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As originally conceived by Colin Young and subsequently worked out in practice by David and Judith MacDougall and various other film-makers, the praxis of Observational Cinema in its classical form involved very much more than observation: not only was it a particular ‘way of seeing’, it was also a particular ‘way of doing’ ethnographic film-making. Central to this praxis, as described in earlier chapters, was a collaborative relationship with the subjects, the adoption of an ‘unprivileged’ perspective in both shooting and editing, and a low
Beyond Observation offers a historical analysis of ethnographic film from
the birth of cinema in 1895 until 2015. It covers a large number of films made
in a broad range of styles, in many different parts of the world, from the
Arctic to Africa, from urban China to rural Vermont. It is the first extensive
historical account of its kind and will be accessible to students and lecturers
in visual anthropology as well as to those previously unfamiliar with
ethnographic film.
Among the early genres that Paul Henley discusses are
French reportage films, the Soviet kulturfilm, the US travelogue, the classic
documentaries of Robert Flaherty and Basil Wright, as well as the more academic
films of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. Among the leading film-makers of the
post-war period, he discusses Jean Rouch, John Marshall and Robert Gardner, as
well as the emergence of Observational Cinema in the 1970s. He also considers
‘indigenous media’ projects of the 1980s, and the ethnographic films that
flourished on British television until the 1990s.
In the final part, he
examines the recent films of David and Judith MacDougall, the Harvard Sensory
Media Lab, and a range of films authored in a participatory manner, as possible
models for the future.
The third Author whose contribution to the praxis of ethnographic film-making we consider in this part of the book is very different from the other two. Colin Young was both the original intellectual architect and also the initial practical enabler of the approach to ethnographic film-making known as Observational Cinema, which since the 1970s has been one of the most influential in the English-speaking world. However, although he may have shot some ethnographic footage now and again, he has not been a practitioner in the active sense of Jean
there are the numerous films about covert observation and surveillance, such as Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960) and Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others (2006). ‘Observational cinema’ has now become a familiar term for a particular subgenre of documentary film. ‘Observational’, however, has always seemed to me a curious word to apply to it. Whatever form documentary takes, it is generally a more interactive process than the word implies. In ‘observational’ there is also, for some people, an implication of covertness, as if the person doing the
, ethnographic film had entered a new phase. The immediacy created by synchronous sound filming caused filmmakers to rethink what documentary films could be, leading to the development of cinéma-vérité , Direct Cinema, cinéma direct and like movements. Characteristically, Jean Rouch was at the centre of these developments. One of the variants was observational cinema, which from the start was specifically associated with ethnographic film (Grimshaw and Ravetz 2009 ). The appeal of
1960s produced a variety of new approaches to documentary, one of which came to be known as observational cinema. It inspired many of the films mentioned in the following chapters. The basic idea had been present in documentary filmmaking from the start and had motivated many of its later practitioners, however different their films might appear. It was, in Joseph Conrad’s words, ‘before all, to make you see’. For Louis Lumière, according to director Bertrand Tavernier, it was to ‘bring the world to the
The looking machine calls for the redemption of documentary cinema, exploring the potential and promise of the genre at a time when it appears under increasing threat from reality television, historical re-enactments, designer packaging and corporate authorship. The book consists of a set of essays, each focused on a particular theme derived from the author’s own experience as a filmmaker. It provides a practice-based, critical perspective on the history of documentary, how films evoke space, time and physical sensations, questions of aesthetics, and the intellectual and emotional relationships between filmmakers and their subjects. It is especially concerned with the potential of film to broaden the base of human knowledge, distinct from its expression in written texts. Among its underlying concerns are the political and ethical implications of how films are actually made, and the constraints that may prevent filmmakers from honestly showing what they have seen. While defending the importance of the documentary idea, MacDougall urges us to consider how the form can become a ‘cinema of consciousness’ that more accurately represents the sensory and everyday aspects of human life. Building on his experience bridging anthropology and cinema, he argues that this means resisting the inherent ethnocentrism of both our own society and the societies we film.
David and Judith MacDougall have developed the practice of Observational Cinema; in Chapter 15 , I explore in what ways certain film-makers of the Sensory Ethnography Lab (SEL) at Harvard have taken on the legacy of Robert Gardner, while in the final chapter, Chapter 16 , I consider a number of films that draw on the participatory praxis that informed Jean Rouch's concept of shared anthropology Central to all three chapters is the argument that has been a guiding thread through the book as a whole, namely, that in order to make films that are
looking in some form. But in this book, I use the term in a more restricted sense to refer to modes of film-making praxis in which film-makers do not seek to direct the subjects, but rather content themselves with filming the subjects as they go about their business according to their own agenda or whim. However, even when used in this restricted sense, ‘observational cinema’ covers a range of different praxes, depending on the nature of the relationship between observer and observed. At one extreme, there is a mode of ethnographic film-making in which the film
life. Particular attention is paid to the development of observational cinema and visual anthropology. Here I discuss some of the misconceptions, theoretical questions and practical problems that arise in this work. In the closing chapter I cast a broader glance at the history of documentary and call for a reinvestment in the ideas that originally inspired it. Writing about these subjects has meant taking account of the complex relationships between filmmaker and film subject, relationships that ultimately guide the filmmaker’s decisions. It has also meant focusing