Description
Book SynopsisThe author is a pivotal figure in the development of ethnographic cinema and visual anthropology. This title provides an overview of the history of visual anthropology, as well as commentaries on specific subjects, such as point-of-view and subjectivity, reflexivity, the use of subtitles, and the role of the cinema subject.
Trade Review"With the voice of an essayist that combine the artistic sensibility of a Bresson with the writerly craft of a Barthes, MacDougall thinks through a theory of the documentary in terms of epistemological issues... [T]his is a first-rate book."--Choice "David MacDougall ... has carried out more research in non-Western cultural contexts than most academic anthropologists and, as this book attests, is well read in the literature... The twenty or so films that he has both shot and directed have been highly influential in establishing a model of good practice in ethnographic film-making. MacDougall also has the ability to write elegantly and reflectively about what he does."--Paul Henley, London Review of Books
Table of ContentsIllustrations vii Preface ix Introduction by Lucien Taylor 3 PART ONE 1. The Fate of the Cinema Subject 25 2. Visual Anthropology and the Ways of Knowing 61 3. The Subjective Voice in Ethnographic Film 93 PART TWO 4. Beyond Observational Cinema 125 5. Complicities of Style 140 6. Whose Story Is It? 150 7. Subtitling Ethnographic Films 165 8. Ethnographic Film: Failure and Promise178 PART THREE 9. Unprivileged Camera Style 199 10. When Less Is Less 209 11. Film Teaching and the State of Documentary 224 12. Films of Memory 231 13. Transcultural Cinema 245 Bibliography 279 Filmography 293 Index 303
