Cine-Essay, a place for audiovisual anthropology

Abstract

Within audiovisual anthropology, different modes of production have been developed according to different theoretical frameworks. The idea is to find a method of audiovisual writing that corresponds to a certain way of thinking about the discipline. For example, for a positivist way of thinking, a cinema of objective enunciation should be made. In this way, form and substance go hand in hand both to research and to disseminate anthropological knowledge from audiovisual writing.

What we intend to discuss in this paper is to resolve what kind of cinematographic enunciation would fit for a hermeneutic anthropology. According to this theoretical framework, the focus should be placed on the person who practices anthropology and not on the cultural fact itself. The latter would be a sort of translator who interprets a given culture in his own way as if it were a text. Therefore, the information is not in the translation but in a contextual framework that the translator-anthropologist must describe - as Geertz says - in a dense manner.

The method of film writing that we advocate in accordance with this theoretical framework is the film-essay. Based on Montaigne's Essais, this form of enunciation does not focus on the object but on the measure of the eyes of the beholder, that is, in this case, on the translator-filmmaker. It is very difficult to systematize the film essay, since there will be as many forms as there are filmmakers who practice it. However, it is possible to sketch certain lines that make us think about the relationship between film-essay and anthropology.