How does cinema convey difference and experience across cultures? This course examines anthropology’s ambivalent relationship to visuality and documentary film, focusing on the particular case of ethnographic film. We begin with classic works that raise questions of documentary realism, colonialism and anthropological knowledge, and then widen our view with works that surface questions of embodiment, performance and identity, including works by Native peoples who had been the subjects of documentary films. Throughout, we remain in touch with the material properties of film as a signifying practice and the wider role of documentary in society.
