Synthesis Paper Six

In the article Notes on Ethnographic Film By a Film Artist, written by Chick Strand, she suggests that it is always possible to present material artfully when creating ethnographic film. She studied anthropology seriously at the University of California at Berkley in the fifties and was captivated by the study of other cultures, but later found that the excitement and enthusiasm came to a dead end. Her expectations of science were a bit naïve, thinking that perhaps in graduate school she would be given the golden key into the deep lives of peoples of indigenous cultures, and finally learn something valuable about the human condition. She thought that her technical documentation would be used as reference in humane decision making but found that the policy makers had the authority over cultures and did not have interest in problem solving and dealing with the acculturation of the people. She then left anthropology and started making avant- garde, and ethnographic film.
Her approach to ethnographic film has been liberal and radical and believes that "anthropologists as filmmakers have been miserable failures." She says "ethnographic film, can and should be works of "art," while ethnographers tend to stop at a place of judgment, artists tap into their expert knowledge of the tools and techniques of film-making, using a heightened sense of perceptibility and awareness. Artists have the ability to create ethnographic film as "symphonies about the fabric of people." She believes that artists are recorders of life and their perception of the human condition is informed by real life experiences. Strand believes that good artists want and need to be hit hard with their own experience and that of others, and they can focus their observations in an objective way without judging it- or making their own social statement. Suggesting that while watching ethnographic films, people are frustrated and bored concluding that anthropologist do not see a need for their audiences to relate. In the article, she goes on to say "film is an immediate, intimate and revealing tool in terms of trying to understand human experience- however suggesting that anthropologists are unwilling to use it to it’s full potential." She asks the question, where are the people in these films? Ethnographic films lack intimacy, dimension, heart and soul and once again they are artless while the inner life is studied in terms of generalities and never in individual terms. Strand believes that anthropologists have been reluctant to deal with the inner person in film because they haven’t yet accepted the techniques already discovered by film artists. Strand attempts to deconstruct the oppressive anthropological, monolithic approach to ethnographic filmmaking, with a radical edge and a sense of adventure. While anthropologists say "no close-ups please," Strand takes the camera off the tripod and records the texture of her subjects by tuning into subtle details, using mostly original footage she weaves her material together supposing it was found