. Our Story: the 10 Years “Guerrilla Warfare” of Beijing Queer Film Festival. Beijing: Beijing Queer Film Festival organisation committee. DVD. Zhang, Zhen. 2007. “Introduction: Bearing Witness. Chinese Urban Cinema in the Era of ‘Transformation’.” In The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century, edited by Zhen Zhang, 36–40. Durham: Duke University Press.  Interviews Lichaa, Flora. 2011. Interview with Guo Jing. Kunming. Lichaa, Flora. 2012. Interview with Yang Haijun (Yangzi). Beijing. Lichaa, Flora. 2012. Interview with Yang Yang. Beijing. Lichaa, Flora. 2011. Interview with Yi Sicheng. Kunming. Lichaa, Flora. 2011. Interview with Ying Liang. Songzhuang. Lichaa, Flora. 2009. Interview with Zhang Xianmin. Beijing.

304

Chapter 15

Lichaa, Flora. 2012. Interview with Zhang Xianmin. Beijing. Lichaa, Flora. 2012. Interview with Zhang Yaxuan. Beijing. Lichaa, Flora. 2009. Interview with Zhu Rikun. Songzhuang. Lichaa, Flora. 2011. Interview with Zhu Rikun. Email.



CHAPTER 16 PROGRAMMER AS FESTIVAL SPOKESPERSON: INFORMATION MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES AT THE TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL SED MITCHELL

The Toronto International Film Festival is an eleven-day event marked with glamour, prestige and excitement. For aspiring and established filmmakers, it is a time of frenzied activity that can make or break a career. For the cinephile, it is an annual high point of cinematic experience and ecstasy. And while a select few within each of these groups can make careers of festival-hopping so that the party never ends, for the vast majority, this festival is a temporary escape from the norm, a brief moment in which the every-day is replaced by the extraordinary. However, for the festival employee, the festival is not extracurricular; it is the cumulative event of a year’s worth of labour, part of the ongoing work of organised professionals, and the effort of volunteered time. It is no more out-of-theordinary than final exams are for the student or ribbon-cuttings are for the construction worker. The pressure is on for a time, but at the end of the week, it is business as usual. In this sense, the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and other film festivals are not just annual events but everyday activities for the staff, programmers, volunteers, and other individuals who make up the organising body of the festival. Ethnography, as a means for identifying the particular and situated experiences of groups of people, can provide a unique and useful perspective to understanding film festivals and those who make them happen. Organisational studies scholars Charles-Clemens Rüling and Jesper Strandgaard Pedersen note there has not been as much attention to the organisational structure of film festivals and the individuals that comprise these structures (2010). They add,

306

Chapter 16 Additional domains of inquiry which we would like to suggest here concern the management of human resources and organisational knowledge within and across festival organisations. Festival organisations are often characterized by fluctuating membership, temporary collaboration and high turnover. Dealing with high turnover, and sustaining the experience, knowledge and identity of festival collaborators is a fundamental issue. In addition, the tension or simply the differences between multiple categories of collaborators–permanent, fixed term contractual employees, volunteers–need to be carefully managed, and knowledge flow as well as preservation need to be secured (Rüling and Strandgaard Pedersen 2010, 320–321).

This is what I have attempted in my work with the Toronto International Film Festival, focusing on the flow of information within and beyond the organising body of the festival. Festival scholarship has noted the importance of film festivals as structured institutions for the management and circulation of information about film theories and practices (Stringer 2003; De Valck 2007). An ethnographic approach repositions the primacy of the “human resources” (Rüling and Strandgaard Pedersen 2010, 321) within these institutional structures. It centers on the people of the organisation as they engage in embodied acts with personal objectives while meeting the overarching goals of the organisation. Through participatory fieldwork and a methodical analysis of “the written festival” (Dayan 2000), my work takes a closer look at the specific ways individuals achieve this task. In this chapter, I will briefly describe my work with TIFF and the significance of “film information” within the festival setting then discuss the role and activities of the festival spokesperson as a particular kind of manager of information at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Theoretical Background and Methodology The flow of information through and within film festivals has been observed by film festival scholars. For instance, early in his analysis, Julian Stringer describes, “regardless of when and where an individual event is held, and in spite of its specific cultural obligations, policies, or aims and objectives, festivals promote information and knowledge concerning the medium of film itself” (2003, 23, emphasis added). Marijke de Valck adds that “local information” can be translated into “global discourse” where “for the professional crowd, this festival is but one stop amongst the many that, together, constitute their global work environment” (2007, 80). While these scholars and many others discuss the significance of film information in general terms or as symbolic discourse, my interest

Information Management Strategies at the Toronto IFF

307

is in the practical conveyance of details, knowledge, and other raw data necessary for the business of film and film festivals to function. In his analysis of film festival operations, Alex Fischer defines his topic as “an overarching concept intended to represent those steps that are essential to facilitate a film festival but does not seek to indicate the day to day tasks that form part of these actions” (2013, xii); I take the reverse approach. I hope to ground the abstract aspects of film festival theory by focusing on the material and enacted activities of the film festival, eschewing the big picture for the “minor details such as phone calls, emails or other means of communication that are the more personal tools of this social connectedness” (2013, xii). Or to paraphrase Roger Ebert’s oft quoted philosophy of film criticism, “it’s not what it is about, it’s how it is about it” (1997). My interest in TIFF began seven years ago when I first attended the festival in order to study the way the festival promoted Canadian film production and exhibition. In that first year, I was struck by the way festival programmers seemed to take a personal interest in the promotion of particular films and filmmakers, their interaction with film professionals and general audiences, and the varied tasks they undertook on behalf of the festival from writing program book descriptions to tweeting messages to fans. While connected, each of these activities seemed distinct from the curatorial decision-making I assumed was the primary objective of festival programmers. Over the years, I continued to attend TIFF first as a general attendee to a variety of public screenings and events, then with the lowest level of industry accreditation, to “press-and-industry” (PNI) screenings and industry spaces and programs. The two experiences were quite different yielding a lot of data, including the slow unveiling of the festival structure and objectives. I was particularly intrigued by the way these elements created controlled divisions between industry and audiences, managing the way the groups interacted with one another. This extended to regulated access to festival information (e.g. the kinds of production details discussed in designated film industry spaces versus general audience spaces were very different). Furthermore, in the past few years, I took on a more participatory role as camera-operator for TIFF’s Midnight Madness blog videography. The Midnight Madness program at TIFF showcases new horror, action, comedy and other genre films for an enthusiastic audience each night of the film festival. Many of these screenings are world premieres with the film’s actors, directors and producers in attendance. Through this position, I was able to get a closer look at the workings of the red carpet and the interaction between smiling movie stars, the fans who love them and the media representatives who stand in between. This provided a unique insight into

308

Chapter 16

the way TIFF promotes films and the relationship between the organisation and the media.

Fig. 16–1. Midnight Madness programmer, Colin Geddes, at the 2012 Toronto IFF. Geddes rouses the crowd before a late night screening. Photo: courtesy of Ian Goring.

Throughout this time, I was getting to know TIFF employees, gaining unique and personal insight into the TIFF organisation. I was able to conduct both informal and formal interviews asking about their work with TIFF–when they first attended the festival, how they’ve been professionally involved with the event and organisation, and what their general impressions were. I have found that, with few exceptions, there has been very little analytical attention given to the “hidden” members of festival operation–the film handlers who make sure the right film gets to the right venue, the film revisionists and projectionists responsible for smooth exhibition experiences, the press office, communication, marketing and public relations departments that play such vital roles in the crafting of festival image and management of internal and external information. For Toronto and other large-scale festivals, these may be year-round occupations requiring skills and specific knowledge, deserving of attention, not just in the publicized moments when things go wrong but because it requires these essential people to make things go right. Instead, most literature–including academic–focuses on specific festival representatives: festival directors, programmers, art directors,

Information Management Strategies at the Toronto IFF

309

communication directors and a few other departmental heads when the occasion calls for spotlighting particular aspects of the festival and organisation. I’ll admit here that this essay will do much the same; however, I will move beyond their public persona and use the festival spokespersons concept as entré to the underlying structure of the festival and better understand their position within the flow of information within and beyond the festival organisation. I have found that the promotion of organisational spokespersons is an information management strategy for the festival. These individuals draw the attention at both the event and in the reporting to better manage the flow of information in two distinct ways: first, as the public and unified voice of an ever-growing organisational body, and second, as the mediator of information between varied stakeholders for whom particular kinds of information prove valuable. To illustrate, I provide two examples from my experience working with TIFF programmer Colin Geddes, the Midnight Madness program, and the Midnight Madness Blog.

Programmers and Information Management at TIFF TIFF employs hundreds of full and part-time staff members who are helped by dozens of annually contracted professionals and thousands of volunteers. As festivals have grown in size and objective, festival structures have required the retention of larger personnel. For my PhD thesis, I have mapped the growth, changing structure, and interconnectivity of the TIFF structure (Mitchell, forthcoming). I argue that this has happened in response to the broadening objectives of TIFF as well as in response to the many stakeholders who work with TIFF to meet their own purposes. Building on what Ruby Cheung identifies as the “corporatization” process of film festivals (2009) and the organisational management noted by Rüling and Pedersen (2010), I argue that the growth and departmentalization of TIFF and similar festivals is largely in response to increased need for information management. For example, in addition to changes in cinematic trends (De Valck 2012), changing technologies have had a major impact on the programming process and require new organisational practices. Filmmaking technologies over the forty years of TIFF’s existence have made film production from independent and global filmmakers much easier to produce and access creating an influx of films to festivals from sources who have not worked through established communication and distribution systems i.e. national film institutes and film studios. In addition, the speed and proliferation of communication technologies have created a larger audience, both attending the festival and watching festival

310

Chapter 16

activity from a distance. There is an organisational responsibility to consider the interests of the film industry, accredited press, unaffiliated fans, and other publics whether present or observing through mediated platforms. This is related to the critical and political role of “gatekeeping” within curation practices (Quandt 2009; Bosma 2015), but here I am more focused on the pragmatics of the programming process: how they manage the increase in scale, not why they choose one film over another. In response, programmers at TIFF, in their role as “specialized intermediary” between film makers and film audiences must sort through more films and appeal to larger audiences (Stringer 2003; see Fig. 16–2).

Fig. 16–2. Diagram: Toronto IFF as an intermediary between filmmakers and audiences. Drawing on the work of Howard S. Becker and Michael Baxandall who discuss the social relationship between "Makers of Art", "Exhibitors of Art", and "Viewers of Art", Julian Stringer describes film festivals as "specialized intermediaries" between filmmakers and film audiences (2003).

Connecting Filmmakers to Audiences Through my experience working on the Midnight Madness blog, I have found that in order to manage this task, programmers rely on a team of people both within the TIFF organisation and without to aid the programming process. The programmer’s main obligations are bringing a film to its intended audience and in turn, bringing an audience to a film that will appreciate it. In practice, Geddes and other programmers are responsible for the many smaller tasks that go along with choosing films such as sorting submissions, seeking out films from notable filmmakers, providing acceptance and rejection notifications, negotiating the schedule of the films during the festival, inviting guests, and many other activities leading up to the point that the Midnight Madness program is officially “locked”, “closed,” or “set.” Then, Geddes and other programmers must

Information Management Strategies at the Toronto IFF

311

move to the second set of tasks. If the first set of tasks is deciding which films he will screen (i.e. bringing the films to the audience), then the second set is deciding how best to get them seen (i.e. bringing an audience to the films). This set of tasks includes writing about the films for the program book and other festival literature, touching base with people who are regular attendees of the Midnight Madness program, finding and reaching out to new and target audiences, garnering interest in press outlets and industry representatives, and potentially planning additional spectacles for the screening event that may draw further attention to the film and to the program itself. In order to accomplish these many tasks, Geddes relies on the help of particular TIFF employees, volunteers, as well as unaffiliated personal contacts. In the figure below, I plot the groups and individuals who help him along the way (Fig. 16–3).

Fig. 16–3. Diagram: Toronto IFF Organisation and staff management. TIFF Programmers rely on the collaboration of staff, colleagues, volunteers, and contacts to accomplish all the tasks involved in programming for the festival. Here, I plot some individuals and groups who help with the selection ("Filters") and promotion ("Amplifiers") in the programming process.

On the left side of the figure are the groups and individuals I identify as “Filters”, the people who help Geddes sift through the many potential films produced each year to find the ones best suited for the intended audience. The two main sources of films are the official submission process through the independent online service, WITHOUTABOX, and the direct solicitation of films from filmmakers and producers. The official submission process ends by late May so that TIFF programmers can turn to the full-time screening, selection and preparation processes. While programmers will do the heavy lifting, this becomes a truly collaborative process with support coming from all parts of the TIFF organisation as

312

Chapter 16

well as the input of non-staff: friends, colleagues from other professional activities, programmers of other festivals/events/venues, and even amateur aficionados. I note the Festival Programming department in the figure because they provide the main administrative support as films are selected and readied for screening. Coordinators and associates may screen, write reports and recommendations, assist with gathering pertinent information on selected films and guests, correspond with guests, identify and work with marketing to reach target audiences and facilitate guest and programmer activities. However, staff members from all parts of the TIFF organisation may contribute. For instance, the Film Reference Library located on the fourth floor of TIFF Bell Lightbox is generally open to the public but from June through August the doors are closed without an appointment so that staff and resources can aid the programmers who move-in to the adjacent spaces and prepare a variety of texts and other information pertaining to their chosen films. The period from the moment the films are announced to the last day of the festival marks the busiest of the year for most TIFF staff members as they focus on gathering and organising all relevant information about festival programming, guests, and potential audiences. In addition, in order to complete their varied tasks, programmers rely on the help of non-staff friends and family to prepare for the festival. For instance, as the Guests Services department prepares for the influx of filmmakers, celebrities, and other invited attendees by securing transportation and accommodation services throughout the city of Toronto, Colin Geddes, his close friends, and family, also prepare for the arrival of guests in town for Midnight Madness. Over the years, Geddes and friends have thrown parties, put together visitor guides, and even hosted new filmmakers in their homes who may not have the same travel budget as more established producers. This prepares the filmmakers for the business of the festival and for showcasing their film to an audience and seems to be one of the aspects of the programming job with which Geddes is most proud and satisfied. This develops a relationship between filmmaker and festival vis-à-vis the programmer and beneficial for all. Filmmakers who were introduced in the Midnight Madness program have brought their later films back to the program in large part because of such relationships and because they know that their film will reach its intended audience. If the Filters help narrow the field and prepare for the festival, on the other side of programming are the people who help the programmer connect the film and the audience, a group I have called “Amplifiers.” It is their job to take the distilled information and use it to help draw attention to the film, filmmaker, and festival. The reputation of the Toronto

Information Management Strategies at the Toronto IFF

313

International Film Festival is well established, but it is the job of the Communication department to maintain that reputation and the Marketing department to make sure it is known. However, as Jon Gann explains, it is the programming and programmer that sets the “personality” of the festival (2012), creating appeal and successful festival experiences. This doesn’t just mean getting good reviews or packing the house. This means finding the right film for the audience and the right audience for a film. It is Geddes job to find that link. TIFF is known for finding and fostering films as they move out of the festival network into theatrical releases and critical acclaim, and they credit not just the programmers for finding these films but audiences for championing the films through such mechanisms as audience-based awards. Each season programmers work with professional publicists who are hired to help manage the presentations of films and premiere events for specific programs. Namely, they help manage the ever-important red carpet. This is the physical space where filmmakers meet the press and the public for the first time at the festival; it’s where much of the festival magic happens. Working closely with Geddes, the Midnight Madness publicists and red carpet teams figure out as early as possible which filmmakers and stars will be able to attend the film and then start garnering. The Midnight Madness program is unique in that it isn’t just the draw of celebrities that bring cameras and crowds. It is the potential for spectacle. Sometimes it is the stars of the show arriving with a troupe of cheerleaders or zombies, or rocking out on a mobile concert stage, or perched on a cart pulled by beleaguered women to the fictitious national anthem of a central-Asian country (Ahearn 2013). This is not the only unique feature of the Midnight Madness screening experience. The Midnight Madness audience at the Ryerson each witching hour of TIFF has its own reputation of being a bit more raucous than their daytime counterparts, a bit more energetic than the arthouse crowd. But they are no less committed or discerning when it comes to the films. I believe the Midnight Madness program is so successful because the audience is not just dazzled at the festival, but by extending the festival experience beyond the theater through the work of Geddes and the Midnight Madness Blog. Before the festival begins and well after it ends, the blog pulls its readership back into the festival mindset and extends the condensed time of the festival (Harbord 2009). By the time I started working as part of the videography team in 2012, the blog had an established format designed to create a community of Midnight Madness fans and attendees. Based on his experience putting together zines and other items for cult and underground screenings, Geddes has actively

314

Chapter 16

cultivated the audience through an online presence that features write-ups, videos, photos, festival tips and even the occasional virtual scavenger hunt. Most of the contributors to the blog are volunteers that Geddes directly contacted because they had worked with him in the past or were avid fans of the festival program. Through this blog, the audience can see exclusive interviews, insights, and news about the Midnight Madness films. In this sense, the task is not just exhibiting the film for an audience but actively cultivating the viewing community that comes together to see a film. There is also set of familiar names and faces contributing to a sense of community: Robert Mitchell is on the red carpet conducting interviews, Sanjay Rajput is giving tips on the best way to get to and from the theatres, Ian Goring is photographing Associate Programmer Peter Kapowsky in a goofy costume, and the editor, Carol Borden, is working her magic behind the scenes to make it all happen. Thus, in addition to being “auteur, critic, historian” (Ruoff 2012, 7) through the selection of films, a programmer is also supervisor, administrator, and human resource director for a group of associates and recruits through the selection process and onto the exhibition of those films. In this aspect, the programmer is not just a spokesperson voicing the message of this group, but the hub connecting the spokes of a network of people all working to achieve the overall task.

Conducting the Flow of Information All of this work by this varied group of people is a process of filtering information, refining it, and then amplifying it in a way that will connect filmmakers and audiences. I emphasize the significance of information because many times the connection and exchange between these individuals and groups is not constituted by the transmission of a film but of information about that film. For instance, it is not unusual for films to be selected based on trailers, marketing pitches, or even just good buzz and not because the programmer has been able to view the entire film since some are in production right up until the festival screening. Likewise audiences choose to attend screenings based on similar bits of information. Furthermore, the connection between filmmaker and audience, facilitated by the programmer does not end after the screening but continues as the audience gives feedback to the filmmaker and shares opinions with potential new viewers. The filmmaker uses this experience for future exhibition of this film and craft new films. The film screening, while not incidental, does not constitute the whole of the relationship.

Information Management Strategies at the Toronto IFF

315

Film festival scholars note the discursivity of film festival programming for defining ideas and practices of cinema (Stringer 2003; Ortner 2013), regional, ethnic, and national cinema (e.g. Czach 2004; Dovey 2015), gender and identity (e.g. Armatage 2009; Loist 2012), etc. However, I have found that within general conversations much of the information does not focus on the conceptual ideas of film, but on the material details of films and filmmaking. For most attendees it is the particulars of the film–who made it and who is in it, what it is about, when and where was it made–that become the biggest draws. Likewise, it is the specific details of production and industry that prove the most valuable to the filmmakers. Moreover, it may be in the redirection or even withholding of information that value is assessed.

Fig. 16–4. Presentation of the film Hardcore at the 2015 Toronto IFF. Midnight Madness programmer, Colin Geddes, and Hardcore star Sharlto Copley look on as director, Ilya Naishuller, shakes hands with producer, Timur Bekmambetov. The film would go on to be released in the United States as Hardcore Henry by STX Entertainment. Photo: courtesy of Ian Goring.

For example, one such moment of evaluation happened during the question and answer session (Q&A) at the 2015 premiere screening of Hardcore from director Ilya Naishuller. For most festival attendees, the post-screening Q&As are highlights of the TIFF experience. It is a time when the audience can interact with visiting directors, actors, and other

316

Chapter 16

film representatives. TIFF programmers act as facilitator typically asking a few questions then calling on audience members eager with their own questions. This is one of the most obvious ways that information flows from filmmaker to film-viewers providing insight into the filmmaking process, the motivations of the filmmakers, and particularities of the film the audience just watched. With growing awareness of production practices and widespread interest in box office and budgets of the latest blockbuster, one question that is often asked is how big was the budget for the film. An inquiring audience member asked this question to Naishuller, but just as he raised his microphone to say something, Geddes stepped in and explained, “one of the secrets about selling a film is that you never say what the budget is until later on after the fact”. The audience had just learned in a previous question that the film had yet to secure distribution but was in heated negotiation between several buyers. As Geddes pointed out, That is what this beautiful, magical night is all about. So right now–right now, while we're here, outside people are on their cell phones texting–there is a big huge scrum–because you guys were watching it with the audience here, but there was also probably around fifty people from the industry all watching it for their first time. So, keep your eyes peeled for whatever the news that is gonna happen. That's one of the beauties of having a world premiere at Midnight Madness.1

In this answer, Geddes acted as intermediary on behalf of the director as well as filmmakers in general as he blocked the publicly taboo subject of budgets. And, by redirecting the audience back to the programme and the “beauties of a world premiere” he refocuses on the current festival experience. In both of these discursive acts, he becomes the spokesperson for the festival acting out the general function of the festival as intermediary between filmmaker and film audience while also drawing attention to the experience and distinctiveness of the festival itself. The film, Hardcore, would sell that night for $10 million dollars, the largest sum for any film at the 2015 festival and one of the largest in TIFF history (Lang and McNary 2015). In this instance, the budget of the film is withheld in the hope that the cultural and/or symbolic value–how much the audience likes it and/or how well its representatives can sell it–will increase its economic value in a sale to a distributor. It is this kind of value-addition and transformation of Bourdieusian capital that leads De Valck to define film festivals as “sites of passage that function as the gateways to cultural legitimization” (2007, 38). Diane Burgess notes this 1

See online video by Robert Aaron Mitchell (2015).

Information Management Strategies at the Toronto IFF

317

relationship in her discussion of Canadian film festivals, including TIFF, identifying programmers as Bourdieu’s “inspired talent-spotters” whose “consecrated work” takes place in the liminal space of the film festival but with material, economic outcomes within the larger cinematic field (Burgess 2008, 18). The moment I describe here is an example of this liminal moment in which the programmer’s work, a culmination of his and his associates work, brings maker and viewer together. As spokesperson, Geddes performs the dual act of evaluation (the process of assigning/ negotiating value) and value-exchange (the process of comparing/ transforming value) for the film, but also for the program and festival.

Information Management and Ethnography The spokesperson model is one way that TIFF has maintained its reputation despite increased competition with other festivals (Stringer 2003) and challenges of sustainable festival operations (Fischer 2013). As previously mentioned, the objectives of TIFF have grown and diversified over its forty years in operation. Cheung argues that one such strategy for managing varied stakeholder objectives is the corporatization of film festivals (2009). While TIFF was never a “government owned entity”, it has shown a tendency to restructure and develop “modeled on that of profit-making commercial enterprises” (Cheug 2009). For TIFF, this includes an increase in long-term and temporary personnel and the departmentalization of this personnel to meet specific tasks,2 such as the tasks described above as filtering and amplifying the information intended to move through the festival. At the same time, film festivals differ from other corporate structures due to the amount and kinds of interaction with an embodied and present audience, extended to larger, distant audiences by an ever-increasing media field aided by social and popular media platforms. As demonstrated, there are moments when information is blocked or redirected in order to best accomplish tasks, a challenge with so many potential voices working on behalf of the organisation. For many corporate structures, they meet this challenge with a corporate culture of secrecy, exclusiveness, and risk management leading to almost complete anonymity and obfuscation of operations. TIFF takes a middle ground through spokespersons who put a human face and embodied presence on information management. This strategy still veils the nuts-and-bolts of festival personnel and operations in favor of more streamlined and

2

See S. Mitchell (forthcoming).

318

Chapter 16

glamorous depictions of the festival, but allows for contiguity between filmmaker and programmer and onward to audience. However, while this information management strategy works well for the objectives of the film festival, it may pose particular challenges for the ethnographer. I, as anthropologist, as “interpreter” (Geertz 1973), am not the spokesperson and thus must be “sensitive to the power differentials, constraints, interests and expectations characteristic of all relationships” (ethics.aaanet.org). In my work, I have tried my best to work within this model while still seeking further insight into the everyday workings of film festivals. For example, in this essay, regardless of ethnographic tradition, I have not used pseudonyms for individuals. Instead, I have chosen not to include the names or identifying details of some individuals, particularly in the filtering process, because the anonymity of the relationships is part of what allows others to emerge as spokespersons. Meanwhile, I name spokespersons and others who are purposely identifiable, particularly in the amplification process, so as to attract and develop an audience community. Another way of looking at this is to consider the importance of what Daniel Dayan identified as the “written festival” (2000). He noted that while the event of the festival is happening, it is documented, redefined, and preserved through texts, such as festival program books, film journalism, and industry reports. This “written festival” shifts the temporary event to enduring texts that become the lasting impression of the festival (Dayan 2000). While many of these texts are produced by individuals who are not employed by the festival organisation, the structure of the event and organisation is able to influence the production through a variety of mechanisms, such as self-published press releases, a graded system of press accreditation and access during the festival event, and limitations on the kinds of print materials and periodicals within festival spaces. Ethnographic research and writing is not controlled in the same way these other texts are controlled. Ethnography asks questions that have not necessarily been asked before and seeks answers that may not have ever been sought (Stringer 2003). Clifford Geertz argues in his elaboration of interpretive anthropology, that the primary task of ethnographers is to inscribe what we see and experience (1973). What we write, the information we collect, the stories we recount and conclusions we draw are the real stuff of ethnography. The end product is our final, edited interpretation of the actions and meanings we see before us. It is what other scholars read, build on, critique and include in the canon of scholarship. And it is also what that constituted group we’ve been discussing will read, accepting or rejecting it as the opinion of an outsider.

Information Management Strategies at the Toronto IFF

319

Information management and the reputation of the festival are vital parts within the autopoesis of festival activity. As Stringer introduced (2003) and Lesley-Ann Dickson has explained in this volume, the “insider/ outsider” dilemma, complicates the work of the ethnographer but is a part of the festival information management strategy–some people have access to some information while others do not. It has meant that I have at times been purposely blocked from valued information and I at times have not included information I knew to be too valuable. Taking into consideration the value of information within film festival settings, the way it is produced, distributed and exchanged, will help us better negotiate this insider/outsider division. As the range of activity and scope of influence of these events continues to grow, making our task as scholars multiplying, vital, and not just a little exciting, it will be our responsibility to consider how best to employ ethnography within a film festival setting. As local film festivals become regional festivals become national festivals become international film festivals–as government-sponsored festivals transition to corporate models–as the very format shifts from on the ground, embodied events to virtual, transmedia events–the task certainly does not become easier. However, by refocusing on the people within film festival organisations, we can see how these events are structured as well as the way the information flowing within and beyond this structure is not inherently valuable but becomes so through the specific objectives and careful practice of film festival organisers.

Works Cited Ahearn, Victoria. 2013. “TIFF Midnight Madness series at 25: From zombies to donkeys.” August 29. Accessed May 2, 2016. http://o.canada.com/entertainment/tiff-midnight-madness-eli-roth. American Anthropological Association. 2012. “Preamble. Principles of Professional Responsibility.” Aaanet.org. Accessed May 2, 2016. http://ethics.aaanet.org/ethics-statement-0-preamble/ Armatage, Kay. 2009. “Toronto Women & Film International 1973.” In Film Festival Yearbook 1: The Festival Circuit, edited by Dina Iordanova, and Ragan Rhyne, 82–98. St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies. Bosma, Peter. 2015. Film Programming: Curating for Cinemas, Festivals, Archives. New York: Columbia University Press. Burgess, Diane. 2008. Negotiating Value: A Canadian Perspective on the International Film Festival. Unpublished PhD thesis. Vancouver:

320

Chapter 16

Simon Fraser University, School of Communication. Accessed June 12, 2016. http://summit.sfu.ca/item/9173 Cheung, Ruby. 2009. “Corporatising a Film Festival: Hong Kong.” In Film Festival Yearbook 1: The Festival Circuit, edited by Dina Iordanova, and Ragan Rhyne, 99–115. St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies. Czach, Liz. 2004. “Film Festivals, Programming, and the Building of a National Cinema.” The Moving Image 4(1):76–88. Dayan, Daniel. 2000. “Looking for Sundance: The Social Construction of a Film Festival.” In Moving Images, Cultures and the Mind, edited by Ib Bondebjerg, 43–52. Luton: University of Luton Press. De Valck, Marijke. 2007 Film Festivals: From European Geopolitics to Global Cinephilia. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University —. 2012 “Finding Audiences for Films: Festival Programming in Historical Perspective.” In Coming Soon to a Festival Near You: Programming Film Festivals, edited by Jeffrey Ruoff, 25–40. St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies. Dovey, Lindiwe. 2015. Curating Africa in the Age of Film Festivals: Film Festivals, Time, Resistance. London, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Ebert, Roger. 1997 “Freeway Movie Review and Film Summary.” Rogerbert.com. January 24. Accessed May 15, 2016. http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/freeway-1997. Fischer, Alex. 2013. Sustainable Projections: Concepts in Film Festival Management. St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies. Gann, Jon. 2012. Behind the Screens: Programmers Reveal How Film Festivals Really Work. Washington, DC: ReelPlan Press. Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. Harbord, Janet. 2009. “Film Festivals-Time-Event.” Film Festival Yearbook 1: The Festival Circuit, edited by Dina Iordanova, and Ragan Rhyne, 40–47. St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies. Klevjer Aas, Nils. 1997. “Flickering Shadow: Quantifying the European Film Festival Phenomenon.” Obs.coe.int. Accessed June 21, 2016. http://www.obs.coe.int/online_publication/expert/00001262.html.en Lang, Brent, and Dave McNary. 2015. “Toronto: ‘Hardcore’ Sells to STX for $10 Million.” Variety.com. September 18. Accessed June 21, 2016. http://variety.com/2015/film/news/hardcore-stx-toronto-1201597226/ Loist, Skadi. 2012. “A Complicated Queerness: LGBT Film Festivals and Queer Programming Strategies.” In Coming Soon to a Festival Near You: Programming Film Festivals, edited by Jeffrey Ruoff, 157-172. St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies.

Information Management Strategies at the Toronto IFF

321

Mitchell, SED. Forthcoming. An Ethnographic Study of the Toronto International Film Festival. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Anthropology Department, Indiana University. Ortner, Sherry B. 2013. Not Hollywood: independent film at the twilight of the American dream. Durham, London: Duke University Press. Quandt, James. 2009. “The Sandwich Process: Simon Field Talks About Polemics and Poetry at Film Festivals.” In Dekalog 3: On Film Festivals, edited by Richard Porton, 53–80. London: Wallflower Press. Rüling, Charles-Clemens, and Jesper Strandgaard Pedersen. 2010. “Film Festival Research from an Organizational Studies Perspective.” Scandinavian Journal of Management 26(3):318–323. Ruoff, Jeffrey. 2012. “Introduction: Programming Film Festivals.” In Coming Soon to a Festival Near You: Programming Film Festivals, edited by Jeffrey Ruoff, 1–21. St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies. Stringer, Julian. 2003. Regarding Film Festivals. Unpublished PhD thesis. Indiana: Indiana University, Department of Comparative Literature. Accessed May 12, 2016. http://search.proquest.com/pqdt/docview/305334436/abstract/85C0EF BCCA5943AFPQ/2?accountid=11620 Online Videos Mitchell, Robert Aaron. 2015. “HARDCORE: World Premiere PostScreening Q&A IIya Naishuller, Sharlto Copley, Timur Bakmambetov.” Online Video. September 14. Accessed June 21, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwNSFvEbsmA

CONTRIBUTORS

Neta Alexander is a doctoral student in the department of Cinema Studies at New York University, researching streaming technologies and digital spectatorship. She is the recipient of the Society of Cinema and Media Studies’ Student Writing Award for 2016, and her articles have appeared in Cinema Journal, Film Quarterly, and Media Fields Journal, among other publications. She has also authored book chapters in the anthologies Compact Cinematics and The Netflix Effect: Technology and Entertainment in the 21st Century, both forthcoming from Bloomsbury Publishing. Eddy Appels is the director of the Beeld voor Beeld film festival and the president of the Dutch Foundation for Visual Anthropology. He is an anthropologist, media historian and documentary filmmaker. He has written and lectured on visual anthropology focusing predominantly on colonial cinema. As a documentary filmmaker he has worked for Dutch national television, mainly for the Jewish National Broadcasting Association, producing and directing some 20 short documentaries. He was a film programmer for the Tropical Theatre in Amsterdam, has been a member of the Board of Directors of the National Association for the History of Sound and Image, and is an advisor on Documentary for the Dutch Media Fund. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Dutch Association for Anthropological Professionals. Lesley-Ann Dickson teaches on the MA in Arts, Festivals and Cultural Management at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh, UK. Her research interests include cultural production/exhibition, cultural value and participation, film festivals, media audiences and spectatorship/ reception, and cinema culture more broadly. For her PhD research (20102014) she conducted an empirical investigation of exhibition practice and audience reception at Glasgow Film Festival. She leads the Edinburgh International Film Audience Conference – a biannual event that brings together scholars working on empirical film audience research.

324

Contributors

Peter I. Crawford has been an active member of the Nordic Anthropological Film Association (NAFA) since the late 1970s. He has written extensively on Visual Anthropology and ethnographic filmmaking. He has wide experience in teaching this subject both theoretically and practically, and is currently doing so at the Visual Anthropology Programme, Aarhus University, Denmark. He also works as a publisher/ editor and as a socio-economic consultant on development issues. His publishing company, Intervention Press (www.intervention.dk), has published numerous books on anthropology and Visual Anthropology. Carlo A. Cubero is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Tallinn University (Estonia), where he lectures and coordinates the Social & Cultural Anthropology Graduate Programme and the Audiovisual Ethnography MA Track. He has worked as a programmer for film festivals in Estonia, Finland and Latvia, and has curated film programmes for the Finnish Anthropological Society, the European Association of Social Anthropology and the International Society of Ethnology and Folklore. He has produced a sonic ethnography, which has been presented in Estonia, Latvia, Iceland and Spain. His ethnography documentary, Mangrove Music, is distributed by Alexander Street Press. Beate Engelbrecht has been co-founder and director of the Göttingen International Ethnographic Film Festival since 1993. Between 1985 and 2014 she worked as an anthropologist, ethnographic filmmaker and producer at Institut für den Wissenschaftlichen Film (IWF). She worked as an assistant in the Anthropological Department at the University of Basel (1977-1979, 1981-1985) and at the Museum für Völkerkunde Basel (197778, 1982). Since 1998 she has undertaken multiple trips to film in Mexico, Burkina Faso, India and Indonesia. She is now the coordinator of the Visual Anthropology Network of the European Association of Social Anthropologists and the director of the online journal AnthroVision. Faye Ginsburg is founding Director of the Center for Media, Culture and History at New York University, where she also directs the graduate programme in Culture and Media as Kriser Professor of Anthropology. She has curated and programmed films for over 25 years, served as an advisor to the annual Margaret Mead Film Festival for two decades, cocurated a 2005 showcase “First Nations/First Features” that exhibited feature films by indigenous directors from across the globe at MoMA in New York City and the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC, and is an advisor to the six-year-old Reelabilities

Film Festivals and Anthropology

325

Disability Film Festival held annually in New York City. She is also a prize-winning author and editor of four books, including Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain; she is presently completing a volume entitled Mediating Culture: Indigenous Media in a Digital Age. Paul Henley is Professor of Visual Anthropology at the University of Manchester, and has been the director of the RAI Film Festival on four occasions (1990, 1992, 2007 and 2017). He was appointed director of the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology on its foundation at Manchester in 1987, and remained in this position until 2014. He trained as a social anthropologist at the University of Cambridge in the 1970s and as a documentary filmmaker at the National Film and Television School, Beaconsfield, UK in the 1980s. He has carried out fieldwork in Venezuela among both indigenous and black communities, producing both films and academic publications on the basis of this research. He has also shot and directed a number of films on UK topics for British national television. In 2010, he published a major study of the work of Jean Rouch, The Adventure of the Real, with Chicago University Press. In 2014, he was awarded a three-year fellowship by the Leverhulme Trust to carry out research on early ethnographic film. Vittorio Iervese is researcher of cultural and communicative processes at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Department of Studies on Language and Culture), Italy. His research focuses on Visual Culture, Visual Sociology, Intercultural Communication, Social Participation and conflicts, photography and documentary filmmaking. Since 2007 he has been a member of the Selection Committee and vice-director of the Festival dei Popoli International Documentary Film Festival. His recent works on documentary have been published in Journal of Cultural Management and Zapruder, as well as the Festival dei Popoli’s catalogues. Flora Lichaa is a PhD student at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales in Paris, with a study on Chinese independent documentary film. She has conducted field research on Chinese independent film festivals for her dissertation, and ran the Shadows independent Chinese film festival in Paris from 2009 to 2012. She has also programmed Chinese films for festivals such as the Jean Rouch International Ethnographic Film Festival, and has written papers on Chinese independent film festivals and Parisian cinemas.

326

Contributors

SED Mitchell is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at Indiana University. Her dissertation is an ethnographic analysis of the Toronto International Film Festival, focusing on the structures, objectives, practices and strategies of the organisation. Since 2014 she has been Art Director of the In Light Human Rights Documentary Film Festival at Indiana University. Her research interests include Media Anthropology, performance studies, and cultural and artistic policy. María Paz Peirano is a Lecturer in Film Studies at Universidad de Chile, with a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Kent. She trained as a Social Anthropologist at Universidad de Chile and holds postgraduate degrees in both Documentary Film and Film Studies, from Universidad de Chile and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile respectively. Her research involves an ethnographic approach to film as social practice, focusing on film festivals and the construction of contemporary Chilean cinema in transnational settings. She has recently worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at Leiden University, studying the impact of international festivals on Latin American cinema. Colette Piault is Doctor in Sociology, Anthropologist, Filmmaker and Honorary Director of Research at the CNRS (Paris, France), and has lectured at the Ethnology Department of the University of Nanterre, Paris 10 (1995-1998). She has been member of the film selection committees for the festivals of Göttingen (1993-1996) and Nuoro (1988-2000), and is an Honorary Member of the Nordic Anthropological Film Association (NAFA). She is the founder and director of several academic institutions, including the Société Française d’Anthropologie Visuelle (SFAV) (19852015) and the Regards sur les Sociétés Européennes international research film seminars (1983-1992). Her publications have focused on her fieldwork, conducted in West Africa, France, and Greece (Epirus) for fifteen years (1974-1988). She is also the director of ten films, the most recent being Return to the Brouck, the Fenland, 40 Years On (2010) (see www.lesfilmsduquotidien.fr). Jay Ruby is an American scholar who was a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Temple University until his retirement in 2003. He received his BA in History (1960) and PhD in Anthropology (1969) from the University of California, Los Angeles. As an archaeologist, he conducted excavations in the American Southwest, West Mexico and the Republic of the Sudan. As a music critic and journalist, he interviewed pop musicians, and wrote album reviews and articles for the

Film Festivals and Anthropology

327

magazine Jazz and Pop. As an ethnographer of visual culture, he conducted long-term participant-observation in Central Pennsylvania and Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago. He edited the enhanced ebook The Complete Sol Worth with Larry Gross, USC. In 2008, he began a study of Bohemian Malibu, and the University of Colorado Press published an enhanced ebook, Coffee House Positano: A Bohemian Oasis in Malibu, 1957-1962 and in 2016 The Property: Malibu’s Other Colony became available. He has also edited a multi-authored book Bohemia in Southern California that will appear in 2016. Ekaterina Trushkina, PhD, is Senior Lecturer at the Russian School of Anthropology of the Russian State University for the Humanities (Moscow). She graduated from Moscow State University in 2008. Currently she co-directs the Days of Ethnographic Cinema international audio-visual anthropology film festival (Moscow). Her research interests include cultural anthropology, history of Visual Anthropology and ethnographic film theory. Aida Vallejo works as Adjunct Professor in Media Studies at the University of the Basque Country (Spain). Her expertise relates to creative documentary and film festivals, having worked in these fields as a scriptwriter, critic, researcher and lecturer. She is the founder and coordinator of the Documentary workgroup of the European Network for Cinema and Media Studies (NECS). A cultural anthropologist (BA, UNED), media scholar (BA, University of the Basque Country UPV/ EHU), documentary expert (MA, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) and film historian (PhD, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), she has published extensively in international journals on documentary film, narratology, film festivals and ethnography of media. She has carried out fieldwork in several countries, mostly across Europe. She is currently working on an edited collection about documentary film festivals and developing a research project that investigates the presence of documentary at film festivals from a global and historical perspective. Victoria Vasileva (Chistyakova), PhD, is Associate Professor at the School of Cultural Studies of the National Research University Higher School of Economics (Moscow). She graduated from Moscow State University in 1999. She is Director of the Days of Ethnographic Cinema international audio-visual anthropology film festival (Moscow). Her research interests include theory and history of media, media and cultural

328

Contributors

memory, audio-visual anthropology and history of the humanities and social sciences in the USSR. Nadine Wanono was a member of the Ethnographic Film Committee and General Secretary of the Committee in 2011. For many years, she took part in the organisation of the Bilan du Film ethnographique which later became the Festival International Jean Rouch. A PhD student of Jean Rouch, she worked with him during her fieldwork among the Dogon and also during the Mozambique workshop organised in 1978. In 2000, in collaboration with the Ethnographic Film Committee, she organised the second “Regards Comparés”, focusing on the Dogon. She also received training as cameraperson and filmmaker at the National Film School in the 1980s. She is currently the in-house researcher at the Institut des mondes africains (IMAF) at the Centre National de la Recherche scientifique (CNRS). She has produced several films, and with Philippe Lourdou directed In the Shadow of the Sun, Funeral and Enthronement of the Hogon of Arou (1997). She has been a member of the Film Selection Committee for the Göttingen Festival (2010-2012). She is co-editor of two special issues of the Journal des anthropologues on Creation and Transmission in Visual Anthropology (2012) and Margins and Digital Technologies (2015). In 2012 she created with colleagues the “Digital Anthropologies” event at Le Cube Digital Art Centre. She is the chief editor of Anthrovision, the online journal of the VANEASA network.

INDEX OF FESTIVALS

Academia Film Olomouc. International Festival of Documentary, Scientific and Educational Films (Czech Republic), 45, 51 AFIDOCS Film Festival (Washington DC, US), 2 American Film Festival (US), 147 Ann Arbor Film Festival (US), 2, 287 Annual International Festival of Anthropology Film at UBC (Canada), 25 Anthropological Film Festival of Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam), 32 Anthropological Film Festival of The Jerusalem Cinematheque (Israel), 26 Antropofest. International Festival of Movies with Anthropological interest (Prague, Czech Republic), 26 Ânûû-rû Âboro Film Festival (New Caledonia, French Pacific), 32 APERTURE. Asia Pacific International Ethnographic Documentary Festival (Melbourne, Australia), 24, 26 Apricot Tree International Ethno Film Festival (Yerevan, Armenia), 26 Arica Nativa. Festival of Rural Cinema (Chile), 82 Aspekty. Festival of Visual Anthropology (Torun, Poland), 25 Astra Film Festival (Sibiu, Romania), 24, 52, 60

BAFICI. Festival de Cine Independiente de Buenos Aires (Argentina), 2, 83 Beeld voor Beeld (Amsterdam, Netherlands), xiii, 11, 24, 29, 50, 223, 224, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 323 Beeld voor Beeld festival at Bogotá (Colombia), 29, 231 Beijing Queer Film Festival (BQFF) (Beijing and Songzhuang, China), 295, 296, 303 Belo Horizonte documentary and ethnographic film festival [Festival do Filme Documentário e Etnográfico. Fórum de Antropologia e Cinema. Forumdoc.bh] (Brazil), 24, 77 Berlin International Film Festival (Germany), 1, 69, 85 BIFF. Beijing Independent Film Festival (Songzhuang, China), 295, 296, 297, 298, 301 Buddhist Film Festival (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 232 Cannes Film Festival (France), 4, 7, 14, 66, 71, 72, 85, 117, 252, 260, 269 CDFF. China Documentary Film Festival (Songzhuang, China), 295, 296, 297, 301, 302 Certamen de Cine y Video Etnológico de las Comunidades Autónomas (Huesca, Spain), 50 Chongqing Independent Film and Video Film Festival (CIFVF) (Chongqing, China), 295, 298, 300, 303

330

Index of Festivals

CIFF. China Independent Film Festival (Nanjing, China), 295, 301, 303 CinANTROP. Festival Internacional de Cinema Etnográfico e documental de Portugal, 26 Cine Otro. Festival Político, Social y de los Derechos Humanos (Valparaíso, Chile), 78, 83 Cinéma du Réel (former Film Festival of Visual Anthropology and Social Documentation, Paris, France), 2, 23, 30, 43, 44, 47, 69, 70, 72, 195, 201 CLACPI. Festival Internacional de Cine y Video de los Pueblos Indígenas (Latin America), vi, 34, 76, 79, 80, 81, 86 Contra El Silencio Todas las Voces (Mexico city, Mexico), 82 Contro-Sguardi. Festival internazionale di cinema antropologico (Perugia, Italy), 26 COVA. Visual Anthropology Conferences held at Temple University (formerly Festival of Anthropological Film, Philadelphia, US), 10, 23, 143, 144, 148, 150, 151, 154, 158 CPH:DOX. Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival (Denmark), 1, 2, 280 Crossing Festival, 295, 297 Days of Ethnographic Cinema. International AudioVisual Anthropology Film Festival (Moscow, Russia), 105, 107, 327 DEF. Days of Ethnographic Film (Ljubljana, Eslovenia), 25 Dialëktus. European Documentary and Anthropological Film Festival (Budapest, Hungary), 25

DIEFF. Delhi International Ethnographic Film Festival (India), 26, 32 DIVA. International Film Festival of Valparaíso (Chile), 83 DOC NYC (New York, US), 172 DocAnt. Muestra Nacional de Cine y Video Documental Antropológico y Social [National Showcase of Anthropologic and Social Documentary Film and Video] (Argentina), 24, 78, 79 Docaviv (Tel Aviv, Israel), 287 Docs Against Gravity Film Festival (former Planet Doc Review, Warsaw, Poland), 280 DocsDF. Festival Internacional de Cine Documental de la Ciudad de México [Mexico City International Documentary Film Festival] Mexico), 25, 75, 82 Documentarist. Istanbul Documentary Days Festival (Turkey), 284, 285 DOK Leipzig. International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film (Germany), 280, 282, 283 Dokufest. International Documentary and Short Film Festival (Prizren, Kosovo), 283, 284, 285, 286, 287 É Tudo Verdade. International Documentary Film Festival (Brazil), 83 Edinburgh International Film Festival (Scotland), 2, 17, 220, 260, 262, 264, 292, 323 Espiello, Festival Internacional de Documental Etnográfico de Sobrarbe, 25, 79 Etats Généraux du Documentaire (Lussas, France), 44

Film Festivals and Anthropology Ethno film Festival. The Heart of Slavonia (Djakovo, Yugoslavia/Croatia), 23, 30 Ethnocineca. International Documentary Film Festival Vienna (Austria), 25 Ethnofest. Athens Ethnographic Film Festival (Greece), 26 Ethnografilm Festival (Paris, France), 26 Ethnografisches Filmfestival Trier (Germany), 26 Ethnographic Film and Media Program of the Middle East and Central Eurasia (Europe), 26, 33 Ethnographic Film and Media Program of the Middle East and Central Eurasia of EASA, 26 Ethnologie et Cinéma: Rencontres autour du film ethnographique (Grenoble, France), 24 Etnofilm ýadca (Czechoslovakia/Slovak Republic), 23, 24 ETNOFILm Festival (Rovinj, Croatia), 26 ETNOFILMfest. Mostra del Cinema Documentario Etnografico (Monselice, Italy), 25 EURORAMA. One Europe of peoples in ethnographic film festivals (Trento, Italy), 25 Eyes and Lenses: Ethnographic Film Festival (Warsaw, Poland), 25 FECIL. Lebu International Film Festival (Chile), 83 FESPACO. Festival panafricain du cinéma et de la télévision de Ouagadougou [Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou] (Burkina Faso), 32 Festicine San Agustín (Colombia), 26, 76

331

Festival de Cine de los Pueblos Indígenas del Chaco (Argentina), 79 Festival de Cine Indígena (Valparaíso Chile), 83 Festival de Cinéma Douarnenez (Finistère. Brittany, France), 44 Festival dei Popoli. International Documentary Film Festival (Florence, Italy), v, 2, 10, 23, 30, 43, 44, 49, 69, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 139, 140, 141, 179, 190, 325 Festival du film ethnographique de Loudun (France), 26 Festival du Film Humains en societies (Louvain, Belgium), 26 Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia (Michoacán, Mexico), 82 Festival Internacional de Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano de La Habana (Cuba), 78 Festival Internacional de Puebla (Mexico), 79 Festival International Jean Rouch (former Bilan du Film Ethnographique, Paris, France), 23, 202, 203, 328 FICValdivia. Festival Internacional de Cine de Valdivia (Chile), 78 FICVIÑA, Viña del Mar International Film Festival (Chile), 78 FIDMarseille (France), 287 FIDOCS. International Documentary Film Festival of Santiago (Santiago de Chile, Chile), 83 FIFEQ. International Ethnographic Film Festival of Quebec (Canada), 25 Fifer. Festival do Cine Etnografico de Recife (Brazil), 26, 77

332

Index of Festivals

Film South Asia Festival (Nepal), 34 FIPA. International Festival for Audiovisual Programs (Cannes, France), 72 Flahertiana. International Documentary Film Festival (Perm, Russia), 106 Folklore on the Screen Film Festival (Moscow, Russia), 100, 104 Forum of Ethnological Films (Freiburg, Germany), 49 Freiburger Film Forum – Africa/America/Asia/Oceania (Germany), 23, 49 French Russian Ethnographic Film Festival (Moscow, Russia), 53 Geografías Suaves/Cine Video Sociedad festival (Mérida, Oaxaca), 82 GIEFF. Göttingen International Ethnographic Film Festival (Germany), 24, 29, 235, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 244, 246 Glasgow International Film Festival, 11 Glasgow International Film Festival (Scotland), 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 272, 274, 323 Guangxi International Ethnographic Film Festival (China), 26 Hot Docs. Canadian International Documentary Festival (Toronto, Canada), 226, 287 IDFA. International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (Netherlands), 1, 226, 232, 280, 281, 282, 288, 289, 290 IFEF. International Festival of Ethnographic Film (Sofia, Bulgaria), 26 IFFR. International Film Festival Rotterdam (Netherlands), 14, 295

ImagineNATIVE Media Arts Festival (Toronto, Canada), 81 In Light Human Rights Documentary Film Festival (Indiana, US), 326 International Anthropological Film Festival (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam), 26 International Festival of Ethnological Film (Belgrade, Serbia), 24 IntimaLente/IntimateLens. Festival of Visual Ethnography (Calvi and Caserta, Italy), 26 JFE. Journées du Film Ethnographique (Bourdeaux, France), 24 JIDFF. Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival (Czech Republic), 279, 280, 281, 282, 283, 284, 287, 289 JIFF. Jeonju International Film Festival (Jeonju, South Korea), 295, 298 Jornadas de Antropología Visual de Mexico [Visual Anthropology Days] (Mexico), 75 Krakow Film Festival (Poland), 284 Kratovo Ethnographic Film Festival (Macedonia), 26, 61 Locarno International Film Festival (Switcherland), 2 àódĨ Ethnographic Festival (Poland), 52 London International Film Festival (UK), 264 Maailmafilmist. World Film Festival (Tartu, Estonia), 25, 113, 116, 119, 188 MAV. Convegno-Rassegna Materiali di Antropologia Visiva (Roma, Italy), 23 May Festival, 295, 297 Mediating Camera. Moscow International Festival of Visual

Film Festivals and Anthropology Anthropology (later Days of Ethnographic Cinema, Moscow, Russia), 105, 107 MIVAF. Moscow International Visual Anthropology Festival (Russia), 25 MMFF. Margaret Mead Film Festival (New York, US), xiii, xiv, 10, 15, 17, 23, 43, 57, 60, 69, 72, 77, 80, 116, 123, 145, 147, 165, 167, 179, 324 Mostra amazônica do filme etnográfico (Manaus, Brazil), 25, 77 Mostra de cine etnográfico (Santiago de Compostela, Spain), 25 Mostra Internacional do Filme Etnográfico [Río de Janeiro International Ethnographic Film Festival] (Brazil), 24, 30, 77, 78 Muestra de Cine y Video Indígena en Colombia Daupará (Colombia), 79 Muestra de Documental Etnográfico de Sobrarbe (Espiello, Spain), 25, 78 Muestra de Documental Peruano, DocuPeru (Lima, Peru), 79 Münchner EthnoFilmFest - Munich Ethnographic Film Festival (formerly Tage des Ethnologischen Films, Germany), 25 NAFA (Nordic Anthropological Film Association) Film Festival, 10, 23 National Geographic All Roads Film Festival (Washington DC, US), 80 New York Film Festival (US), 1, 98, 172 One with a movie camera. International Ethnografic Film Festival in Marburg (Germany), 26

333

Open Festival of the Documentaries, 106 Pärnu Visual Anthropology Film Festival (Estonia), 23, 24, 51, 90, 100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 108, 109 Planete Doc Review (later Docs Against Gravity Film Festival, Warsaw, Poland), 280 RAFF. Russian Festival of Anthropological Film (Salekhard/Ekaterinburg, Russia), 22, 24, 52, 106 RAI (Royal Anthropological Institute) Film Festival (UK), xiii, 11, 23, 28, 49, 60, 113, 116, 207, 208, 212, 213, 216, 220, 221, 325 Regard Blue. Festival of Student Film and Media (Zurich, Switzerland), 25 Regards Comparés (Paris, France), 11, 193, 196, 198, 200 Riga World Film Festival (Latvia), 26, 118 Robert Flaherty Film Seminar (US), 145, 147, 178 Russian Ethnographic Film Festival (Moscow, Russia), 53 San Francisco International Film Festival (US), 2 Santa Fe Film festival (Granada, Spain), 50 Sarajevo International Film Festival (Bosnia-Herzegovina), 283, 284, 285 Semaine du Cinéma ethnographique (Caen, France), 24 Settimana Mediterranea del Film Antropologico organized (Palermo, Sicily, Italy), 49 SIEFF. Sardinia International Ethnographic Film Festival. Rassegna Internazionale di Documentari Etnograficci di

334

Index of Festivals

Cerdeña (Nuoro, Sardinia, Italy), 23, 29, 55, 60, 63, 78, 326 Sundance Film Festival (US), 6, 7, 14, 15, 16, 78, 85, 252, 256, 258, 259, 260, 269, 270, 274, 286, 291, 320 SVA (Society of Visual Anthropology) Film and Video Festival (US), 23, 28 Sydney Film Festival (Australia), 2 Tage des Ethnologischen Films (formerly one with Münchner EthnoFilmFest, Munich, Germany), 25 Taiwan International Ethnographic Film Festival (Taiwan), xiii, 25 Tampere Film Festival (Finland), 45, 111, 119, 123 The Visual Anthropology of Everyday Life: The Philadelphia Home Movie Festival (US), 153 Thessaloniki Documentary Festival (Greece), 283, 284 Thessaloniki International Film Festival (Greece), 251 TIEFF. Taiwan International Ethnographic Film Festival (Taiwan), 24, 25 TIFF. Toronto International Film Festival (Canada), 2, 12, 305, 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313, 315, 316, 317, 319, 320, 326 Tribeca Film Festival (New York, US), 226

Unrestricted New Image Film Festival (Beijing, China), 294 Venice International Film Festival (Italy), 4, 147, 170, 260, 279, 287 ViBGYOR. International Film Festival (India), 32 Viscult. Festival of Visual Culture (Joensuu, Finland), 25, 29, 116, 188, 190 Visions du Réel. Festival International de cinéma Nyon (Switcherland), 45, 280 Vue sur les Docs (later FIDMarseille, France), 44 Wairoa MƗori Film Festival (New Zealand), 34 Weitwinkel. Ethnographisches Filme und Dokumentationen Filmfestival (Germany), 26 Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival (Japan), 32 Yunfest. Yunnan Multiculture Visual Festival (Kunming, China), 25, 30, 295, 296, 297, 301, 302 Zagrebdox International Documentary Film Festival (Croatia), 51, 281, 283, 287 Zanzibar International Film Festival (Tanzania), 32 Zinebi. International Festival of Documentary and Short Film of Bilbao (Basque Country, Spain), 279

INDEX OF FILMS

5:10 to Dreamland (1976), Bruce Conner, 153 A Balinese Trance Séance (1979), Timothy Ash, 149 A Joking Relationship (1962), John Marshall, 197 A Life with Asperger’s (2013), Jaime Ekkens, 116 A Man Called, 149 A Rite and Passage (1972), John Marshall, 149 Across The Frontiers (1975), David Attenborough, 151 Alto do Minho (2012), Miguel Filgueiras, 117 Arucanians of Ruca Choroy (1971), Jorge Prelorán, 151 As hiper mulheres, Itão Kuêgü (The Hyperwomen, 2011), Carlos Fausto, Leo Sette and Takumã Kuikuro, 83 At the Caribou Crossing Place (1967), Asen Balicki, 150 At the Winter Sea Ice Camp (1967), Quentin Brown, 104, 150 Balinese Character (photographic ethnography, 1942), Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, 157, 162 Behind the Mask (1975), David Attenborough, 151 Beigels Already (1992), Debbie Shuter, 238 Betty Tells Her Story (1972), Liane Brandon, 155 Bitter Melons (1971), John Marshall, 149

Black Harvest (1991), Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson, 238 Bleh (1983), Rob Boonzajer-Flaes, cameraman Maarten Rens, 224 Boarded Up (2000) Steef Meyknecht, 224 Brass Unbound (1993), Johan van der Keuken, 225 California Reich (1975), Walter Parks, 151 Camels and The Pitjantara (1969), Roger Sandall, 149 Cannibal Tours (1988), Dennis O'Rourke, 175 Cello Tales (2013), Anne Schiltz, 117 Celso and Cora (1983), Gary Kildea, 214 Choreometrics research project, Allan Lomax, 155 Chronicle of A Summer (Chronique d'un été, 1961), Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin, 147 Chronique d’un village Tzotzil (1992), Thierry Zeno, 238 Chronique paysanne (1990), Jacqueline Veuve, 238 Chulas Fronteras (1976), Les Blank and Chris Strachwitz, 151 Codes of Electronic Imaging (1974), Woody and Steina Vasulka, 152 Condolences (㏿桽Wei wen, 2009), Ying Liang, 295 Conte et comptes de la cour (1993), Eliane de Latour, 238 Cosas de mi Vida (1976), Chick Strand, 153

336

Index of Films

Dangling Participle (1970), Standish Lawder, 152 De Nadie (2006), Tim Dirdamal, 78 Dead Birds (1963), Robert Gardner, 122, 132, 140, 147, 150, 154, 165 Dead Presumed Missing? (2003), Colette Piault and Paul Sant Cassia, 61 Deal (1974), John Schott and E.J. Vaughn, 152 Desert People (), Ian Dunlop, 147 Dionysos (1984), Jean Rouch, 194, 212 Dor. Low is Better (1988), Rob Boonzajer-Flaes, cameraman Maarten Rens, 224 Eat the Sun (1975), John Cox and John Papajani, 155 Emerging (1990), 238 Enthusiasm (1931), Dziga Vertov, 148 Essene (1972), Frederick Wiseman, 152 Expedition Yemen–126 Degrees in the Shade (2013), Mikael Strandberg, 116 Face Values TV Series (BBC), 213 Feet Upon the Mountains (1978), W. Peter West, 154 Folk Memory Project (forthcoming), Wu Wanguang, 297 Football Incident (1976), Marceline Loridan and Joris Ivens, 149 Foreign Parts (2010), Véréna Paravel and J.P. Sniadecki, 2, 136, 137 Forest of Bliss (1986), Robert Gardner, 114, 212, 225, 230 Funerailles a Bongo–Anai Dolo 1848-1970 (1979), Jean Rouch, 149 Galla (1981), Majram Jusupova, 104

Georgi and the Butterflies (Ƚɟɨɪɝɢ ɢ ɩɟɩɟɪɭɞɢɬɟ, 2004), Andrey Paounov, 283 Giving Birth: Four Portraits (1976), Julie Gustafson and John Reilly, 155 Going Home (1972), Adolfas Mekas, 153, 155 Good-bye Old Man (1977), David and Judith MacDougall, 150 Grandma of Boats (1993), Mark Soosaar, 238 Guadalcanal Requiem (1977), Nam June Paik, 152 Guahibos (1976), Juan Downey, 152 Hardcore, Ilya Naishuller (released in the United States as Hardcore Henry), 315 High School (1968), Frederick Wiseman, 152 High School 31 (1976), Marceline Loridan and Joris Ivens, 149 Hospital (1970), Frederick Wiseman, 152 Ika Hands (1988), Robert Gardner, 216 Imaginero: The Image Man (1969), Jorge Prelorán, 151 In and Out of Africa (1992), Ilisa Barbash and Lucien CastaingTaylor, 238 In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914), Edward Curtis, xiv In the Land of the War Canoes (1972), Edward Curtis, xiv In the Shadow of the Sun, Funeral and Enthronement of the Hogon of Arou (1997), Philippe Lourdou and Nadine Wanono, 328 Inside Outside Station Nine (1970), John Marshall, 149 Ixok (1990), Wilma Kiener and Dieter Matzka, 238

Film Festivals and Anthropology Jaguar (1954-67), Jean Rouch, 148, 169 Jaws (1975), Steven Spielberg, 271 Journey to the Maggot Feeder (2015), Priit Tender and Liivo Niglas, 116 Joyce at 34 (1974), Joyce Chopra, 155 Karamay (⏚㕘䘪∬Kelamayi, 2010), Xu Xing, 301 Karspel II (1991), Ton Guiking and Steef Meyknecht, 224 Kenya Boran (1974), David and Judith MacDougall, 150 Kramer vs Kramer (1979), Robert Benton, 272 La Musica e Quattro (1993), Rosali Schweizer, 238 Le Brouck (1972), Colette Piault, 63 Le ciel, la terre (The Threatening Sky, 1967), Joris Ivens, 135 Les Maîtres Fous (1955), Jean Rouch, 114, 147, 148, 169 Leviathan (2012), Lucien CastaingTaylor and Véréna Paravel, 1, 2, 17, 74 Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité… et puis après? (1990), Jean Rouch, 216 Link-Up Diary (1987), David MacDougall, xv Lion Hunters (1965), Jean Rouch, 148 Living With Peter (1973), Miriam Weinstein, 155 Maasai Diary TV Series (BBC2), 215 Man of Aran (1934), Robert Flaherty, 147 Man With a Movie Camera (1929), Dziga Vertov, 148 Marat/Sade (1966), Peter Brook, 135 Margaret Mead’s New Guinea Journal (1968), Craig Gilbert, 148 Media Burn (1975), Ant Farm, 153

337

Meditation on Violence (1948), Maya Deren, 199 Men in the Ring (1990), Erich Langjahr, 238 Microcultural Incidents in Ten Zoos (1969), Ray Birdwhistell, 155 Miss Nikki and the Tiger Girls (2012), Juliet Lamont, 167 Mizike Mama (1992), Violaine de Villers, 238 Moi, un noir (Me, A Black Man, 1958), Jean Rouch, 131 Mostly Americans (sculpture), Robert Asher, 158 Mulga Seed Ceremony (1967), Roger Sandall, 149 My Father the Doctor (1974), Miriam Weinstein, 155 N!ai, The Story of a !Kung Woman (1980), John Marshall, 237 Nanook of the North (1922), Robert Flaherty, 106, 114, 213 Nawi (1970), David and Judith MacDougall, 150 Necrology (1971), Standish Lawder, 152 Neighbors on the Block–a study of life in single room occupancy hotels in New York (1971, photographic exhibition), Lawrence Salzman, 157 New Tribes Mission (1975), Timothy Asch and Napoleon Chagnon, 149 No Lies (1972), Mitchell Block, 155 Number Our Days (1976), Barbara Myerhoff and Lynn Littman, 151 Oak Park Stories (2007), Jay Ruby, 161 Ocamo is My Town (1974), Timothy Asch and Napoleon Chagnon, 149 Of Men and Mares (1998), Metje Postma, 224

338

Index of Films

Pink Saris (2010), Kim Longinotto, 74 Pintubi Revisit Taru Yaru (1970), Roger Sandall, 149 Pintubi Revisit Yumari (1971), Roger Sandall, 147 Playing with Scorpions (1972), John Marshall, 149 Polesye Carols (ɉɨɥɟɫɫɤɢɟ ɤɨɥɹɞɤɢ, 1972), Zinaida Mozheyko, 96 Polesye Weddings (ɉɨɥɟɫɫɤɢɟ ɫɜɚɞɶɛɵ, 1986), Zinaida Mozheyko, 104 Polka (1986), Rob Boonzajer-Flaes, cameraman Maarten Rens, 224 Pomen (1979), Gueorgui Balabanov, 215 Porto Marghera–Venice: The Story of a Lethal Deception (2002), Paolo Bonaldi, 279 Portrait of a Friend (1978), Jean Rouch, 148 Primary (1960), Robert Drew, 152 Primate (1974), Frederick Wiseman, 152 Ramparts of Clay (1971), JeanLouis Bertuccelli, 155 Rather Strange Tribe (1971), Tim Wilson, 155 Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1972), Jonas Mekas, 153, 155 Return to the Brouck: The Fenland, 40 Years On (Retour au Brouck, 2010), Colette Piault, 59, 63 Rhythms of Earth (1974), Alan Lomax, 99 Ricky and Rocky (1972), Tom Palazzolo and Jeff Krienes, 155 Rivers of Sand (1973), Robert Gardner, 150 Room to Live (1992), Simon Everson and Marian Stoica, 238 Room with a View (1997), Rada Šešiü, 285

Running Fence (1978), Maysles brothers, 152 Russian Folk Theatre (Ɋɭɫɫɤɢɣ ɧɚɪɨɞɧɵɣ ɬɟɚɬɪ, 1975), Leonid Kupershmidt, 96 Sacrifice of Serpents (1997), Dirk Nijland, 224 Sertschawan (1992), Beatrice Michel and Hans Stürm, 238 Silent Minority (1981), Nigel Evans, 133 Song of Ceylon (1934), Basil Wright (prod. John Grierson), 215 Sweat of the Sun, David Attenborough, 151 Sweetgrass (2009), Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, 1, 2 Taiga Nomads (1992), Heimo Lappaleinen, 238 Takeover (1980), David and Judith MacDougall, 150 Tanka (1976), David Lebrun, 154 Tapir Distribution (1975), Timothy Asch and Napoleon Chagnon, 149 Tauw (1970), Ousame Sembene, 156 Tempus de Baristas (1993), David MacDougall, 114 The Act of Killing (2012), Joshua Oppenheimer, 74, 116 The Araucanians of Ruca: Summer (1971), Jorge Prelorán, 151 The Ax Fight (1975), Timothy Asch and Napoleon Chagnon, 149, 197 The Belovs (1993), Victor Kossakovsky, 289 The Blood of Yingzhou District (2006), Ruby Yang, 176 The Communication of Thai Social Norms (1975), Stephanie Kreb, 156 The Continuing Miracle, Regions Beyond Missionary Union, 154

Film Festivals and Anthropology The Cows of Dolo Ken Paye (1979), James Gibbs and Marvin Silverman, 149 The Disappearing World Series (1970-1991), Granada Television, 151, 212 The Eternal Frame (1972), the Ant Farm, 153 The Feast (1970), Timothy Asch and Napoleon Chagnon, 147, 149 The Field of Hopes (CerƯbu lauki/ɉɨɥɹ ɧɚɞɟɠɞ, 1988), Andris SlapiƼš, 99, 100 The Fighting Dances of Crissa (1974), Judith Blank, 156 The First Days in the Life of a New Guinea Baby (1952), Margaret Mead, 166 The Human Zoo: The Story of Calafate (2011), Hans Mulchi, 83 The Hunters (1957), John Marshall and Robert Gardner, 132, 147, 149, 197 The Irish Tapes (1971), John Reilly and Stefan Moore, 155 The Kwakiutal of British Columbia (1929), Franz Boas, 148 The Last Black Sea Pirates and Sir Norman Foster (film project), (released in 2013 as The Last Black Sea Pirates, dir. Svetoslav Stoyanov), 282 The Last of the Cuiva (1971), Brian Moser, 151, 155 The Leader, His Driver and the Driver’s Wife (1991), Nick Broomfield, 136 The Leap across the Cattle (1979), Ivo Strecker, 201 The Lost World of the Kalahari (1956), Laurens Van der Post, 197

339

The Lost World of the Kalahari (1956), TV series, Laurens van der Post, 197 The Masai and Masai Women (1976), Chris Curling and Melissa Llewelyn-Davies, 151 The Meat Fight (1974), John Marshall, 149 The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation (2005), John Canemaker, 176 The Mosquito Problem & Other Stories (ɉɪɨɛɥɟɦɴɬ ɫ ɤɨɦɚɪɢɬɟ ɢ ɞɪɭɝɢ ɢɫɬɨɪɢɢ, 2007), Andrey Paounov, 283 The Mursi: Nitha (1991), Leslie Woodhead and David Turton, 238 The Nuer (1971), Robert Gardner, 150 The Other Half (♵₏◙/Ling yi ban, 2006), Ying Liang, 295 The Owl That Married the Goose (1971), Caroline Leaf, 153 The People of the Water Bird (Veelinnurahvas/ɇɚɪɨɞ ɜɨɞɨɩɥɚɜɚɸɳɟɣ ɩɬɢɰɵ, 1970), Lennart-Georg Meri, 102 The Politics of Intimacy (1972), Julie Gustafson, 155 The Resettlement (1992), Viliam Poltikovic, 238 The Sounds of Kaleva (Kaleva hääled/ Ɂɜɭɤɢ Ʉɚɥɟɜɵ, 1985), Lennart-Georg Meri, 102 The Time of Dreams (ȼɪɟɦɟɧɚ ɫɧɨɜɢɞɟɧɢɣ, 1983), Andris SlapiƼš, 99, 103, 104 The Tribe (tv series, Channel 4), 207 The Trobriands, Island of Women, Yasuko Ichioka, 151 The War Game (1965), Peter Watkins, 183 The Wasp Nest (1972), John Marshall, 149

340

Index of Films

The Wedding Camels (1980), David and Judith MacDougall, 150 The Winds of the Milky Way (Linnuteetuuled/ȼɟɬɪɵ ɦɥɟɱɧɨɝɨ ɩɭɬɢ, 1977), LennartGeorg Meri, 98, 102 The Women’s Olamal (1984), Melissa Llewelyn-Davies, 215 The Yanomani Tribe in War and Peace (1977), Yasuchi Toyotomi, 151 Timonya (1969), V. Golovanov, T. Bogdanova, 96 Titicut Follies (1967), Frederick Wiseman, 135 To Justify Bu Qinfu (执◫䛃䓅ⅴ初 ⃌Huan Bu Qinfu yi meili, 2011), Wang Yunlong and Han Yi, 301 To Live with Herds (1972), David MacDougall, 147 To Live With Herds (1974), David and Judith MacDougall, 150 Tobelo Marriage (1985), Dirk Nijland, 224 Tourou et Bitti (1971), Jean Rouch, 149 Trance and Dance in Bali (1951), Margaret Mead, 166 Tribal Eye TV Series (BBC), 151 Turkana Conversations (1989), David and Judith MacDougall, 237 Turnim Hed: Courtship and Music in Papua New Guinea (1992), James Bates, 238

Two Ways of Justice (Maasai Diary TV Series, BBC2, 1985), Melissa Llewelyn-Davies, 215 Umbruch (1987), Hans-Ulrich Schlumpf, 238 Une partie de campagne (1974), Raymond Depardon, 199 Varicella (2015), Victor Kossakovsky, 289 Waiting for Harry (1980), Kim McKenzie, 150, 214 Walbiri Ritual at Gunadari (1967), Roger Sandall, 149 We Get Married Twice (1974), Miriam Weinstein, 155 Well-Spent Life (1971), Les Blank, 151 West of the Tracks (材導◉Tie xi qu, 2003), Wang Bing, 296 When Night Falls (㒠执㦘幬尐広 Wo hai you hua yao shuo, 2012), Ying Liang, 298 Winter of River People (Ɂɢɦɚ ɪɟɱɧɵɯ ɥɸɞɟɣ, 1982), Arkady Mikhalev and Nadezhda Lukina, 104 Wo noch der Herrgott gilt (1992/1993), Edmund Ballhaus, 238 Women Warriors of the Amazon, Yasuchi Toyotomi, 151 Worlds Apart TV Series (BBC) (since 1982), 213 Zheteng (㔧名, 2010), Wang Wo, 302

INDEX OF NAMES

Aaron, Andy, 155 Accola, Patrick, 156 Ackermann, Andreas, 241 Adair, John, 147, 153, 163, 170, 205 Aibel, Bob, 160 Alekseyev, Eduard, 92, 93, 94, 95, 97, 99 Alpert, Jon, 155 Amadingue (chief of the Mask), 194 Anderson, Robin, 238 Andreyeva, Evgenya, 103, 105, 106 Appels, Eddy, 11, 29, 223, 230, 323 Arnold, Jean Michel, 195 Asch, Timothy, xiv, 43, 145, 147, 149, 152, 156, 162, 170, 180, 183, 197, 199, 217 Asher, Robert, 158 Astre, Georges Albert, 194 Attenborough, David, 151 Badger, Mark, 186, 189 Baily, John, 213 Balabanov, Gueorgui, 215 Balikci, Asen, v, 42, 43, 51, 57, 65, 104, 108, 144, 182, 183, 186 Ballhaus, Edmund, 238 Barbash, Ilisa, 1, 2, 238 Barone, Enrico, 114, 116 Bass, Warren, 155 Bates, James, 238 Bateson, Gregory, 148, 152, 161, 162, 165, 177 Baudry, Pierre, 184 Bauer, Matti, 241 Baxandall, Michael, 310 Bazin, André, 7, 117 Becker, Howard S., 156, 310 Bedaux, Rogier, 200 Bekmambetov, Timur, 315 Bellman, Beryl, 156

Ben-Dov, Ariella, 167, 173 Benthall, Jonathan, 213 Benton, Robert, 272 Benzi, Paolo, 288 Bertelsen, Marianne, 16 Bertuccelli, Jean-Louis, 155 Bing, Wang, 296 Birdwhistell, Ray, 155 Bježanþeviü, Sanja, vi, 30 Blanchet, Severin, 184 Blanchet, Vincent, 184 Blank, Judith, 156 Block, Mitchell, 155 Boas, Franz, 148 Bonaldi, Paolo, 279 Boonzaijer-Flaes, Robert, 224 Borden, Carol, 314 Born, Georgina, 266 Bourdieu, Pierre, 7, 254, 316 Bovin, Mette, 45, 179 Boyle, Karen, 262 Bozhilova, Martichka, 282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 288 Brandon, Liane, 155 Brault, Michel, 54, 193, 199 Brecht, Bertold, 129 Brednich, Rolf, 236, 237 Brewer, John, 267 Brice, Mark, 183 Brody, Hugh, 213, 219 Bromley, Yulian, 91 Brook, Peter, 135 Broomfield, Nick, 136 Brown, Quentin, 104 Brown, William, 251 Burgess, Diane, 316 Burns, Red, 156 Cabrera, Nelson, 83 Carelli, Vincent, 75

342

Index of Names

Carpenter, Edmund, 148, 156, 170, 226 Carrelli, Vincent, 186, 189 Carstensen, Jeppe, 1 Casasu, Mario, 83 Castaing-Taylor, Lucien, 1, 74, 162, 238 Caviezel, Flavia, 241 Çelebi, Emel, 284, 285 Chagnon, Napoleon, 156 Chalfen, Richard, 146, 153, 156 Charnov, Elaine, 168 Cheung, Ruby, 15, 35, 309 Chick Strand, 153 Chio, Jenny, vi, 30 Chiozzi, Paolo, 101, 104, 108, 182 Chopra, Joyce, 155 Cnattingius, Anna, 183 Columbus, Christopher, 217 Comolli, Annie, 54 Connan, Anne, 5, 68 Conner, Bruce, 153 Connolly, Bob, 238 Cooper, Merian C., 43 Copley, Sharlto, 315, 321 Córdova, Amalia, 87 Cousins, Mark, 112, 176 Cox, John, 155 Cox, Rupert, 220 Crawford, Peter I., 10, 29, 46, 50, 65, 122, 177, 179, 182, 202, 216, 217, 222, 225, 233, 237, 324 Curling, Chris, 151 Curtis, Edward, xiv, 148, 171 D’Arthuys, Jacques, 184 Dangerfield, Rodney, 160 Dayan, Daniel, 6, 252, 270, 318 de Brigard, Emilie, 167, 168 de Bromhead, Toni, 183, 213 De France, Claudine, 54, 194, 202 de Heusch, Luc, 195, 201 de Latour, Eliane, 238 De Martino, Ernesto, 131, 139, 140 De Valck, Marijke, 4, 7, 14, 15, 74, 122, 161, 252, 253, 254, 255,

259, 277, 290, 292, 306, 309, 316, 320 de Villers, Violaine, 238 Delorme, Mariel, 196 Depardon, Raymond, 199 Deren, Maya, 152, 161, 199 Derks, Ally, 288 Derrida, Jaques, 129 di Gioia, Herb, 183, 210 Dickson, Lesley-Ann, 11, 261, 319, 323 Dieterlen, Germaine, 194, 195, 200 Dineen, Molly, 183 Dirdamal, Tim, 78 Downey, Juan, 152 Dreschke, Anja, 241 Drew, Robert, 152 Dunlop, Ian, 43, 46, 147, 183 Dyushen, Natalia, 100 Ebert, Roger, 307 Ehrenburg, Illya, 90 Eipides, Dimitri, 284, 285 Ekkens, Jaime, 116 Ekström, Knut, 45, 182 Elder, Sarah, 153 Elsaesser, Thomas, 115 Engelbecht, Beate, 29 Ethis, Emmanuel, 7 Evans, Nigel, 133 Everson, Simon, 238 Fabiánová, Diana, 289 Farnel, Sean, 287 Fausto, Carlos, 83 Filgueiras, Miguel, 117 Filimonov, Leonid, 105, 108 Fischer, Alex, 307 Fischer-Møller, Knud, 182, 184, 186, 210 Flaherty, Robert, 106, 128, 145, 147, 148, 162, 170, 171, 173, 178, 213 Forman, Sir Denis, 212, 216 Fortes, Meyer, 197 Frazer, Cliff, 153 Fuchs, Peter, 236 Fulchignoni, Enrico, 43, 194, 197

Film Festivals and Anthropology Gallois, Dominique, 186 Gann, Jon, 313 Gardner, Bob, 199 Gardner, Robert, xiii, 43, 119, 122, 132, 140, 144, 147, 148, 150, 154, 162, 165, 170, 210, 212, 215, 216, 221, 225, 230 Geddes, Colin, 308, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313, 315, 316, 317 Geertz, Clifford, 318 Geffroy, Yannick, 156 Genisaretsky, Oleg, 106 Gerbrands, Adriaan Alexander, 224, 230, 236 Gibbs, James, 149 Ginsburg, Faye, xiii, v, 167, 171, 196, 324 Goffman, Erving, 156, 270 Goldschmidt, Walter, 144, 183 Golovnev, Andrei, 105, 106 González-Abrisketa, Olatz, v Gorbachev, Mikhail, 106 Goring, Ian, 308, 314, 315 Goshovskij, Vladimir, 97 Granbom, Lotta, 186 Grierson, John, 215, 216 Gross, Larry, 154, 156, 327 Gualinga, Noemi, 218 Guiking, Ton, 224 Gumilev, Lev, 91 Gusev, Victor, 94 Gustafson, Julie, 155 Hammacher, Susanne, 220 Hayman, Graham, 14 Heider, Karl, 144, 145, 148, 150, 208 Heimo Lappalainen, 45, 182, 184 Henley, Paul, 11, 188, 189, 202, 207, 214, 325 Henning Siverts, 45 Herzfeld, Michael, 108 Hockings, Paul, 44, 66, 177, 190 Holtedahl, Lisbet, 179, 183, 238 Hoppál, Mihály, 100, 103 Hovorka, Marek, 280, 287 Hugo, Victor, 138

343

Husmann, Rolf, 29, 65, 237 Huysecom, Eric, 200 Ichioka, Yasuko, 151 Iervese, Vittorio, 10, 127, 325 Iordanova, Dina, 4, 13, 34, 86, 122, 178, 258, 277, 292, 319, 320 Irving, Andrew, 220, 221 Ivanov, Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich, 94, 102 Ivens, Joris, 135, 149 Jablonko, Allison, 155, 236 Janulaitis, KĊstutis Agustinas, 94, 97 Jech, Pavel, 288 Jenssen, Toril S., 184 Jerstad, Jon, 183, 238 Jie, Hu, 301 Jing, Guo, 295, 296, 297, 303 Johnston, Graham, 183 Jørgensen, Anne-Mette, 184 Kai, Cao, 295, 296, 301 Kamerling, Leonard, 153 Kapowsky, Peter, 314 Khrennikov, Tikhon, 93 Khrushchev, Nikita, 90 Kiener, Wilma, 238 Kildea, Gary, 183, 214 Kossakovsky, Victor, 280, 289 Kreb, Stephanie, 156 Krienes, Jeff, 155 Kuikuro, Takumã, 84 Kupershmidt, Leonid, 96 Latour, Bruno, 7 Lawder, Standish, 152 Leach, Edmund, 213 Leacock, Richard, 55, 128, 138, 140, 152, 193 Leaf, Caroline, 153 Lebrun, David, 154 Leroi-Gourhan,, 196, 204 Les Blank, 151 Levi-Strauss, Claude, 40 Liang, Ying, 295, 296, 297, 298, 303 Lindin, Cecilia, 281 Littman, Lynn, 151

344

Index of Names

Llewelyn-Davies, Melissa, 151, 215 Loist, Skadi, v, 4, 15, 253, 259, 292 Loizos, Peter, 216, 226 Lomax, Alan, 99, 104 Longinotto, Kim, 74, 75, 211 Loridan, Marceline, 149 Lourdou, Philippe, 202, 328 Lüem, Barbara, 236 Lukas, Victor, 156 Lutkehaus, Nancy, 6 Luvaas, Brent, 17 MacDonald, Kevin, 219 MacDougall, David, xiv, xv, 5, 30, 39, 43, 46, 48, 68, 145, 150, 170, 183, 184, 185, 210, 211, 212, 214, 226, 237 MacDougall, Judith, xiv, 43, 46, 145, 150, 170, 183, 214, 237 Madsen, Berit, 15, 184 Magidov, Vladimir, 105 Malinowski, Bronislaw, 209 Marshall, John, xiv, 55, 75, 132, 145, 147, 149, 151, 152, 183, 193, 197, 199, 237 Matzka, Dieter, 238 Mauss, Marcel, 253 Mayor, Anne, 200 Maysles brothers, 152 Maysles, Albert, xiii Mead, Margaret, xiii, xiv, 10, 15, 17, 23, 28, 43, 57, 60, 69, 72, 77, 80, 116, 123, 144, 145, 147, 148, 155, 165, 166, 167, 174, 177, 179, 324 Mekas, Adolfas, 152, 155 Mekas, Jonas, 152, 155 Meletinsky, Eleazar, 96 Meri, Lennart-Georg, 98, 101, 102, 103, 104, 108 Mette Bovin, 45, 179 Meurkens, Jan-Willem, 231 Meyknecht, Steef, 223, 224 Meyknecht, Steve, 237 Michaels, Eric, 152, 162 Michel, Beatrice, 238 Middleton, John, 156

Miller, Kaye, 156 Mitchell, Robert, 314 Moeran, Brian, 6, 16 Mogilyansky, Nikolay, 91 Møhl, Perle, 184 Mokuka (Brazilian native filmmaker), 218 Møller, Poul B., 185 Mooney, Karen, 156 Moore, Alexander, 226 Morin, Edgar, 131, 172 Moser, Brian,, 151, 155, 217 Mozheyko, Zinaida, 93, 94, 97 Mulchi, Hans, 83 Müller, Tue Steen, 279, 280, 281, 282, 289 Munro, Emily, 262 Myerhoff, Barbara, 151 Myers, Fred, xv Naishuller, Ilya, 315, 316, 321 Näser, Torsten, 241 Nash, June, 156 Nichols, Bill, 115, 185 Nijkand, Dirk, 50 Nikitina, Serafima, 94 Novik, Elena, 96, 97, 99, 102, 103, 104, 106 O’Brien, Denise, 150, 156 O’Rourke, Dennis, xiii, 116, 123, 175 Okada, Kazuo, 236 Omori, Yasuhiro, 182 Oppenheimer, Joshua, 74 Orlicz, Barbara, 284 Östör, Ákos, 53 Paik, Nam June, 152 Palazzolo, Tom, 155 Papajani, John, 155 Parajanov, Sergei, 97 Paravel, Véréna, 1, 2, 74, 136, 139 Parks, Walter, 151 Parrish, Essie, 154 Parry, Jonathan, 226 Peirano, María Paz, 1, 9, 10, 21, 23, 24, 26, 73, 251, 290, 326 Pennebaker, D.A., 152

Film Festivals and Anthropology Piault, Colette, v, 9, 39, 46, 55, 58, 61, 66, 68, 237, 326 Piault, Marc H., 5, 68, 104, 108, 200 Piquereddu, Paolo, 29 Polanyi, Karl, 254 Poltikovic, Viliam, 238 Porton, Richard, 13, 122, 258, 291, 321 Postma, Metje, 204, 224, 225 Powdermaker, Hortense, 256 Powell, Harry, 213 Prelorán, Jorge, 43, 74, 75, 79, 151, 183 Prenghyová, Andrea, 281, 282, 289 Prince Charles, 213 Prins, Janine, 241 Puhovski, Nenad, 281, 287, 289 Rajput, Sanjay, 314 Ramseyer, Urs, 236 Rehder, Sten, 184 Reichert, Julia, 156 Reilly, John, 155 Rekdal, Per, 179 Remunda, Filip, 281 Rens, Maarten, 224 Rikun, Zhu, 295, 296, 297, 299, 301, 302, 304 Rivet, Paul, 197 Rivière, Georges Henri, 197 Roach, Catherine, 272 Rollwagen, Jack, 28, 225 Rothschild, Amalie, 156 Rouch, Jean, xiii, xiv, 11, 28, 43, 47, 54, 104, 128, 131, 148, 159, 161, 163, 169, 177, 183, 193, 194, 195, 196, 199, 201, 202, 204, 210, 212, 216, 224, 325, 328 Ruby, Jay, xiv, 10, 104, 143, 146, 150, 154, 156, 158, 161, 162, 171, 226, 326 Rudneva, Anna, 96 Rühl, Johannes, vi, 15 Rüling, Charles-Clemens, 305 Runnell, Pille, 116 Saher, Ayse, 156 Saimre, Tanel, 186

345

San Jinés, Iván, 79 Sandall, Roger, 147, 149 Scandizzo, Hernán, 79 Schäuble, Michaela, 241 Schiltz, Anne, 117 Schlumpf, Hans-Ulrich, 237 Schneider, Klaus, 238 Schott, John, 152 Schutzenberger, Anne Ancelin, 156 Schweizer, Rosali, 238 Seeberg, Ditte Marie, 180, 184 Seegers-Krückeberg, Anna, 241 Sembene, Ousame, 156 Sertiü, Oliver, 285, 287 Šešiü, Rada, 284, 285, 287 Sette, Leo, 84 Shirokogorov, Sergei, 91 Shklovsky, Viktor, 129 Shuter, Debbie, 238 Sicheng, Yi, 295, 296, 297, 303 Silvennoinen, Pekka, 29 Silverman, Marvin, 149 Šimková, Miriam (later Miriam Ryndová), 283 Simonsen, Jan Ketil, 185 SlapiƼš, Andris, 94, 99, 100, 103, 104 Slivka, Martin, 238 Sniadecki, J.P., 2, 136, 139 Soloway, Irving, 156 Solveig Freudenthal, 45 Sönmez, Necati, 284, 285, 288 Soosaar, Mark, 103 Soto, Julio, 285 Spielberg, Steven, 271 Spray, Stephanie, 2 Stack, Jonathan, 15, 167, 172 Stalin, Joseph Vissarionovich, 90, 92 Stoeva, Anna, 282 Stoica, Marian, 238 Stone, Flo, 167, 168, 169 Stoney, George, xiii, 153 Storaas, Frode, 241 Strandberg, Mikael, 116

346

Index of Names

Strandgaard Pedersen, Jesper, 16, 305, 321 Strathern, Marilyn, 217 Strecker, Ivo, 201 Stringer, Julian, 74, 87, 261, 266, 273, 275, 306, 310, 317, 318, 321 Stürm, Hans, 238 Swatez, Jerry, 156 Szwed, John, 148 Tai Li, Hu, xiii Tamok (Brazilian native filmmaker), 218 Tari, János, 53, 210, 237 Taskovski, Irena, 281, 282 Taureg, Martin, 5, 15, 68 Tax, Sol, 144 Tealdi, Stefano, 279, 281 Thatcher, Margaret, 56 Thomson, Christopher W., 200 Thu Ha, Nguyen Thi, vi, 32 Tolstoy, Nikita, 94 Tomaselli, Keyan G., vi, 5, 14, 30 Tormis, Veljo, 102 Tormis, Veljo (born in 1930), 102 Toyotomi, Yasuchi, 151 Turan, Kenneth, 253 Turner, Terence, 186 Turner, Terry, 218 Turner, Victor, 7 Turton, David, 65, 122, 177, 216, 221, 222, 238 Ushiyama, Junichi, 151 Vale da Costa, Selda, vi, 30, 77 Valentincic Furlan, Nadja, 241 Vallejo, Aida, 1, 11, 14, 35, 251, 259, 277, 285, 286, 327 Van de Peer, Stefanie, 15, 35 van der Keuken, Johan, 225 van der Post, Laurens, 197 Van Gennep, Arnold, 7 Vasulka, Steina, 152 Vasulka, Woody, 152 Vaughn, E.J., 152 Velez, Pacho, 2 Veraart, Orsi, 186

Vertov, Dziga, 148 Veuve, Jacqueline, 238 Wagenberg, Monika, 14 Wanono, Nadine, 11, 193, 195, 200, 203, 328 Warner, Elizabeth A., 99, 100 Watkins, Peter, 183 Watt, Harry, 214, 216, 218, 219 Weinstein, Miriam, 155 Wellinger, Ingrid, 15 Wenguang, Wu, 295, 296, 297 Werbner, Richard, 220 West, W. Peter, 154 Westrich, Michael, 241 Whilhelm, Christiane, 283 Williams, Carroll, 144, 145 Williams, Joan, 28 Willmont, Jacques, 195 Wilson, Tim, 155 Wiseman, Frederick, 135, 152 Wo, Wang, 302 Wong, Cindy Hing-Yuk, 8 Woodhead, Leslie, 238 Worth, Sol, 145, 146, 153, 160, 161, 170, 196, 327 Wright, Basil, 43, 215, 216, 221 Wright, Chris, 220 Xianmin, Zhang, 295, 296, 300, 303, 304 Xianting, Li, 295, 296, 297, 298, 301 Xin, Xu, 301 Yang, Yang, 295, 296, 297, 303 Yaxuan, Zhang, 295, 296, 304 Yeaworth, Shorty, 154 Yerkovich, Sally, 156 Yi, Han, 301 Young, Colin, 43, 46, 48, 65, 144, 162, 183, 184, 188, 193, 199, 210, 212, 225 Young, Sir George, 133 Yuan, He, 295, 296, 297 Yunlong, Wang, 301 Zavattini, Cesare, 131 Zemp, Hugo, 5, 68 Zeno, Thierry, 238

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

16 mm, 41, 45, 48, 61, 62, 148, 153, 156, 180, 182, 186, 196, 202, 243 35 mm, 41, 48, 52, 61, 202 3D, xv 4K projection, 230 AAA. American Anthropological Association, 23, 27, 28, 62, 66, 144, 145, 147, 160, 319 Aaland, 179 Aarhus University, 185, 187, 324 Aboriginal Australians, 193 Aca-Fandom, 272, 274, 275 Access, 266 Accommodation, 60, 208, 287, 297, 312 Accreditation, 291 Activism, 13, 15, 17, 34, 86, 87, 140, 178 Actor-Network Theory, 8 Admission fees (see cost of registration), 60 Africa, 4, 14, 24, 31, 33, 35, 148, 156, 228, 239, 243, 255, 259, 320, 326 Africa Museum in Berg and Dal (Netherlands), 228 Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging party, 136 Agitprop (production company, Bulgaria), 282 AIKAX. Associação Indigena dos Kuikuro do Alto Xingu, 83 Akbank Sanat art centre (Istanbul), 284 ALA. Congreso Latinoamericano de Antropología [Latin American Anthropology Conference], 75

Alaska Native Heritage Film Project, 153 All-Union Commission for Musical Folk Art (Folklore Commission) (Russia), 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 108 All-Union House of Composers (Vsesoyuzny Dom Kompozitorov) (Moscow, Russia), 90 Alto Xingu region (Brazil), 84 Amblin Entertainment, 152 American Museum of Natural History, xiii, 145, 165 Amsterdam School of Visual Anthropology, 224 Animation, 280 Anthropological Survey of India, 32 Anthropologie Filmique group, 54 Anthropology Film Center (US), 28, 144, 145 Appalshop, 153 Arabic, 44 Archives, 63, 123, 195, 200, 320 Arctic, 44, 98, 185, 189 Argentina, v, 17, 24, 75, 77, 78, 79, 80, 83, 278 Argentinian Ministry of Culture, 78 Armenia, 26, 44, 51, 89 Art, 14, 16, 17, 67, 90, 91, 129, 140, 152, 156, 162, 163, 203, 259, 260, 292, 310, 326, 328 Art-house, 266 Artificial light, 197 Artistic, 152, 287 Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), 262

348

Index of Subjects

Asia, 4, 15, 24, 26, 31, 33, 35, 39, 239 Association of Korean Research (Vietnam), 32 Attendance, 169, 208, 211, 218, 219, 266, 307 Audience, 46, 83, 133, 134, 169, 207, 220, 226, 243, 262, 269, 270, 271, 274, 275, 310, 320, 323 Australia, 26, 39, 46, 68 Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 149 Authoritarian regime, 293, 299 Auto-ethnography, 79, 253 Autopoesis, 319 Avant garde, 152 Avicom, the audiovisual network of Museums, 53 Awards (see prizes), 68, 71, 72, 81, 274 Azerbaijan, 51, 89 BAFTA. British Academy of Film and Television Arts (UK), 212 Balinese, 148, 157, 162 Balkan Documentary Center (BDC), 283, 284, 285, 286, 287 Balkans, 283, 284, 285, 290 Barnard College, xiv BBC television, 151, 183, 212, 213, 266, 274 BDC (Balkan Documentary Center) Workshop, 283, 286, 287 Beijing Bureau of Culture (China), 300 Beijing University, 296, 297 Belarus, 89, 96 Benares, 226 Berlinale Talent Campus, 282 Bessarabia, 89 Beta SP, 62 BFA. Beijing Film Academy, 294, 296 Black & White, 63 Blockbuster, 316 Blu-ray, 61

Bolivia, 79, 80 Bollywood (see Hindi film industry), 14, 259 Bosnia-Herzegovina, 284, 286 Bozo, in Mali, 202 Brazil, 24, 25, 26, 47, 75, 77, 186, 218 British Universities Film & Video Council, 100 Broadcast, 54, 64, 154, 213 Bulgaria, 51, 98, 284 Burkina Faso, 32, 324 Buyers, 6, 138, 252, 282, 316 CAFFE. Coordinating Anthropological Film Festivals in Europe, 22, 29, 35, 229, 233 Cambridge University, 16, 161, 197 Cameroon, 188 Canadian Film Board, 153 Canary Islands, 138 Canelos Quichua from Ecuador, 218 Capitalism, 122 Carpathian area, 97 CDP. Collaborative Doctoral Partnership, 263 Celluloid, 181 Center for Visual Communication, 102 Central Asia, 89 Central State Archive of the USSR for Film and Photo Documents, 99 Centre for Contemporary Art (Glasgow), 264 Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), 195 CFE. Comité du Film Ethnographique [Committee of Ethnographic Film or Ethnographic Film Committee], 27, 35, 47, 193, 194, 196, 201, 202, 203, 204, 328 Challenge for Change Program (Canada), 153 Channel 4 Television, 207, 213

Film Festivals and Anthropology Chile, 75, 76, 78, 79, 80, 82, 83, 87, 326 China, 25, 26, 149, 220, 293, 294, 295, 296, 297, 301, 302, 303 Chinese Communist Party, 301 Christian, 154 Chukotka, 99 CIFES. Comité International du Film Ethnographique et Sociologique [International Committee of Ethnographic and Sociological Film], 133, 201 Cineblend (Amsterdam), 228 Cineclub of the Universidad Central (Bogotá), 231 Cinephile, 7, 85, 118, 305 Cineteca Nacional (Santiago de Chile), 79 Cineworld (multiplex in Glasgow), 264 CLACPI. Consejo Latinoamericano de Cine y Video de Pueblos Indígenas [Latin American Council for Indigenous Peoples’ Film and Communication], vi, 34, 76, 80, 81, 86 Close-up, 64 CNRS. Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 47, 68, 100, 195, 196, 199, 200, 202, 326, 328 Collaborative research, 11, 266, 275 Colloquio Internazionale sul film etnografico e sociologico [International Conference on Ethnographic and Sociological Film] (Florence, 1962), 132 Colombia, 26, 29, 76, 79, 80, 81, 231 Commission (International Commission on Visual Anthropology of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences), 42, 57

349

Commissioning editors, 138, 279, 281, 282, 283 Communication department, 313 Communication directors, 309 Competitive, 16 Cooperative, 28, 140 Co-production, 279, 280, 281, 282, 286, 289 Cornerhouse (arts cinema, Manchester), 215 Corporate models, 319 Creative Co-Funding of Indie Films (Rotterdam), 295 Creativity, 54, 64, 203 Critics, 7, 149, 253, 284, 296, 314, 326, 327 Croatian Audiovisual Centre, 285 Cult, 149 Cultural Capital of Europe, 60 Cultural exoticism, 132, 209 Cultural revolution, 301 Cultural studies, 8, 15, 187, 327 Curators, 117, 119, 200 CVA. Commission of Visual Anthropology, 5, 10, 22, 29, 65, 66, 67, 68, 109 Cyprus, 61 Czechoslovakia, 57 Dancers, 232 Data, 156 DCP (Digital Cinema Package), 232 Decision-making, 264, 267, 307 Delhi Symposium on Visual Anthropology, 32 Denmark, 1, 45, 46, 50, 179, 184, 185, 187, 190, 191, 279, 324 Department of Anthropology in Tromsö,, 54 Department of Ethnography in Leiden, 54 DER (Documentary Educational Resources), 145, 161, 204 Digital beta, 62 Digital sound, 230 Disability, 243, 245

350

Index of Subjects

Discovery Campus Training Workshop, 283 Discrimination, 56, 245 Distribution, 72, 87, 141, 156, 292 Distributors, 138, 143, 282 Doc Alliance Project, 280, 287 Docs for Sale documentary market, IDFA, 288 Documentary, 1, 13, 16, 17, 23, 25, 26, 30, 35, 44, 45, 51, 75, 77, 78, 83, 102, 103, 106, 135, 140, 141, 144, 145, 177, 189, 194, 225, 227, 259, 260, 277, 279, 280, 281, 282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 292, 323, 325, 326, 327 Documentary in Europe Workshop (Bardonecchia, Italy), 281 Dogon, 47, 193, 194, 195, 200, 328 DOK.Incubator workshop, 289 Downtown Community Video Center (US), 155 Dukla cinema (Jihlava), 280 Durham University (UK), 48, 87, 162, 163, 218, 303, 320 DV format, 45 DVD, 61, 62, 220, 230, 232, 244, 285, 287, 294, 300, 303 EASA. European Association of Social Anthropologists, 30, 33, 114 East European Forum (pitching, Jihlava), 280, 281, 282, 289 East Silver Market, 284 Eastern Europe, 24, 40, 45, 50, 51, 53, 239, 281, 282 EC. Encyclopaedia Cinematographica (Germany), 236, 237, 238 Ecuador, 79 Editing (montage), 41, 132, 246, 293 EDN. European Documentary Network, 279 Educational Film Librarians Association, 147

EHESS. École des Hautes Études en Sciencies Sociales (Paris), 52 EIFAC. Edinburgh International Film Audiences Conference (2009), 262 Embassy of the Netherlands, 231 Emic, 255 ENAH. Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 75 England, 207, 220, 274 Entertainment, 168, 169, 294, 319 Environment, 220 EPHE. École Pratique des Hautes Études (Paris), 54 Estonia, 89, 98, 100, 102, 103, 108, 190 Estonian Institute (Eesti Instituut), 98 Ethiopia, 175 Ethnofiction, 155 Ethnographic Bureau (Russia), 105, 106 Ethnographic description, 277 Ethnographic Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 100, 103 Ethnography, 15, 26, 40, 50, 65, 122, 161, 162, 163, 177, 204, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 233, 251, 254, 258, 259, 260, 269, 274, 275, 277, 292, 293, 305, 317, 318, 324 Ethnomethodology, 251 Ethnomusicology, 40 Etic, 255 Etnoscopio A.C., 75 Eurasia, 105 Eurocentrism, 33 European City of Culture (see Cultural Capital of Europe), 264 Evaluation of Ethnographic and Folkloristic Films seminar (Florence), 43 Ex Oriente Film workshop, 280, 282

Film Festivals and Anthropology Experimental, xv, 1, 2, 3, 77, 82, 107, 113, 152, 162, 163, 172, 173, 176, 199, 235, 243, 297 EYE Film Institute (Amsterdam), 226, 227, 229, 230, 232 Factish Field art and anthropology, 220 Fake, 155 FAMU film academy, 281, 288 Fanhall Studio (China), 297, 301 Faroe Islands, 179 Fees, 56, 60, 69, 85 FIAPF. Fédération Internationale des Associations de Producteurs de Films, 115 Fieldwork, xvi Film Bureau (China), 294, 302 Film clubs, 294 Film Festival Identity Workshop (Jihlava), 287 Film festival yearbook, 4, 13, 15, 34, 35, 86, 87, 140, 178, 258, 292, 319, 320 Film Foundation of Lower Saxony, 244 Film Reference Library, TIFF (Toronto), 312 Financing, 49, 60, 71, 235, 244, 285, 296 Finland, 25, 29, 45, 98, 116, 119, 123, 160, 179, 188, 190, 283, 324 Finno-Ugric peoples, 93, 98 Folklore Commission (USSR), 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 108 Folklore on the Screen research group, 96, 97 FONCA. Government Fund Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (Mexico), 75 Fórum de Cinema e Antropologia, 77

351

France, xiii, 10, 23, 24, 26, 27, 35, 41, 44, 47, 48, 50, 54, 55, 63, 68, 69, 100, 202, 204, 282, 326 French Institute, 212 French structuralists, 224 Fueguino indigenous peoples, 83 Fuji, 69, 195 Fund for Ethnology in Leiden (Netherlands), 230 Fund representatives, 282 Funding, 59, 156, 286 Funds, 8, 31, 56, 60, 61, 74, 75, 77, 145, 188, 244, 291 Gender, 197, 242, 243, 245, 315 Geopolitics, 14, 86, 161, 252, 259, 292, 320 Georgia, 51, 89, 95, 96 Glasgow Film Theatre, 262, 263, 264, 265 Global South, 216 Global Village (New York), 154 Goldsmiths College, 218, 220 Government, 56, 75, 89, 199, 228, 288, 297, 298, 299, 300, 301, 317 GPO Film Unit, 214, 215 Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology, 48, 54, 77, 186, 187, 188, 189, 215, 219, 325 Granada Television, 151, 161, 210, 212, 217, 219 Grass Roots Television (US), 155 Great Britain, 99, 100 Greenland, 185 Guests, 312 Hamar pastoralists of Ethiopia, 207 Hamar society, 201 Hanoi University of Culture, 32 Hanoi University of Social Science and Humanity, 32 Harry Watt Fund, 218 Harvard University, 1, 74, 136, 274 HD. High Definition, 62 Hindi film industry (see Bollywod), 256

352

Index of Subjects

Hollywood, 12, 14, 16, 17, 86, 143, 147, 152, 162, 256, 260, 292, 320 Home movies, 153 Hong Kong, 13, 299, 320 Human rights, 5, 22, 74 ICAES. International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, 27, 44 Iceland, 45, 179, 190, 191, 324 IDF. Institute of Documentary Film (Prague), 281 Immaterial cultural heritage, 227 INAPL (National Institute of Anthropology and Latin American Thought), 78 Independent cinema, 33, 264, 272, 293, 300 Indian National Trust for Art and Culture, 32 Indigenous, 4, 10, 34, 73, 74, 76, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 165, 170, 173, 175, 186, 211, 214, 240, 284, 324, 325 Industry representatives, 11, 287, 311 Industry sections, 289 Industry-partnered research, 262, 269, 273 Information management, 12, 253, 309, 317, 318, 319 Insider, 8, 11, 254, 256, 261, 262, 265, 267, 268, 269, 270, 272, 273, 319 Institute of Contemporary Arts (UK), 212 Instituto Superiore Regionale Etnografico (Nuoro, Sardinia), 49 Interactive media, 239 International Conference on the Origins of Ethnographic Film, 60 International Film Festival Workshop (University of St Andrews, Scotland, 2009), 251

International Seminar of Visual Anthropology in Jodhpur (India), 32 Interviews, 303 Inuit, 47, 153 Istituto Italiano per il Film di Documentazione Sociale [Italian Institute for Social Documentary Film], 135 Istituto superiore regionale etnografico della Sardegna, 60 Italian neorealism, 131 IWF. Institut für den Wissenschaftlichen Film [Institute for Scientific Film] (Göttingen), 49, 60, 201, 235, 236, 237, 244, 246, 247, 324 Jan Vrijman Fund (IDFA, Amsterdam), 281 Jeonju Digital Project (pitch competition, JIFF, China), 295 Jews, 44 Jornadas de Antropología Visual de Mexico [Mexican Days of Visual Anthropology], 75 Juries, 16, 68, 69, 288 Jvc, 69, 216 Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), 179 Karelo-Finnish SSR, 89 Kashia Pomo, 154 Kayapó, 186, 189 Kayapo Video Project, 218 Kazakhstan, 51, 89 Kenya, 215 Khabarovsk Territory, 100 Kodak, 69, 195 Korean Foundation, 32 Krakow Film Foundation, 284 Kuikuro, 84 Kunming University, 296 Kutaisi (Georgia), 95 Kyrgyzstan, 51 Latin America, 9, 10, 15, 31, 34, 73, 74, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 84, 85, 87, 220, 326 Latvia, 89, 94, 109

Film Festivals and Anthropology Leeds Metropolitan University, 220 Leiden School of Visual Anthropology, 224 Leiden University, 50, 201, 230, 326 Leverhulme Foundation, 54 LGBT. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, 296 Li Xianting Foundation, 298, 301 Likhachev Russian Research Institute of Cultural and Natural Heritage, 105 Lithuania, 89, 94 Long take, 64 Los Angeles Video Van Project, 153 Maison des Arts et de la Culture de Créteil, 195 Mali, 188 Management, 305, 309, 317, 320, 321, 323, 325 Manchester University, 48, 60, 65, 122, 177, 221, 222 Maps, 127, 139 Market, 7, 115, 131, 137, 159, 228, 283, 289 Marketing department, 313 Max Planck Institute (Göttingen), 60 MEDIA programme of the European Union, 279 Mediterranean, 44 Mexico, v, 75, 76, 79, 80, 82, 174, 278, 324, 326 Midnight Madness Blog (TIFF, Canada), 309, 313 Midnight Madness program (TIFF, Toronto), 307, 308, 309, 310, 312, 313, 315, 316, 319 Migrant organisations, 232 Ministère des Affaires Etrangères (France), 72 Ministry of Culture of Colombia, 231 Ministry of Development Aid (Netherlands), 228 Minorities, 41, 43, 44, 55, 153, 297

353

Minority, 133, 163 Mobility, 108, 211, 245, 277 Moldavia, 89 MoMA. Museum of Modern Art (New York), xiv Money, 56 Mp4 (HD264), 232 Multi-sited ethnography, 255, 259, 292 Musée des Arts et Traditions Populaires (Paris), 197 Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée (Mucen), 202 Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino [Chilean PreColumbian Art Museum], 79 Museum of Antiquities (Netherlands), 230 Museum of Ethnography (Hungary), 53, 190, 226, 228 Museum of Ethnography (Leiden), 226, 228 Museum of Ethnology (Rotterdam), 224 Museum of Fine Arts (Bilbao, Basque Country), 279 Museum of Natural History (Los Angeles), 158 Museum of Natural History (New York, US), 60 Museum of Romanian Peasant (Bucharest), 52 Music, 41, 44, 52, 55, 91, 92, 95, 96, 97, 173, 220, 224, 227, 228, 243, 326 Music concerts, 91, 227 Musical folklore, 90, 94, 95, 107 Musicians, 71, 91, 95, 232, 326 NAFA. Nordic Anthropological Film Association, 15, 28, 179 Nanterre University, 194 Narrative, 111, 189 National Endowment for the Arts (US), 158

354

Index of Subjects

National Ethnographic Museum (Netherlands), 228 National Film Theatre (UK), 212 National Museum for World Cultures (Leiden), 228, 229 National Museum of Ethnography (Etnografiska Museet) (Stockholm), 180 National Research University Higher School of Economics (Russia), 107, 327 National Science Foundation (US), 145, 160 Nationalism, 93, 115 Native Americans, 153, 154, 217 Navahos, 147, 153 Netherlands, 10, 24, 50, 223, 224, 227, 228, 230, 231, 233, 285, 288 Netsilik Eskimo, 150 Networking, v, 10, 11, 21, 28, 29, 30, 31, 34, 42, 57, 58, 59, 64, 74, 77, 81, 121, 182, 183, 253, 254, 277, 278, 282, 283, 284, 287, 289, 297, 299 New York Community Film Workshop, 153 New Zealand, 34, 57, 81 Newsletter, 5, 10, 22, 35, 57, 65, 66, 67, 68, 109, 144 NFTS. National Film & Television School (Beaconsfield, UK), 48, 68, 183, 184, 185, 201, 212, 213, 325 NFTS2, 54 NGO, 83 Nodes, 4, 8, 73, 81 Non-diegetic music, 197 Non-profit organisations, 130, 294, 302 Non-sync sound, 64 Nordic Countries, 66, 189 Northern Bukovina, 89 Norway, 45, 179, 183, 190, 191 Norwegian Film Institute, 185, 190

Núcleo Chileno de Antropología Visual [Chilean Visual Anthropology Group], 75 Observant participation, 272 Observational, 152, 165, 183, 210, 215, 224, 270, 272, 273 Oculus Rift, xv Odyssey Television, 151, 221 Olympion Theatre (Thessaloniki), 283, 284 ONF. Office Nationald du Film du Canada/National Film Board of Canada, 54 Online database, 283 Oscar. Academy Awards, 151 Otherisation, 33 Outsider, 8, 11, 256, 261, 262, 266, 267, 268, 270, 273, 318 Oxford University, 16, 39, 65, 87, 140, 177, 219, 259, 274 Papua and New Guinea, 47 Paraguay, 79 Paris X University, 54, 194 Participant observation, 113, 253, 265, 266, 267, 268, 272, 273, 278, 293 Participatory fieldwork, 306 Participatory video, 78 Pathé Tuschinski theatre (Amsterdam), 288 Performing arts, 227 Photography, 39, 54, 75, 131, 144, 157, 158, 168, 325 PIEF. Program in Ethnographic Film (Temple University) (later Society for the Anthropology of Visual Communication), 27, 144, 145 Pitching forum, 279, 280, 281, 282, 287, 289, 291 Polish Docs, 284 Political, 302 Positionality, 255, 268 Practice Society film club (China), 294, 296, 300 Pre-capitalist societies, 254

Film Festivals and Anthropology Premiere, 169, 287, 291, 313, 315, 316 Primorye Territory, 100 Prizes (see awards), 106, 147, 155, 211, 212, 214, 215, 217, 219, 220, 239 Production, 62, 86, 141, 157, 161, 194, 258, 292 Programming, 178, 235, 237, 239, 246, 287, 312, 319, 320, 321 Protestant, 154 Public Centre of Visual Anthropology (Lomonosov Moscow State University), 105, 107 Q&A, 113, 117, 168, 200, 295, 298, 299, 315, 321 Qualitative, 140, 253, 274 Quantitative, 274 Quechua, 83 Racism, 136, 212 RAI Film Committee, 213, 214, 216 RAI. Royal Anthropological Institute (UK), xiii, 23, 28, 48, 54, 60, 113, 182, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 219, 220, 221, 222, 325 Raindance Foundation (US), 155 RAM. Reunión de Antropología del Mercosur [Mercosur Anthropology Meeting], 75 Reality, 189 Reception, 274 Red carpet, 307, 313, 314 Reflexivity, 162, 255 Regards Comparés, 47, 55, 197, 328 Regards sur les Sociétés Européennes [Looking at European Societies] seminar, 45, 50, 53, 56, 61, 65, 66 REMAV. Red Mexicana de Antropología Visual [Mexican Visual Anthropology Network], 75 Retrospectives, 63, 75

355

RGNF. Russian Foundation for the Humanities, 89 Riga Film Studio, 100 Right-wing, 228 Ritual, 41, 55, 66, 67, 96, 100, 103, 131, 224, 290 Roles, 156, 256, 274 Roundtable, 147, 284, 285 Royal Asiatic Society (UK), 214 Royal Tropical Institute (Netherlands), 227, 228 Rules, 256 Rural, 82 Russia, 9, 24, 25, 31, 46, 52, 89, 91, 105, 108 Russian Institute for Cultural Research, 107 Russian Visual Anthropology Association, 52 Salvage ethnography, 132 Samoyed, 98 Sàpmi, 179 SAPPRFT. State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (China), 294 Sardinia, 23, 29, 49, 57, 131, 190 SAVAN. Dutch Foundation for Audio-Visual Anthropology, 223 Science, v, 102, 140, 156, 162, 190, 225, 278 SCMS. Society for Cinema and Media Studies, 261 SEL. Sensory Ethnography Lab (Harvard), 1, 2, 3, 74, 136 Selection committees, 28, 33, 54, 128, 187, 188, 210, 235, 237, 239, 240, 242, 243, 246, 296, 326 Self-censorship, 297, 302 Self-reflectiveness, 104 Shamanism, 53, 109 Shared anthropology, 199 Siberia, 52, 91, 96, 98, 100, 106, 187, 189 Sicily, 49, 57

356

Index of Subjects

Siegen University, 244 Sina Weibo, microblog (China), 300 Sites of passage, 7, 8, 255, 290, 316 SOAS. School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London), 48, 212, 215, 218 Society for the Anthropology of Visual Communication (former PIEF), 144, 145, 160 Sociology, 41, 43, 140, 223, 233, 274, 325, 326 Söder, 182 Songzhuang Art Museum, 297, 301 Sound, 157, 227, 323 South Africa, 32, 136 South America, 46 Southern Appalachian Video Ethnography Project (East Tennessee State University), 153 Soviet Bloc, 280 Soviet Union, 31, 51, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 98, 99, 100, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 109, 327 Spain, v, 25, 50, 73, 79, 278, 279, 324, 327 Spokesperson, 306, 314, 316, 317, 318 Sponsorship, 30, 56, 60, 71 Stakeholders, 31, 74, 116, 293, 309 State University of Leiden, 223 State-owned, 294 Stefilm (production company, Italy), 279 Studenski Centar [student centre] (Zagreb), 281 Students, 32, 48, 50, 78, 105, 107, 127, 133, 144, 145, 160, 170, 176, 183, 184, 187, 188, 193, 194, 195, 196, 199, 201, 202, 211, 216, 224, 231, 239, 244, 281, 283, 294, 299 Summer Institute in Visual Anthropology (US), 145, 160 Super 8 mm, 194, 195, 201, 202

SVA. Society for Visual Anthropology, 15, 23, 28, 62, 66, 67, 160 Sweden, 45, 50, 57, 179, 183, 190 Swedish Film Institute, 182 Taboo, 256, 257 Taiwan, xiii, 25 Tajikistan, 89 Talking head, 242 Tallinn Seminar of Ethnographic Films, 103 Taskovski Films Ltd (distribution company, UK/Czech Republic), 281 Tasks and Methods for Promoting Musical Folklore seminar (Russia), 95 Teaching, 53, 144, 156 Television, 54, 59, 63, 64, 70, 71, 72, 93, 96, 97, 98, 102, 116, 132, 143, 151, 153, 154, 166, 196, 197, 201, 207, 213, 217, 218, 220, 228, 232, 240, 279, 282, 293, 294, 302, 323, 325 Temple University, xiv, 10, 143, 145, 146, 326 Theatre, xv, 91, 97, 116, 138, 224, 227, 228, 232, 263, 281, 297 Theatrical release, 313 Thick description, 254, 272 Third world, 3, 113, 115, 184, 212 TIFF Bell Lightbox (Toronto), 312 Total social fact, 253 Transcaucasia, 89 Tripod, 197 Trobriand Islands, 213 Tropenmuseum (Amsterdam), 227, 228 Tropentheater (Amsterdam), 224, 226, 227, 228, 229 Turkana, 150, 237 Turkey, 284, 285, 286 Turkic peoples, 93 Turkmenistan, 89 UACM. Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de México, 75

Film Festivals and Anthropology UCSJ. Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana (Mexico), 75 Ukraine, 89, 96, 97 Umatic, 62 UNESCO, 43, 171, 194, 201, 212, 218 UNESCO Round Table on Ethnographic Film in the Pacific Area, 43 Union of Composers of the RSFSR/USSR/Russian Federation, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 99, 102, 103, 109 United Kingdom, 11, 46, 50, 57, 60, 183, 212, 217, 218, 221, 262, 264, 323, 325 United States, 9, 10, 17, 23, 24, 27, 28, 36, 39, 46, 60, 61, 62, 66, 68, 72, 104, 136, 144, 145, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 156, 159, 163, 169, 173, 272, 287, 315 Universidad Central (Bogotá), 231 University College London (UCL), 221 University of Amsterdam, 50, 223, 231, 233 University of Bristol, 208 University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), 43, 48, 145, 150, 183, 225 University of Canterbury, 60 University of Glasgow, 262 University of Illinois (Chicago), 44 University of Kent, 218, 326 University of London, 212, 214 University of Southern California (USC), 28, 180, 221, 327 University of St Andrews (Scotland), 60, 191, 258 University of the Basque Country, v, 191, 278, 279, 327 University of Utrecht, 231 University of Witwatersand (South Africa), 32 Uralic, 98

357

Urban, xiii, xiv, 16, 26, 75, 82, 87, 156, 260, 264, 274, 292, 303, 324 Urgent anthropology, 132 USSR Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Ethnography, 97 Uzbekistan, 89 Value, xv, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 69, 74, 113, 117, 135, 138, 153, 160, 196, 197, 217, 225, 254, 266, 267, 315, 316, 319, 323 Value-addition, 4, 7, 316 Value-exchange, 317 VANEASA. Visual Anthropology Network of the European Association of Social Anthropologists, 29, 328 VARAN (Ateliers) film school (Paris), 184 VCD, 294 Venezuela, 76, 79, 80, 325 VHS, 61, 62, 216, 243 VICAS. Vietnam Institute of Culture and Arts Studies, 32 Video artist, 152, 196, 296 Video-letters, 79 Videotape, 148, 156 Vimeo, 61, 116 Virtual Reality, xv Visual artists, 232 VNA. Vídeo Nas Aldeias [Video in the Villages] project, 75 Voice over, 52, 56, 197 Watershed (cultural centre, Bristol), 207, 221 Wenner-Gren Foundation, 144 Western Europe, 24, 40, 50, 51, 52, 282, 286 Withoutabox, 311 Workshop, 52, 55, 75, 80, 137, 157, 173, 174, 175, 176, 184, 187, 188, 204, 207, 216, 217, 219, 220, 237, 245, 256, 261, 279, 281, 282, 283, 285, 286, 287, 289, 291, 295, 298, 328 World anthropologies, 33

358

Index of Subjects

World Blend Café (Netherlands), 228 Yakutia (Russia), 99 Yamal-Nenets, 106 Yanomami, 47, 162, 193, 197 Youtube, 61, 116, 287

Yugoslavia, 30, 99, 281, 287, 290 Yunnan province (China), 297, 301 Yunnan Provincial Library (China), 296 Yunnan Provincial Museum (China), 297