Key research themes
1. How do anthropological principles and ethical considerations shape the production and representation in anthropological filmmaking?
This research theme explores the negotiation between scientific rigor, ethical challenges, and storytelling aesthetics within anthropological filmmaking. It examines how anthropologists and filmmakers balance their multiple roles, ethical engagement, and the responsibilities inherent in representing others, especially in participatory and decolonizing contexts. This theme is crucial for ensuring ethnographic films remain both epistemologically sound and ethically accountable.
2. How are new media technologies and collaborative practices transforming the production, authorship, and dissemination of ethnographic films?
This theme investigates technological innovation, digital culture, and participatory methodologies that enable new forms of shared authorship, distribution, and sensorial engagement in anthropological filmmaking. It highlights the shift from unilateral filmmaking to collaborative and networked production processes, including Indigenous and community-led media, and the resulting redefinitions of ethnographic authorship, visual epistemology, and exhibition.
3. How can sensory, embodied, and affective methodologies enhance the representation and understanding of lived experience in anthropological filmmaking?
This theme focuses on the integration of sensory ethnography, feminist and decolonial perspectives, and embodied filmmaking practices that aim to convey affect, care, and subjectivity beyond observational paradigms. It investigates techniques that foreground corporeality, multi-sensoriality, and narrative intimacy to open new epistemological and affective dimensions in ethnographic and documentary film, thus enriching anthropological insights into human experience.