The Comité du Film Ethnographique
Seminar 25, 26 & 27 March 2006
From ethnological films to visual anthropology,
A reappraisal:
New technology,
new fields of investigation,
new languages
Salle de Cinéma Jean Rouch, Musée de l’Homme, Paris
The year 2006 will mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Bilan du Film
Ethnographique, which the committee organizes annually. For this occasion, we are proposing
an international seminar for taking stock of the different orientations that have led from
ethnological documentaries to the contemporary experiments of audiovisual anthropology with
digital equipment.
Following the usual week of projections during the Bilan, this three-day meeting will
focus on the following themes:
1- The pathways from the ethnological documentary to audiovisual anthropology.
2- The reappraisal of concepts and themes: from eye-witnesss (the objectivistic temptation) to
the diversity of the “logics of knowledge” (the paradoxes of relativism).
3- The anthropological situation: meetings, dialogues, transactions, negotiations and the
diversity of experiences and languages.
4- The question of the languages of our trade and of their contemporary uses runs throughout all
themes in the seminar; it will be a major axis during our discussions.
Please find enclosed a call for papers and an application form. We would appreciate if
you would circulate these texts in your institution and to persons whom you think would be
interested by our meeting.
Your suggestions for this seminar or for a paper to be presented during it should
reach the Comité du Film Ethnographique by 1 October 2005 at the following address:
cfe@mnhn.fr
Sincerely,
The organizers
Françoise Foucault, Laurent Pellé, Marc H. Piault, Nadine Wanono
The Comité du Film Ethnographique is organizing from 25 to 27 March 2006 a
seminar:
From ethnological films to visual anthropology,
a reappraisal:
New technology,
new fields of investigation,
new languages
Call for papers
The language of cinema in anthropology has enabled us to explore fields that, for a
long time, were peripheral to — or even laid outside — the realm of research (the space/time
relation; duration; emotions; the relativity of behaviors and values; comparative treatments of the
body; cultural expressions of personhood; performances of speech and the ongoing construction
of reality,etc..). Filmmaking has become an inescapable means for conceiving of both the
relativity of cultures and the essential reciprocity of viewpoints. As a way to explore and learn
about different patterns of behavior and as the very expression of knowledge to be shared and
compared, audiovisual anthropology, which slowly emerged during the second half of the
20th century, is being ever more widely used in research and experimentation. The Bilan du Film
Ethnographique has contributed to this exploration; it has been a reflection and essential vector
of these developments. We will be celebrating the 25th Bilan in March 2006.
Nowadays more than ever, new questions are arising about: the uses of the tools of
our trade; the nature of the fields being investigated; the need to work out a specific language,
body of knowledge and means of communication. Following this 25th Bilan, a three-day seminar
will be held from 25 to 27 March 2006 to discuss these themes and the current prospects of
anthropology.
This seminar will start by briefly recalling a few of the major orientations that have had
an impact on how we think about and make documentary films and by pointing out a few
landmarks in the passage from ethnological documentaries to audiovisual anthropology. The first
documents of “colonial cinema” will be mentioned, as well as the films coming out of “scientific”
observation, cinema vérité, and “live” or “light” cinema — of what has led to ethnological filmmaking, meetings, comparative points of view, the sharing of situations and what we now call
audiovisual anthropology.
A second focus of this seminar will be the renewed relations between societies and
cultures as well as the questioning of definitions of personhood, of group and individual identities
and of ways of “belonging”. These crucial questions fit in a context of a generalized circulation of
models. Anthropology has played a major part in asking legitimate questions about the
objectivity of reality. It has contributed to a literal “denaturalization of dominant modes of
thought”. The sharing of points of view — though initially unequal —heralded questions not just
about the hierarchy and paradigms of values in all fields. It also undoubtedly raised deeper,
more difficult questions about the universality of values. The paradox of our times crops up out
of the possible simultaneity of communication and information which the advocates of a
“massifying” globalization have taken into account, with the revelation, owing to this
instantaneous visibility, of the extreme diversity of rationales for apprehending and
understanding the world.
The third focus of this seminar will be to explain how “conceivable reality” is
necessarily the product of possible transactions, necessary negotiations and “conversations”
between what we are alternatively or even simultaneously. Syncretism and the recognition of
internal contradictions authorize and legitimate a switch to the “constituted-constituting image” of
meetings, conversations and dialogic relations. This construction but also reception, diffusion,
and understanding of the audiovisual language are part of a single approach, of a single
principle for establishing “situations” wherein distinction and “belonging” are maintained as a
permanent problematic requirement. This way of imparting a dynamics to our seminar is
necessarily based on a transformation of the “experience of representation” and its instruments.
A fourth preoccupation of this seminar will be, given the transformed tools of our
trade, to inquire into the forms of expression of these meetings, which are also experiments in
communication and the communicability of knowledge, adjusted as they are to various “cultural
logics”. The passage from analog to digital techniques, modifications in space-time relations
owing to the use of networks of communication such as the Web, questions about the
“transitivity of reality” and “imaginary construction”, the consequences of “virtualization” or, even
more, the possible forms of abstraction via images and sounds… all this calls for evaluating a
language, which is constantly in gestation, by borrowing from discourses that, though different,
are confronted with a necessary but urgent (in)determination, which postulates the refusal of a
unique discourse, of universal commensurability.
We are calling for papers from anthropologists (in research and/or teaching positions),
student researchers, the makers and producers of documentary films, and the heads of
programming departments. They are requested to send us their proposals for papers — a
working title along with an abstract of up to 100 words — by 1 October 2005. Spoken
interventions will be limited to twenty minutes. Since the written version of the paper will be given
in advance to participants, the twenty-minute period should be devoted to a demonstration
through images. The definitive version of the paper should reach us by 1 February 2006 at the
latest. Proposals for papers should be sent or by e-mail to: cfe@mnhn.fr or by mail:
Comité du Film Ethnographique
Musée de l’Homme
Place du Trocadéro
75116 Paris
From ethnological films to visual anthropology: a reappraisal
New technology, new fields of investigation, new languages
25, 26 & 27 March 2006
Enrollment in the seminar
Enrollment fees open access to all activities during the seminar. Participants will
receive the papers submitted and may attend, at no costs, projections during the 25th Bilan du
Film Ethnographique from 19 to 24 March 2006.
Fees
Normal participation
(institution, film-makers and
producers, researchers and
Till 30 September 2005
After 1 October 2005
100 ι
130 ι
members of teaching staffs)
Members of the Comité du
Film Ethnographique
80 ι
100 ι
Student participants
30 ι
50
These fees cover coffee breaks, lunches and cocktails during the three-day seminar; they do not
cover accommodation in Paris, for which participants have to make reservations themselves.
The enrollment form along with payment should be sent to:
Comité du Film Ethnographique
Inscriptions colloque
Nadine Wanono
17 place du Trocadéro – 75116 Paris – France A l’attention de Nadine Wanono or cfe@mnhn.fr
Payment by check,money order should be made in euros to the: Colloque Comité du film
ethnographique. Please avoid other forms of payment.
Enrollment form
Name (Last — First):
Address:
Postal code:
City:
Country:
Telephone:
E-mail:
Organization / association:
Working title of the proposed paper:
Abstract of the proposed paper (100 words):
Fees
Normal participation
(institution, filmmakers and
Till 30 September 2005
After 1 October 2005
100 ι
130 ι
producers, researchers and
members of teaching staffs)
Members of the Comité du
Film Ethnographique
80 ι
100 ι
Student participants
30 ι
50
These fees cover coffee breaks, lunches and cocktails during the three-day seminar; they do not
cover accommodation in Paris, for which participants have to make reservations themselves.
Payment by check or money order should be made in euros to the: Colloque Comité
du film ethnographique. Please avoid other forms of payment.