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

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 35 films and videos from the 1890s to the 1990s and discusses a wide range of film and videomakers, including Georges M. Elis, Maya Deren, Peter Kubelka, Ray Birdwhistell, Jean Rouch, Su Friedrich, Bill Viola, Kidlat Tahimik, Margaret Mead, Tracey Moffatt and Chantal Akerman. Combining cultural critique with aesthetic analysis, she explores the dynamics of historical interruption, recovery and reevalaution. As disciplinary boundaries dissolve, Russell contends, ethnography is a means of renewing the avant-gardism of experimental film, of mobilizing its play with langauge and form for historical ends. Ethnography likewise becomes an expansive term in which culture is represented from many different fragmented perspectives. Experimental Ethnography should appeal to visual anthropologists, as well as film scholars interested in experimental and documentary practices.