Description
Book SynopsisExperimental Film and Anthropology urges a new dialogue between two seemingly separate fields. The book explores the practical and theoretical challenges arising from experimental film for anthropology, and vice versa, through a number of contact zones: trance, emotions and the senses, materiality and time, non-narrative content and montage.
Trade Review"[Experimental Film and Anthropology] tries to go beyond this established dichotomy in understanding experiment and anthropological practice as one and the same practice - and succeeds in this in a very compelling manner ... This book is much more than a mere contribution to the ""sensual turn"" in anthropology: it makes us think beyond the established canon of anthropological filmmaking, it makes us think in terms of creativity about our field, our methodology, and a medium we thought we knew all about. It might not be considered exaggerated to consider this volume one of the greatest achievements in writing on visual anthropology in the last decade. - Anthropological Notebooks
Arnd Schneider and Caterina Pasqualino have brought together an innovative collection of works that challenge a number of anthropological premises through the exploration of the many and varied techniques of experimental film ... A highly engaging and provocative collection of essays that raises a number of important and challenging questions for the practice of both written and visual anthropology. - The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology - Tiffany Cone, Australian National University, Australia
Experimental Film and Anthropology represents a profound and welcome paradigm shift for visual anthropology ... Even those with a more general interest will find fresh insights into ways of thinking about, gathering, and representing anthropological knowledge and the experiences of ethnographic subjects ... I found the book a bracing tonic, well worth the demands of time and attention, and have already incorporated it in my teaching of film as a method and mode of ethnographic inquiry. - Asian Ethnology
A very interesting collection on experimental ethnographic film [that] explores some of the technical and theoretical issues and possibilities of disturbing conventional ways of seeing, thinking, and experiencing but also implicitly raises warnings about the subjectivizing of anthropological knowledge. …a worthy addition to [Bloomsbury’s] list and to the overlapping fields of art/film and anthropology. - Anthropology Review Database
[The book] successfully shows that while experimental film has been accused of an anti-representational, self-referential and art-pour-l'art approach, it does not necessarily lack resistance to normative thinking on the real. - TAJA: The Australian Journal of Anthropology
This collection of essays examines the history and points to the future of experimental ethnography. Full of insights into experimental forms and new cultural knowledges produced through experiments in audio-visual media, this book explores an eclectic group of films. Voices of anthropologists and filmmakers come together for a fresh new perspective on the intersections of experimental and ethnographic film practices. - Catherine Russell, Concordia University, Canada"
Table of ContentsList of FiguresAcknowledgmentsContributors1. Experimental Film and AnthropologyCaterina Pasqualino, CNRS, France and Arnd Schneider, University of Oslo, Norway 2. Stills that Move: Photofilm and AnthropologyArnd Schneider, University of Oslo, Norway3. Experimental Film, Trance and Near-death ExperiencesCaterina Pasqualino, CNRS, France4. Contemporary Experimental Documentary and the Premises of Anthropology: The Work of Robert FenzNicole Brenez, University of Paris-1/Panthéon-Sorbonne, France 5. Our Favorite Film ShocksRane Willerslev, University of Oslo, and Christian Suhr, University of Arhus, Denmark6. Do No Harm – The Cameraless Animation of Anthropologist Robert AscherKathryn Ramey, Emerson College, USA7. Asynchronicity: Rethinking the Relation of Ear and Eye in Ethnographic PracticeJennifer L. Heuson, New York University, USA, and Kevin T. Allen, New School University, USA 8. Memory Objects, Memory Dialogues: Common-sense Experiments in Visual AnthropologyAlyssa Grossman, University of Gothenburg, Sweden 9. Beyond the Frames of Film and Aboriginal FieldworkBarbara Glowzcewski, CNRS, France10. Visual Media Primitivism: Toward a Poetic EthnographyMartino Nicoletti, University of Derby, UK11. From the Grain to the Pixel, Aesthetic and Political ChoicesNadine Wanono, CEMAf: Centre D’etudes des Mondes Africains / CNRS, FranceIndex of Names
