240520 SE Film and Anthropology. The Stories Images Tell (P4) (2020S)

Anthropologists have long been concerned with matters of visual / audio-visual representations: photographs, ethnographic drawings, and documentary films all tell stories about people and their life-worlds. The image as a mode to express meaning thus opens up the need for contextual and socio-culturally sensitive ways of seeing the world, and demonstrates the ways, in which narratives are culturally constructed, continuously shift and transmit social and political meaning. This seminar provides students with the opportunity to study the politics and aesthetics of cultural representations and discusses anthropological perspectives on the usages of documentary film as meaningful ethnographic tools and representations of societies. Throughout the semester we critically examine how ethnographic films bring to light questions of authorship, power relations, creativity, aesthetics and the variety of socio-political perceptions that impact the ways in which stories are told. Through the use of key concepts in visual anthropology and with the help of ethnographic film examples, students develop an understanding on how to use audio-visual media to analyse, represent and critique ethnographic content and contribute to knowledge production.

The course’s main focus is on ethnographic films and the social analysis of the image, building a trajectory from early approaches to contemporary visual and cultural studies. As a team-delivered course, we draw on our long-term experience in analysing, discussing and curating documentaries for the annual international documentary film festival ethnocineca in Vienna.

Structure and Methodology
In the first three sessions, students are introduced to core readings and analytical concepts in visual anthropology and a variety of (audio)visual examples, as well as tools for film analysis, which they will later use for their final essays. In the following three interactive sessions students watch and discuss classic and experimental ethnographic and documentary films in order to critically engage with the politics of image making. We furthermore discuss collectively different (audio)visual forms of (self)representations and story-telling. The last session provides space for reflection and students’ questions on their final-essays.

Learning Outcomes
With the seminar students develop a better understanding of the development of ethnographic documentary film and therefore a coherent context for the question of how to study films and visual culture. Students know and apply anthropological concepts and theories in visual anthropology to designated case examples and understand the meaning of film culture in contemporary anthropology. They learn to critically analyse representations in context, use socio-culturally sensitive concepts of film- and image analysis and learn to discuss contrasting approaches to the genre of ethnographic film.

Additional learning outcomes
Students know central theories, key concepts and literature in visual anthropology
Students acquire the skill of critical debate, discussion, rhetoric and analytical thinking
Students enhance their efficiency in academic writing and group work