Description
Book SynopsisSuitable for visual anthropologists, as well as film scholars interested in experimental and documentary practices, this book focuses on both the avant-garde and visual anthropology. It provides an analyses of more than thirty-five films and videos from the 1890s to the 1990s.
Trade Review“The breadth and range of this book is fantastic. Russell tackles many interesting problematics and she does so through an eclectic choice of examples. This will stand out as a major and unique redefinition of the fields of experimental cinema and visual anthropology.”—
Ivone Margulies, author of
Nothing Happens: Chantal Akerman’s Hyperrealist Everyday“This is an extremely important and innovative book. Russell brings together two distinct fields from film studies that have previously remained separate—the avant-garde and ethnographic film—and reconstructs their relationship in such a way that both fields are significantly transformed.”—
David E. James, author of
Power Misses: Essays Across (Un)Popular CultureTable of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Preface xi
Introduction to Experimental Ethnography
1. Another Look
2. Surrealist Ethnography
Documentary Before Documentary
3. The Body as the Main Attraction
4. Ethnotopias of Early Cinema
5. Playing Primitive
The Undisciplined Gaze
6. Zoology, Pornography, Ethnography
7. Framing People: Structural Film Revisited
Other Realities
8. Ecstatic Ethnography: Filming Possession Rituals
9. Archival Apocalypse: Found Footage as Ethnography
Conclusion
10. Autoethnography: Journeys of the Self
Notes
Bibliography
Filmography
Index
