Anthropology, Film and Genocide.

American Anthropologist, 2001

If you have been paying attention to the ins and outs of anthropology in the last couple of decades, you have probably noticed that the field of visual anthropology has gained vertiginous academic traction not only in Brazil but worldwide. The reasons for this are manifold, but it is a fact that the ease of use and relatively low cost of audiovisual equipment brought about by the digitalization of the filmmaking process has immensely contributed to the growth -in number and in quality -of films produced inside anthropology departments. However, the extent to which the filmmaking process has been the object of scholarly investigation in the social sciences thus far has largely coincided with the need for affirming its appropriateness as a research method; close to no serious inquiry has sought to convey to the academic community the "flesh and blood" or the "spirit" (MALINOWSKI, 2015, p.23) of contemporary practices of recording and editing film. An unfortunate result of neglecting to study the skilled practices of the filmmaker is their continued absence from a public forum where they can be scrutinized and debated in ways that advance the possibilities of harnessing their features -and even their quirks-to the benefit of the anthropologist.

Social Anthropology, 2011

Fassin, Didier and Richard Rechtman. 2009. The empire of trauma. An inquiry into the condition of victimhood.

Public Anthropologist, 2019

What is it that you film, when you film a spirit? Mattijs van de Port explores this question visually and analytically in his film on spirit possession in Candomblé, in Bahia (Brazil). In so doing, he simultaneously explores, critically and reflectively, issues of representation and ethnographic practice. The film opens with scenes from a place called the Miracle of Saint Roque (Milagre de Sâo Roque), in Bahia. Water drips from the side of a rock and two boys conspire, talking quietly to each other and occasionally glimpsing at the camera, the filmmaker and the viewer. One of them decides to direct the filmmaker, asking him whether he has ever made a film about werewolves? He replies that, no, he hasn’t. A few moments later, the director asks one of the boys, Andres: “what is all this?” Andres disappears from the frame. The filmmaker insists, “what do we see here? The miracle of...” he prompts the boy. The boy doesn’t speak, and the filmmaker further comments to himself on the recorded narrative “Oh come on, Matheus, it’s the miracle of Saint Roque.” The filmmaker comments, both to the viewer and to himself, how he might have missed life happening in front of his eyes while he was occupied with getting his frame right, and we hear this narration over shaky shots which one might not have expected to see in the final cut of a film. He goes on to comment how, in the spirit of anthropological inquiry, he has been the one asking the questions and determining what was of interest and what not - and werewolves weren’t featuring in his questionnaire.

2017

The article explores three consecutive periods in which the disciplines of anthropology and film ethnography collide. The first moment examines the common practice of Bronislaw Malinowski and Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North. I argue that Flaherty’s film illustrates the general fieldwork schema proposed by Malinowski to document the world of the Other-native. The second period connects the writings of Marcel Mauss and his influence in Jean Rouch’s cinéma-vérité. I state that Mauss’ radical sense of doubt about scientific pretentions of objectivity sustained Rouch’s cinematography with the general principle that reality is accessible only in partial form. Finally, the third period compares the anthropology of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro with the Sensory Ethnographic Lab’s film Leviathan. I argue that it is in both cases where bodily practices are being supported to account for more sensorial perceptions of the environment.

Vibrant: Virtual Brazilian Anthropology, 2012

This article discusses the dialog between filmic anthropology's procedures and methods and anthropological practice, with a focus on ritual, which is captured by the moving image in a more direct and fluid way. For this, the ritual of reproduction and preservation of cattle in Santiago, a peasant village in the Peruvian Andes is used as an empirical base. As an anthropologist-filmmaker I will try to make explicit the relationship between the observed process filmed and the informant, combining two important epistemological grids: Claudine de France's deferred observation, and Clifford Geertz's interpretation from the native's point of view. Finally, based on this experience, I will make some observations about the use of methodological approximations from filmic anthropology in anthropological practice, between film and anthropology.

WiSe 2017 Seminar Beschreibung - Institut für Filmwissenschaft

Cultural Anthropology (Fieldsights), 2021

How might anthropologists shape the future of anthropological film exhibition and distribution? What are currently the most pressing questions or challenges in this field of film distribution? And how do current changes in technology and user access needs prompt us to revisit long-term questions about the relations between anthropologists and their audiences, interlocutors, and institutional structures? In this post, we discuss several initiatives in which we are involved and that aim to revitalize and transform available infrastructures of circulating, valuing, and archiving anthropological films. With that, we highlight here three affordances of digital technologies that emerged as central themes in our discussion: first, the potential of broadening the audiences of anthropological films, especially in the field of education; second, the role of digital distribution platforms in generating scholarly recognition for filmmakers; and third, the ways in which distribution platforms can contribute new digital tools that can potentially become part of projects of decolonizing anthropology, for example through more inclusive and participatory modes of catalogue indexing.