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Ethnographic Film
An ethnographic film is a non-fiction film, often similar to a documentary film, historically shot by Western filmmakers and dealing with non-Western people, and sometimes associated with anthropology. Definitions of the term are not definitive. Some academics claim it is more documentary, less anthropology, while others think it rests somewhere between the fields of anthropology and documentary films. Anthropologist and ethnographic filmmaker David MacDougall wrote in a 1978 paper: "Ethnographic films cannot be said to constitute a genre, nor is ethnographic film-making a discipline with unified origins and an established methodology. Since the first conference on ethnographic film was held at the Musée de l'Homme 30 years ago, the term has served a largely emblematic function, giving a semblance of unity to extremely diverse efforts in the cinema and social sciences." The genre has its origins in the colonial context. Scholars and practitioners have put great efforts to disa ...
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Documentary Film
A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and Media studies, media analyst Bill Nichols (film critic), Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in terms of "a filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception [that remains] a practice without clear boundaries". Research into information gathering, as a behavior, and the sharing of knowledge, as a concept, has noted how documentary movies were preceded by the notable practice of documentary photography. This has involved the use of singular Photograph, photographs to detail the complex attributes of History, historical events and continues to a certain degree to this day, with an example being the War photography, conflict-related photography achieved by popular figures such as Mathew Brady during the Am ...
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New Guinea
New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; , fossilized , also known as Papua or historically ) is the List of islands by area, world's second-largest island, with an area of . Located in Melanesia in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Mainland Australia, Australia by the wide Torres Strait, though both landmasses lie on the same continental shelf, and were united during episodes of low sea level in the Pleistocene glaciations as the combined landmass of Sahul. Numerous smaller islands are located to the west and east. The island's name was given by Spanish explorer Yñigo Ortiz de Retez during his maritime expedition of 1545 due to the perceived resemblance of the indigenous peoples of the island to those in the Guinea (region), African region of Guinea. The eastern half of the island is the major land mass of the nation of Papua New Guinea. The western half, known as Western New Guinea, forms a part of Indonesia and is organized as the provinces of Pap ...
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16 Mm Film
16 mm film is a historically popular and economical Film gauge, gauge of Photographic film, film. 16 mm refers to the width of the film (about inch); other common film gauges include 8 mm film, 8 mm and 35mm movie film, 35 mm. It is generally used for non-theatrical (e.g., industrial, educational, television) film-making, or for low-budget motion pictures. It also existed as a popular amateur or home movie-making format for several decades, alongside 8 mm film and later Super 8 film. Kodak, Eastman Kodak released the first 16 mm "outfit" in 1923, consisting of a Ciné-Kodak camera, Kodascope projector, tripod, screen and splicer, for US$335 (). RCA Records, RCA-Victor introduced a 16 mm sound movie projector in 1932, and developed an optical sound-on-film 16 mm camera, released in 1935. History Eastman Kodak introduced 16 mm film in 1923, as a less expensive alternative to 35mm movie film, 35 mm Film formats, film for amateurs. The ...
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Jean Rouch
Jean Rouch (; 31 May 1917 – 18 February 2004) was a French Filmmaking, filmmaker and anthropologist. He is considered one of the founders of cinéma vérité in France. Rouch's practice as a filmmaker, for over 60 years in Africa, was characterized by the idea of ''shared anthropology''. Influenced by his discovery of surrealism in his early twenties, many of his films blur the line between fiction and documentary, creating a new style: ethnofiction. The French New Wave filmmakers hailed Rouch as one of their own. Commenting on Rouch's work as someone "in charge of research for the Musée de l'Homme" in Paris, Godard said, “Is there a better definition for a filmmaker?". Biography Rouch began his long association with Nigerien subjects in 1941, when he arrived in Niamey as a French colonial hydrology engineer to supervise a construction project in Niger. There he met Damouré Zika, the son of a Songhai proper, Songhai traditional healer and fisherman, near the town of A ...
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Germaine Dieterlen
Germaine Dieterlen (15 May 1903 in Valleraugue – 13 November 1999 in Paris) was a French anthropologist. She was a student of Marcel Mauss, worked with noted French anthropologists Marcel Griaule (1898-1956) and Jean Rouch, wrote on a large range of ethnographic topics and made pioneering contributions to the study of Mythology, myths, initiations, techniques (particularly "descriptive ethnography"), graphic systems, objects, classifications, ritual and social structure. She is most noted for her work among the Dogon people, Dogon and the Bambara people, Bambara of Mali, having lived with them for over twenty years, often in collaboration with Marcel Griaule, with whom she wrote the book The Pale Fox (1965). Themes Some of the main themes in her work concentrate on the notions of sacred kingship, the position of the Childbirth, first born, relationships between maternal uncles and nephews, division of labor, marriage, and the status of the Rainmaking ...
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Marcel Griaule
Marcel Griaule (16 May 1898 – 23 February 1956) was a French author and anthropologist known for his studies of the Dogon people of West Africa, and for pioneering ethnographic field studies in France. He worked together with Germaine Dieterlen and Jean Rouch on African subjects. His publications number over 170 books and articles for scholarly journals. Biography Born in Aisy-sur-Armançon, Griaule received a good education and was preparing to become an engineer and enrolled at the prestigious Lycée Louis-le-Grand when in 1917 at the end of World War I he volunteered to become a pilot in the French Air Force. In 1920 he returned to university, where he attended the lectures of Marcel Mauss and Marcel Cohen. Intrigued by anthropology, he gave up plans for a technical career. In 1927 he received a degree from the École Nationale de Langues Orientales, where he concentrated on Amharic and Ge'ez. Between 1928 and 1933 Griaule participated in two large-scale et ...
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Ya̧nomamö
The Yanomami, also spelled Yąnomamö or Yanomama, are a group of approximately 35,000 indigenous people who live in some 200–250 villages in the Amazon rainforest on the border between Venezuela and Brazil. Etymology The ethnonym ''Yanomami'' was produced by anthropologists based on the word , which, in the expression , signifies "human beings." This expression is opposed to the categories (game animals) and (invisible or nameless beings), but also (enemy, stranger, non-indigenous). According to ethnologist Jacques Lizot: ''Yanomamö'' and ''Yanomama'' are variant spellings. Supporters of the work on the tribe of anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon usually use ''Yanomamö''. Those who oppose his work or are neutral usually use ''Yanomami'' or ''Yanomama''. History The first report of the Yanomami is from 1654, when a Spanish expedition under Apolinar Diaz de la Fuente visited some Ye'kuana people living on the Padamo River. Diaz wrote: From approximately 1630 to 17 ...
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The Ax Fight
''The Ax Fight'' (1975) is an ethnographic film by anthropologist and filmmaker Tim Asch and anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon about a conflict in a Yanomami village called Mishimishimabowei-teri, in southern Venezuela. It is best known as an iconic and idiosyncratic ethnographic film about the Yanomamo and is frequently shown in classroom settings. Summary The film has four parts and operates on a number of analytical levels. It opens with a map of the region where the village is located and then proceeds to about ten minutes of virtually unedited film footage of combat among multiple participants armed with clubs, machetes, and axes. This 11-minute sequence represents all that was shot of the fight, which lasted about twenty minutes. Many of the shots and accompanying audio reflect the surprise of the Western film crew and their ignorance about the cause of the fight until some time later. The fight, which occurred on the second day of Asch and Chagnon's arrival to the villa ...
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Tim Asch
Timothy Asch (July 16, 1932 – October 3, 1994) was an American anthropologist, photographer, and ethnographic filmmaker. Along with John Marshall and Robert Gardner, Asch played an important role in the development of visual anthropology. He is particularly known for his film '' The Ax Fight'' and his role with the USC Center for Visual Anthropology. Background Asch was born in Southampton, New York and attended The Putney School. He studied at Columbia University, where he received his B.S. in anthropology in 1959. While at Columbia, he served as a teaching assistant for Margaret Mead, who encouraged his work in visual anthropology. From 1950 to 1951, he served apprenticeships with Minor White, Edward Weston and Ansel Adams through the San Francisco Art Institute (formerly known as the California School of Fine Arts). He received his M.A. in African Studies from Boston University (with an anthropology concentration at Harvard University) in 1964. Career Asch was kn ...
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Napoleon Chagnon
Napoleon Alphonseau Chagnon (27 August 1938 – 21 September 2019) was an American cultural anthropologist, professor of sociocultural anthropology at the University of Missouri in Columbia and member of the National Academy of Sciences. Chagnon was known for his long-term ethnographic field work among the Yanomamö/Yanomami, a society of indigenous tribal Amazonians, in which he used an evolutionary approach to understand social behavior in terms of genetic relatedness. His work centered on the analysis of violence among tribal peoples, and, using socio-biological analyses, he advanced the argument that violence among the Yanomami is fueled by an evolutionary process in which successful warriors have more offspring. His 1967 ethnography '' Yanomamö: The Fierce People'' became a bestseller and is frequently assigned in introductory anthropology courses. Admirers described him as a pioneer of scientific anthropology. Chagnon was called the "most controversial anthropologist" ...
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ǃKung People
The ǃKung ( ) are one of the San peoples who live mostly on the western edge of the Kalahari Desert, Kalahari desert, Ovamboland (northern Namibia and southern Angola), and Botswana. The names ''ǃKung'' (''ǃXun'') and ''Ju'' are variant words for 'people', preferred by different ǃKung groups. This band society, band level society used traditional methods of hunting and gathering for subsistence up until the 1970s. Today, the great majority of ǃKung people live in the villages of Bantu pastoralists and European ranchers. Beliefs The ǃKung people of Southern Africa recognize a Creator deity, Supreme Being, ǃXu, who is the Creator and Upholder of life. Like other African High Gods, he also punishes man by means of the weather, and the Otjimpolo-ǃKung know him as Erob, who "knows everything". They also have Animism, animistic and Animatism, animatistic beliefs, which means they believe in both personifications and impersonal forces. Amongst the ǃKung there is a strong ...
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