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- Convenors:
-
Aparna Sharma
(University of Glamorgan)
Martha Blassnigg (Plymouth University)
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- Discussant:
-
Michael Punt
(Plymouth University)
- Format:
- Workshops
- Location:
- Wills 3.33
- Start time:
- 20 September, 2006 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
In the light of recent directions in film history and film theory this panel is intended to invite us to rethink the uses of cinema as a research tool in the fields of anthropology.
Long Abstract:
This panel invites us to rethink the uses of cinema as a research tool in the fields of anthropology. The dominant use of cinema as primary evidence tends to derive from the orthodoxies of textual analysis of narrative films or the scrutiny of the documentary evidence of ethnographic films. The first methodological problem that this presents is that it conflates two quite distinct uses of film technology: the production of certain kind of images and sounds (film) and the institutions that have been built around their reception (cinema). Secondly we are now beginning to understand that audiences in the late 19th century were quite influential in determining the kinds of images that were presented to them and shaped the contexts in which they were received. We will show how by rethinking film, cinema and its audiences, we can use visual evidence with greater precision in our anthropological research. Punt (film and cinema historian) will discuss the determining impact on film form and cinema institutions exerted by audiences at the very threshold of the cinemas invention between the years of 1894 and 1900 and will show how established worldwide business networks allowed for a complex traffic between the remote audience and the observed that shaped film form. From the perspective of philosophy, visual anthropology and consciousness studies Blassnigg (cultural anthropologist, film theorist) will discuss the complex processes of cinema perception as an active participation that critically engages with the visions of the filmmakers, their apparatus, and their interaction with the filmed subjects. Finally from the vantage of a practising filmmaker Sharma (film maker, cultural theorist) will discuss the fundamental disparity in the relay of perceptions that are embodied in any film experience. She will show how montage editing problematises and reconciles these ruptures and in so doing impacts on our perception of other relationships. The three presentations will outline their respective positions using archive footage.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Michael Punt (Plymouth University)
Paper short abstract:
Punt examines the determining impact on film form and cinema institutions exerted by audiences at the very threshold of cinema’s invention (c1895) and shows how established worldwide business networks allowed for a complex traffic between the remote audience and the observed that shaped film form.
Paper long abstract:
This paper will discuss the determining impact on film form and cinema institutions exerted by audiences at the very threshold of the cinemas invention between the years of 1894 and 1900 and will show how established worldwide business networks allowed for a complex traffic between the remote audience and the observed that shaped film form. Proceeding from established historical research on the business strategies of the inventors of various parts of cinema technology, the paper will show how the mode of exhibition invited an interactive relationship with its local audience, and through the processes of distribution built an international consensus of how to view and classify the 'other' without resorting to a hegemonic interpretation of the film text.
Through a formalist analysis of the products of moving image technology and their cultural use as cinema we may be able to avoid the pitfalls of textual analysis, and, interrogate the film archive for evidence of a changing imaginary in which the self and the other are in flux. The significance of this approach is that the cinema dispositif (technological arrangement) can become an analogue for human consciousness that can be decoded relative to independent frameworks of data.
Martha Blassnigg (Plymouth University)
Paper short abstract:
From the perspective of philosophy, visual anthropology and consciousness studies Blassnigg will discuss the complex processes of cinema perception as an active participation that critically engages with the visions of the filmmakers, their apparatus, and their interaction with the filmed subjects.
Paper long abstract:
This paper will take the perspective of philosophy, visual anthropology and consciousness studies to present the complex processes of cinema perception (as distinct from the more familiar interpretation of film texts), to be an active participation that critically engages with the pre-packaged vision of the filmmakers and their apparatus. It will shift the attention away from the main focus on the content and the production process of the film to its reception, the involvement of the heterogeneous distributed audiences and the complex processes of the cinema experience.
The paper will draw on current research in which the author is developing a model for a comparison between the perception of film and the perception of clairvoyants. Based on an ethnographic study of clairvoyance in a European context she will deconstruct the processes of knowledge transfer and interaction with consciousness.
By revisiting Henri Bergson's philosophy and his concept of time as duration through the filter of new historicism in film theory and Edgar Morin's anthropological approach to the cinema reception, this presentation aims to critically reflect on the imaginary qualities imposed on the cinema technology and the magical connotations of technology, by inviting to a discussion of consciousness in a convergence of anthropology, philosophy and cinema studies. The paper also suggests a way to revisit the self-reflective and interactive relationships of the anthropologist in the field in particular as it becomes evident in the implications of film or new media technologies within a framework of a more complex understanding of the perception of film.
Nico de Klerk (Nederlands Filmmuseum)
Paper short abstract:
Film, let alone the 'humble' home movie, is not widely considered to be an important source in the humanities. On the basis of a selection of home movies made in the Dutch East-Indies de Klerk will make a case for the relevance of moving images – and their limits – in historical and social research.
Paper long abstract:
This presentation will discuss how the work of a filmarchive can contribute to anthropological research. In particular the paper will address the study of early non fiction material and issues of distribution, cultural exchange and specificity, post-colonial discourse and questions around filmform and content in relation to the function of research in a filmarchive. The presentation will draw on the experience of the presenter and his long standing engagement with the Netherlands Filmmuseum.
The Netherlands Filmmuseum is a national archive that collects, preserves, restores, and presents materials belonging to the Dutch cinema culture; it also distributes contemporary films. As the Dutch cinema culture is its domain, the Netherlands Filmmuseum focuses not merely on materials produced in the Netherlands, but also, if not more so, on all those materials that were distributed, exhibited, displayed or that were otherwise related to cinema as business, experience, and art in the Netherlands. In a small production country that means that the majority of its materials is of foreign origin.
'Nico de Klerk is a researcher at the Netherlands Filmmuseum in Amsterdam. In his work he has focused on, among other things, early documentary, colonial cinema, the programme as an exhibition format, and the notion of national cinema. Results of this work resulted in a series of international Amsterdam Workshops, such as "In the Eye of the Beholder" in 2000, in museum programmes, and in publications. He has edited Nonfiction from the Teens (1994), 'Disorderly order': colours in silent film (1996), Uncharted territory: essays in early nonfiction film (1997), and Raymond Depardon: photographer/filmmaker (2005). He has published articles in various Dutch and international journals.'
Aparna Sharma (University of Glamorgan)
Paper short abstract:
Montage collides at the core of anthropological inquiry raising cultural positioning in a complex register. Examining third world avant-garde cinema this paper exposits montage as a critical practice entwining etic and emic perspectives. It is argued this stresses ethnographic documentation’s scope.
Paper long abstract:
Mobilizing the possibility of juxtaposition, montage editing collides at the core of anthropological inquiry raising the subject of cultural positioning in its most complex equations. In this paper, Montage and Ethnicity — conversations in documenting culture, I will argue how this form-based intervention contributes in furthering an understanding of ethnic subjectivities and the ramifications this has for ethnographic documentation. For this I will examine occupations from third world avant-garde cinema, where montage has served in fulfilling complex constructions. At the first instance, the montage principle of dialectical confliction has been evoked as a mode of 'critical juxtaposition' — a means to problematise discourses surrounding subjects such as the nation and gender. Further, editing dynamics privileging qualities of rhythm, movement, tone, interval and insistent upon framing, whose foremost exemplar are the experiments of Dziga Vertov, one finds get evoked in a gesture for articulating a more perceptual stance that muddies the disparity between cinema and its audiences, despite their cultural location/s.
By tracing a line of communication between modern Indian thinker and poet Rabindranath Tagore and the avant-garde interventions of filmmakers, Ritwik Ghatak and Kumar Shahani, the paper will discuss particular montage principles transacted and situated in relation to classical Indian aesthetics including tantric iconography to attend particular political concerns. It will exposit the implication of a principally haptic and movement oriented dynamic within the constructions as the spiritual stance evoking an ancient aesthetic tradition along with a more urgent occupation, which I argue likens as the implication between the etic and emic anthropological perspectives respectively. This entwining of the etic and emic positions allows in resituating the scope of documentation in relation to ethnic subjects beyond conventional aspirations for cultural exposition towards a more argumentative and culturally conversant stance that complicates subject positions and deemphasises conformist categories such as those surrounding colonialism.
Beate Engelbrecht (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity)
Paper short abstract:
How does the publication of films, the possible uncontrolled uses of films, and the questions of rights and respect influence the process of anthropological film-making? The paper will discuss these questions in the context of long-term anthropological research with Mexican migrants in Mexico and Florida.
Paper long abstract:
Filmmaking is a highly complex process. In the context of anthropological research it is a valuable tool in many aspects. Recording images, constructing stories, discussing montage - nowadays it is possible to do this together with the protagonists easily. What does this mean concerning the research and the publication process? It opens up a new world of research possiblities. It questions the publication process. Here, new options have to be considerate. The production of DVDs on one side, the possiblility of publishing visual material in parts, together with written material, without a given story is one new prospect. The publication of visual material in the Internet is another important and very problematic possibility. Both options question the role of the audience. Is the prospective audience passive, consuming, active, investigating, or …? How does the publication of films, the possible uncontrolled uses of films, the questions of rights and respect influence the filmmaking process itself? The paper will discuss these questions in the context of longterm anthopological research with Mexican migrants in Mexico and Florida and in the context of discussing various film project with young ethnographic filmmakers.
Chris Speed (Plymouth University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper will identify the potential for online digital animations as a medium for expressing the complex and relational properties of social, cultural, economic and political human interactions with their environment as they are found in human geography and architectural theory.
Paper long abstract:
This paper will identify the potential for online digital animations as a medium for expressing the complex and relational properties of social, cultural, economic and political human interactions with their environment as they are found in Human Geography and Architectural theory.
By reflecting upon the use of film by architects and spatial designers throughout the twentieth century, the paper will identify how time based media has been used to express specific theoretical frameworks for time and space using both qualitative and quantitative methods. Tracing the work of Architects such as Ray and Charles Eames to Patrick Keiller, their films will be placed in a larger context that allows us to identify their own social, spatial and temporal disposition through their particular use of technology and means of production.
The author uses an analysis of these historical films as a means of presenting his own work that uses live computer generated animations as an appropriate contemporary medium for expressing complex spatial and temporal concepts. Situated within socially constituted networks that use relational databases to track spatial and semantic activity within an architectural context, the computer models represent time based visions for understanding space and time beyond the use of film or video.