Experimental Ethnography: The Work of Film in the Age of Video

by Catherine Russell

Experimental film and ethnographic film have long been considered separate, autonomous practices on the margins of mainstream cinema. By exploring the interplay between the two forms, Catherine Russell throws new light on both the avant-garde and visual anthropology.
Russell provides detailed analyses of more than thirty-five films and videos from the 1890s to the 1990s and discusses a wide range of film and videomakers, including Georges Méliès, Maya Deren, Peter Kubelka, Ray Birdwhistell, Jean Rouch, Su Friedrich, Bill Viola, Kidlat Tahimik, Margaret Mead, Tracey Moffatt, and Chantal Akerman. Arguing that video enables us to see film differently—not as a vanishing culture but as bodies inscripted in technology, Russell maps the slow fade from modernism to postmodern practices. Combining cultural critique with aesthetic analysis, she explores the dynamics of historical interruption, recovery, and reevaluation. As disciplinary boundaries dissolve, Russell contends, ethnography is a means of renewing the avant-gardism of “experimental” film, of mobilizing its play with language and form for historical ends. “Ethnography” likewise becomes an expansive term in which culture is represented from many different and fragmented perspectives.
Original in both its choice of subject and its theoretical and methodological
approaches, Experimental Ethnography will appeal to visual anthropologists, as well as film scholars interested in experimental and documentary practices.

Genres: Film, Anthropology

416 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Catherine Russell was born in Tacoma, Washington and raised in a small town just south, South Hill, Puyallup. At the time South Hill was a heavily wooded area and far off the beaten path. Growing up she had the forests as her fantasy world along with the wild animals. She lived with her parents and an older sister. There are a few similarities from her own childhood that have carried over in to her first novel, “The Stage”. As a child, she did have a small dog named Toto, whom she would quite frequently roam the woods with. Her childhood home still stands, and is still nestled in the woods even though South Hill has undergone an extreme makeover since she lived there. She enjoyed hours of day dreaming and playing in the woods, which in turn fed her fantasy world of make believe.

Reviews

[melancholinary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although up to this point I have not been able to find a definitive definition of what exactly is meant by Experimental Ethnography—whether it is the ethnographic method, the film works with a more unconventional approach that breaks cultural boundaries, or the ethnographer's generally different position—the collection of discussions on various styles and cinematic approaches to the concept of ethnography in this book is quite enjoyable to read, even though sometimes I find the analysis to be too far-fetched. However, I am somewhat puzzled by the subtitle that appropriates Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Film in the Age of Video," because the discussion of video, as a cinematic medium, and as a tool for ethnographic study is rarely discussed, let alone explore the political implication of video. I wonder why almost no media study on video as method and technology is referenced here, except to discuss its attributes which are indeed specific and obvious—that video is more intimate. It has a different concept of time compared to film (in the context of watching cinematic presentation). Some of the works discussed here are indeed rooted in the technology and logic of video but mostly dissected in terms of its content rather than medium. Some critiques of apparatus theory discussed here are quite interesting to read.