Ethnofiction

Ethnofiction refers to a subfield of ethnography which produces works that introduce art, in the form of storytelling, "thick descriptions and conversational narratives", and even first-person autobiographical accounts, into peer-reviewed academic works.^[1]^[2]^[3]

In addition to written texts, the term has also been used in the context of filmmaking, where it refers to ethnographic docufiction, a blend of documentary and fictional film in the area of visual anthropology. It is a film type in which, by means of fictional narrative or creative imagination, often improvising, the portrayed characters (natives) play their own roles as members of an ethnic or social group.

Jean Rouch is considered to be the father of ethnofiction.^[4] An ethnologist, he discovered that a filmmaker interferes with the event he registers. His camera is never a candid camera.^[5] The behavior of the portrayed individuals, the natives, will be affected by its presence. Contrary to the principles of Marcel Griaule,^[6]^[7]^[8]^[9] his mentor, for Rouch a non-participating camera registering "pure" events in ethnographic research (like filming a ritual without interfering with it) is a preconception denied by practice.^[10]^[11]^[12]^[13]^[14]

An ethnographer cameraman, in this view, will be accepted as a natural partner by the actors who play their roles. The cameraman will be one of them, and may even be possessed by the rhythm of dancers during a ritual celebration and induced in a state of cine-trance.^[15]^[16] Going further than his predecessors, Jean Rouch introduces the actor as a tool in research.^[17]^[18]^[19]^[20]

A new genre was born.^[21] Robert Flaherty, a main reference for Rouch, may be seen as the grandfather of this genre, although he was a pure documentary maker and not an ethnographer.

Being mainly used to refer to ethnographic films as an object of visual anthropology, the term ethnofiction is as well adequate to refer to experimental documentaries preceding and following Rouch's oeuvre and to any fictional creation in human communication, arts or literature, having an ethnographic or social background.

History

Parallel to those of Flaherty or Rouch, ethnic portraits of hard local realities are often drawn in Portuguese films since the thirties, with particular incidence from the sixties to the eighties,^[22] and again in the early 21st century. The remote Trás-os-Montes region (see: Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro Province in Portugal), Guinea-Bissau or the Cape Verde islands (ancient Portuguese colonies), which step in the limelights from the eighties on thanks to the work of certain directors (Flora Gomes, Pedro Costa, or Daniel E. Thorbecke, the unknown author of Terra Longe^[23]^[24]^[25]) are themes for pioneering films of this genre, important landmarks in film history. Arousing fiction in the heart of ethnicity is something current in the Portuguese popular narrative (oral literature): in other words, the traditional attraction for legend and surrealistic imagery in popular arts^[26] inspires certain Portuguese films to strip off realistic predicates and become poetical fiction. This practice is common to many fictional films by Manoel de Oliveira and João César Monteiro and to several docufiction hybrids by António Campos, António Reis and others.^[27]^[28] Since the 1960s, ethnofiction (local real life and fantasy in one) is a distinctive mark of Portuguese cinema.

Chronology

1950s

1955 – Les maîtres fous (The Mad Masters) by Jean Rouch, France
1958 – Moi, un noir (Me a Black) by Jean Rouch, France

1960s

1961 – La pyramide humaine by Jean Rouch, France
1962 – Acto da Primavera (Act of Spring) by Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal
1963 – Pour la suite du monde (Of Whales, the Moon and Men) by Pierre Perrault and Michel Brault, Canada
1967 – Jaguar, by Jean Rouch, France

1970s

1976 – People from Praia da Vieira (Gente da Praia da Vieira) by António Campos, Portugal
1976 – Trás-os-Montes by António Reis and Margarida Cordeiro, Portugal

1980s

1982 – Nelisita: narrativas nyaneka by Ruy Duarte de Carvalho, Angola
1988 – Mortu Nega (Death Denied) by Flora Gomes, Guiné-Bissau

1990s

1997 – Ossos by Pedro Costa, Portugal

2000s

2000 – No Quarto da Vanda (In Vanda's Room) by Pedro Costa, Portugal
2003 – Terra Longe (Remote Land) by Daniel E. Thorbecke^[29]
2006 – Colossal Youth by Pedro Costa, Portugal
2007 – Transfiction by Johannes Sjöberg

2010s

2011 – Toomelah by Ivan Sen
2012 – The Act of Killing by Joshua Oppenheimer, Indonesia
2014 – Cavalo Dinheiro (Horse Money) by Pedro Costa, Portugal
2014 – La creazione di significato (The Creation of Meaning) by Simone Rapisarda Casanova, Italy
2015 – Dead Slow Ahead by Mauro Herce
2018 – Zanj Hegel la (Hegel's Angel) by Simone Rapisarda Casanova, Haiti
2018 – The Dead and the Others by João Salaviza, Portugal
2019 – Vitalina Varela by Pedro Costa, Portugal
2019 – Work, or To Whom Does the World Belong, by Elisa Cepedal, Spain^[30]

Footnotes

^ VanSlyke-Briggs, Kjersti (2009-09-01). "Consider ethnofiction". Ethnography and Education. 4 (3): 335–345. doi:10.1080/17457820903170143. ISSN 1745-7823. S2CID 217531370.
^ McNamara, Patricia (2009-06-01). "Feminist Ethnography: Storytelling that Makes a Difference". Qualitative Social Work. 8 (2): 161–177. doi:10.1177/1473325009103373. ISSN 1473-3250. S2CID 145116084.
^ Bochner, Arthur P. (2012-01-01). "On first-person narrative scholarship: Autoethnography as acts of meaning". Narrative Inquiry. 22 (1): 155–164. doi:10.1075/ni.22.1.10boc. ISSN 1387-6740.
^ Glossary at MAITRES_FOUS.NET
^ Types of Cameras – definition at UCLA
^ Marcel Griaule (1898–1956) Archived 2012-04-02 at the Wayback Machine – Article by Sybil Amber
^ From Pictorializing to Visual Anthropology1 Archived 2015-06-26 at the Wayback Machine – Chapter from "Handbook of Methods in Cultural Anthropology"
^ Nannicelli, Ted (July 2006). "From Representation to Evocation: Tracing a Progression in Jean Rouch's Les magiciens de Wanzerbé, Les maîtres fous, and Jaguar". Visual Anthropology. 19 (2): 123–143. doi:10.1080/08949460600596558. S2CID 144385606.
^ Ciarcia, Gaetano (2002). "L'ethnofiction à l'œuvre. Prisme et images de l'entité dogon" [Ethnofiction at work. Prism and images of the dogon entity]. Ethnologies Comparées (in French) (5): 20 p. http://alor.univ.
^ Father of 'cinema verite' dies – BBC news
^ BIOGRAPHIES: Jean Rouch – Article by Ben Michaels at Indiana University
^ A Tribute to Jean Rouch by Paul Stoller at Rouge
^ Ethnographic Film (origines)
^ Knowing Images: Jean Rouch's Ethnography <- Chapter from Sarah Cooper's monograph "Selfless Cinema?: Ethics and French Documentary" (Oxford: Legenda, 2006) at MAITRES-FOUS.net
^ "Cine-trance". Archived from the original on 2012-01-03. Retrieved 2012-10-06.
^ Cine-trance: a Tribute to Jean Rouch(Visual Anthropology, American Anthropologist)
^ Ethnofiction and the Work of Jean Rouch, article by Reuben Ross, UK Visual Anthropology, November 9, 2010
^ Videos about ethnofiction on Vimeo
^ Coates, Jennifer (2 February 2019). "Blurred Boundaries: Ethnofiction and Its Impact on Postwar Japanese Cinema". Arts. 8 (1): 20. doi:10.3390/arts8010020.
^ Coming of Age as Other: Indigenous People in the Ethnofiction Film 'The Dead and The Others' – article at CINEA, 14 december 2018
^ Quist, Brian (2001). Jean Rouch and the genesis of ethnofiction (Thesis). Long Island University. OCLC 778067104.
^ Imagining Rurality: Portuguese Documentary and Ethnographic Film in the 1960s and 1990s Archived 2012-03-19 at the Wayback Machine – Abstract for a conference by Catarina Alves Costa at Comité du Film Ethnographique
^ African Filmmaker Profiles: Flora Gomes at The Woyingi Blog
^ The Films of Pedro Costa at Distant Voices
^ Terra Longe at South Planet (French)
^ The Portuguese and the "others": dialogue of cultures and characters in oral literary tradition Archived 2012-03-19 at the Wayback Machine – Article by Maria Edite Orange and Maria Inês Pinho at Departamento de Artes e Motricidade Humana do IPP – Escola Superior de Educação (Porto)
^ Silvano, Filomena (1 October 2010). "Things we see: Portuguese anthropology on material culture". Etnografica. 14 (3): 497–505. doi:10.4000/etnografica.264. hdl:10362/11467.
^ Disquieting Objects – Article by Gabe Klinger at The Museum of Moving Image
^ Terra Longe, David & Golias
^ David González (2019-11-22). "Review: Work, or to Whom Does the World Belong". Cineuropa.

External links

Ethnofition at The University of Manchester (watch video)
Ethnofiction and Beyond: The Legacy of Projective Improvisation in Ethnographic Filmmaking by Johannes Sjöberg
L'ETHNOFICTION A L'ŒUVRE: prisme et images de l'entité dogon – Article (French) by Gaetano Ciarcia at Université Montpellier III
Rouch & Cie. – un quintette Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine – Article (French) by Andrea Paganini at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales
Ethnic Portraits and Ethnofiction at Mubi
The war of dreams: exercises in ethno-fiction by Marc Augé (google books)
Ethnofiction : drama as a creative research practice in ethnographic film at Mendley – Paper by Bloom, Elizabeth A., Ed.D., STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT BINGHAMTON, 2006
Language description and "the new paradigm": What linguists may learn from ethnocinematographers – Article by Gerrit J. Dimmendaal, University of Cologne, at University of Hawai'i at Manoa
Ethnofiction and the Work of Jean Rouch at UK Visual Anthropology
VanSlyke-Briggs, Kjersti (September 2009). "Consider ethnofiction". Ethnography and Education. 4 (3): 335–345. doi:10.1080/17457820903170143. S2CID 217531370.

[1] VanSlyke-Briggs, Kjersti (2009-09-01). "Consider ethnofiction". Ethnography and Education. 4 (3): 335–345. doi:10.1080/17457820903170143. ISSN 1745-7823. S2CID 217531370.

[2] McNamara, Patricia (2009-06-01). "Feminist Ethnography: Storytelling that Makes a Difference". Qualitative Social Work. 8 (2): 161–177. doi:10.1177/1473325009103373. ISSN 1473-3250. S2CID 145116084.

[3] Bochner, Arthur P. (2012-01-01). "On first-person narrative scholarship: Autoethnography as acts of meaning". Narrative Inquiry. 22 (1): 155–164. doi:10.1075/ni.22.1.10boc. ISSN 1387-6740.

[4] Glossary at MAITRES_FOUS.NET

[5] Types of Cameras – definition at UCLA

[6] Marcel Griaule (1898–1956) Archived 2012-04-02 at the Wayback Machine – Article by Sybil Amber

[7] From Pictorializing to Visual Anthropology1 Archived 2015-06-26 at the Wayback Machine – Chapter from "Handbook of Methods in Cultural Anthropology"

[8] Nannicelli, Ted (July 2006). "From Representation to Evocation: Tracing a Progression in Jean Rouch's Les magiciens de Wanzerbé, Les maîtres fous, and Jaguar". Visual Anthropology. 19 (2): 123–143. doi:10.1080/08949460600596558. S2CID 144385606.

[9] Ciarcia, Gaetano (2002). "L'ethnofiction à l'œuvre. Prisme et images de l'entité dogon" [Ethnofiction at work. Prism and images of the dogon entity]. Ethnologies Comparées (in French) (5): 20 p. http://alor.univ.

[10] Father of 'cinema verite' dies – BBC news

[11] BIOGRAPHIES: Jean Rouch – Article by Ben Michaels at Indiana University

[12] A Tribute to Jean Rouch by Paul Stoller at Rouge

[13] Ethnographic Film (origines)

[14] Knowing Images: Jean Rouch's Ethnography <- Chapter from Sarah Cooper's monograph "Selfless Cinema?: Ethics and French Documentary" (Oxford: Legenda, 2006) at MAITRES-FOUS.net

[15] "Cine-trance". Archived from the original on 2012-01-03. Retrieved 2012-10-06.

[16] Cine-trance: a Tribute to Jean Rouch(Visual Anthropology, American Anthropologist)

[17] Ethnofiction and the Work of Jean Rouch, article by Reuben Ross, UK Visual Anthropology, November 9, 2010

[18] Videos about ethnofiction on Vimeo

[19] Coates, Jennifer (2 February 2019). "Blurred Boundaries: Ethnofiction and Its Impact on Postwar Japanese Cinema". Arts. 8 (1): 20. doi:10.3390/arts8010020.

[20] Coming of Age as Other: Indigenous People in the Ethnofiction Film 'The Dead and The Others' – article at CINEA, 14 december 2018

[21] Quist, Brian (2001). Jean Rouch and the genesis of ethnofiction (Thesis). Long Island University. OCLC 778067104.

[22] Imagining Rurality: Portuguese Documentary and Ethnographic Film in the 1960s and 1990s Archived 2012-03-19 at the Wayback Machine – Abstract for a conference by Catarina Alves Costa at Comité du Film Ethnographique

[23] African Filmmaker Profiles: Flora Gomes at The Woyingi Blog

[24] The Films of Pedro Costa at Distant Voices

[25] Terra Longe at South Planet (French)

[26] The Portuguese and the "others": dialogue of cultures and characters in oral literary tradition Archived 2012-03-19 at the Wayback Machine – Article by Maria Edite Orange and Maria Inês Pinho at Departamento de Artes e Motricidade Humana do IPP – Escola Superior de Educação (Porto)

[27] Silvano, Filomena (1 October 2010). "Things we see: Portuguese anthropology on material culture". Etnografica. 14 (3): 497–505. doi:10.4000/etnografica.264. hdl:10362/11467.

[28] Disquieting Objects – Article by Gabe Klinger at The Museum of Moving Image

[29] Terra Longe, David & Golias

[30] David González (2019-11-22). "Review: Work, or to Whom Does the World Belong". Cineuropa.

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Ethnofiction

History

Chronology

1910s

1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

See also

Footnotes

External links

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