New VAEF films 2021

Pandemic Dreams (2021)

Reposted from https://ethnographiceye.blogspot.com

 During the coronavirus pandemic many people reported having trouble sleeping and experiencing eerie, vivid dreams or more frequent nightmares. It is presumed by researchers that the pandemic constitutes as a collective trauma: isolation, existential dread, anxiety over one’s job or financial situation, fear for the well-being of one’s family and loved ones takes a toll on everybody’s psyche. It makes it difficult for the brain to relax at night, hence the trouble sleeping and the disturbing dreams.

The aim of the film is to present a selection of bizarre, nostalgic and scary dreams from the time of the COVID pandemic and through them offer a admittedly limited document of this difficult period. Four dreams were included in the 8-minute film, each depicts a different mood connected to the pandemic. The first one, a classical nightmare offers a glimpse into the first phase when the virus was still new and completely unknown and people had to deal with lockdowns and isolation for the first time. It is an anxiety dream in which a menacing, dark figure wearing a blue medical mask threatens the dreamer. The second dream captures the longing for having nice meals with friends – it is the desire of many in isolation who had to settle for ordering food delivered by overworked, underpaid messengers. The images of these delivery people – the unsung heroes of the pandemic – are counterposed with an account of a nice feast with friends. The third dream evokes the common feeling of being separated from one’s friends by the epidemiological restrictions. The images capture the wish to escape to nature in order to be far from potentially dangerous crowds. The final sequence presents images from a physical protest which happened despite the COVID restrictions: students protesting for one of their unjustly imprisoned peer wearing masks and trying to observe social distancing (sequences of the protest by courtesy of Tiphaine Trudelle). The political struggle is juxtaposed with the dream account of physical struggle – the dreamer is trying to climb a rock wall. The four dreams together create an arch from the paralysis of fear through the nostalgia for the ‘old’ world building up to literal resistance amidst the pandemic.

All dream accounts were recorded in the dreamer’s native language, so the different tones and rhythms create different moods and tempos, as well as represent the fact that most people dream in their first languages. All the contributors are university students – their reflective, analytical daytime activity stands in contrast with the surreal, irrational dream material they are recounting. The film did not have a pre-written script – it was shaped by the process of collecting audio dream accounts. Visual sequences were shot after these were collected, images were determined by the audio accounts. Thus, the dreamers became the writers of the film. 

You can watch the final version of the film here:

Read here about its making: https://ethnographiceye.blogspot.com/2021/04/common-nightmare-can-random-collection.html

A Story Told about You and Others

Final project ‘A story told about you and others’

The Ethnology of Being

A Story Told about You and Others tells an intimate story of authenticity, resilience, and societal alienation through the story of a Roma resident named Joli at a settlement in Monor, Hungary. The storytelling incorporates the filmmakers’ journey of discovery as Joli and the filmmakers encounter each other for the first time and tell stories about the self and others. Roma representation in Hungary has always been associated with stereotypical tropes. Roma communities often live in spatially separated areas, such as the settlement village in Monor, a town in Pest county, Hungary. Through subtle visual cum worded inferences, A Story Told about You and Others aims to portray Joli not as a blank space of Roma stereotypes, but an idiosyncratic persona layered with multiple identities and shrouded in an active everydayness of life and varied struggles. Also, it highlights the permeating nature of othering both in one’s lived experiences and…

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“What I see is life looking at me”: on Trinh T. Minh-ha’s ‘Reassemblage’ (and other questions to be answered)

from Ira’s blog

The idea of women as masters of fire was somehow holding the whole film structure playing with spectators’ frustration about the lack of any whole picture. Shots of women cooking food, shots of forest fires. I find myself waiting for monotonous, almost BBC-documentarish voice informing us that some people in Senegal blame women for the forest fires. After continuously facing the feeling of unease created by the movie, I realize how strange my unconscious expectations are and feel ashamed. Speaking in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s words, this was the time when I fell into a single story of ethnography-related films I have seen before. Or was it just this crave for some coherent narrative without which everything dissolves? I think it was Stefan who pointed out during one of our classes that, in his opinion, the film does not re-essemble but just de-essembles, de-constructs. I feel like it is me who…

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Forms of interaction and reflexion in The Digital Age — reblogged from Stefan’s twitchingeyes

The innovations brought by Rouch and Morin’s Chronique d’une Ete in terms of forms of interaction and reflexion in filmmaking were enabled by technological changes. Mobile film cameras and sound recorders allowed the synchronous recording of sound and moving images, placing the filmmaker in-the-world-in-action. These changes were integral to Rouch and Morin’s project, which was […]

via Forms of interaction and reflexion in The Digital Age — twitchingeyes

Forms of interaction and reflexion — from Stefan’s blog twitchingeyes

Chronique d’un été (1961) co-directed by Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin is recognised as one of the most innovative documentary films made. The most important innovations of the film relate to what Nichols (1991) calls the interactive mode of representation, introduced for the first time by Flaherty in Nanook of the North (1922), and the […]

via Forms of interaction and reflexion — twitchingeyes

Reposted fromThe Ethnology of Being (Lishu’s blog)

Week 8. Cinema-verité: Engaging through the Camera My understanding of “cinema-verité” may be a bit confused. I first came into contact with the notion of cinema verité through waves of its adaptation into narrative films, such as the Romanian New Wave, and what many would categorize Richard Linklater’s films. So when I watched Chronicle of a Summer (1961) by Jean Rouch, it […]

via Reflection V — The Ethnology of Being

on cinematic anthropology, the use of sensation in ethnographic filmmaking

reflections from a sensory ethnography class at McGill University

anthropologyworks

Professor Lisa Stevenson at the event. Source: Claire Avisar

To most people, the image of a farm on the outskirts of Montreal, the routine of a professional bodybuilder, and Afghan lullabies have little to do with one another. To students of the Anthropology department’s ANTH 408: Sensory Ethnography course, however, they represent the subjects of a semester’s worth of work documenting, creating, and reflecting upon the process of ethnographic filmmaking.

On January 20, held within the historic limestone walls of Thompson House, McGill’s Anthropology Students’ Association hosted the students, their friends, and professors of a class whose central work focused on sensory ethnography (a practice that privileges audiovisual representations of living subjects and rejects the mediation of dialogue, narration, or subtitles). Prefaced by a cocktail hour, this event provided its attendees an evening of food, drinks, and the chance to engage with the students whose work was showcased. With a…

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A Visual Research at a Shelter for the Dying in Kolkata (an Online Gallery) By Egor Novikov

The sketches, photographs and field notes collected in this online gallery were made in April 2016 during an anthropological fieldwork at Kalighat Home for the Dying Destitutes. The shelter is founded by Mother Teresa and run by her monastic order Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata (Calcutta)*. My research was focused on the life changing experience of the western volunteers working with the bare life of the marginalized Indians. I found this experience being tightly bound to corporeal phenomena: physical contact, monstrous images of suffering and transgression of spatial borders. Hence, the visual methods were irreplaceable while working with these hard-to-describe matters as well as for the consequent presentation of the research outcomes.

A few years ago the nuns of the order introduced a ban on photographs in the Home on the pretext of protecting human dignity. As one of the signs on the wall explains it: “…our patients are not animals”. While carrying out participant observation in the premises of the shelter as a volunteer, I had to go back to the old anthropological method of sketching inhabitants of the shelter and their daily life taking advantage of every break in service. The method came out being effective in many – often unexpected – ways. The work on the sketches gave me a reason to stay for a longer period focused in one direction, which usually doesn’t happen: the volunteers mainly spend their working time in constant movement. Thus I could pay attention to details and witness the slow pace of the patients’ life and their interactions.

Besides various side effects such as closer relations with nuns and other volunteers and involving them into my research the sketches provided me with a much more profound access to the values and the mental conditions of the disempowered patients of the Home. Brought to the shelter at the verge of death from streets of Kolkata they are predominantly silent and passive, subjected to the totality of religious charitable service of the sisters. In spite of multiple symbolical and structural borders which separated me (a western socially acknowledged volunteer) from them (nameless inhabitants of a human dumpster of Global South), we could establish a certain personal contact where sketching functioned as a universal mediator delivering multiple unclear but powerful messages through the linguistic, cultural and symbolic borders.

Clearly, when looking closely at the patients of the Home, processing the visual perceptions through my body and imprinting their images on paper, I functioned as a politically active subject objectifying their stripped bare life into a social product. Apparently, for these forsaken inhabitants of social bottom such recognition from a western stranger who embodied their image in an intimate act of representation often was an important experience. At some cases upon seeing their portraits usually apathetic people came out of their desperate indifference and showed strong emotions so irregular in their condition seeming almost frightening. Some of them found it important to write their names on the sketches. For instance, in one case a patient revealed his name for the first time since he got to the shelter asking to sign the portrait. Another one was asking me to let him see all the sketches whenever he saw me passing by with the journal in my hand, though I don’t know for certain what was that he found there for himself. Meanwhile, that might be another value of these brief visual reflections: they are tangible pieces of the field experience which bear imprints of various actors. They are points of attention where anxious gazes of the patients, the nuns and the volunteers cross, where all of them find essential meanings of their own.

A couple of words about the technical side: for sketching and the fieldnotes I used a moleskine-type A8 notebook with a waterproof cover (small enough to carry around behind the trouser belt) and a regular ‘Pilot’ gel pen. For the photo (also video) shooting I used a compact high-resolution mirrorless Ricoh GXR camera with a ‘normal’ 50mm lens, which provides a view angle close to that of a human eye.

*          Following a call from Virgin Mary Mother Teresa founded female monastic order “Missioners of Charity” in India in 1950. She started bringing critically ill people from the streets of Kolkata to an old shelter for Hindu pilgrims at the main Kali temple in 1952, which was the beginning of the Home for Dying Destitutes. Today the Kalighat Home gives place to almost a hundred of local people in critical health condition. About ten nuns and novices, a dozen of volunteers and a few paid workers provide daily care to the residents. A few patients die in the shelter every week. The Mission remains one of the most known symbols of religious charity in the world. For decades it has invoked severe discussions being an object of both furious criticism and blind veneration.

 

Ethnographic Fieldwork Equipment That (Hopefully) Won’t Break the Bank: Camcorders by Matthew L. Hale (Indiana U)

from Anthropology News:

Ethnographic Fieldwork Equipment That (Hopefully) Won’t Break the Bank: Camcorders

National Association of Student Anthropologists

Matthew L. Hale (Indiana U)

Having considered digital audio recorders and cameras in the first and second installments of this four part series, I now turn our attention to digital camcorders. Once again, a disclaimer before I begin, this column is not an endorsement nor is it a review of any particular product, brand, or service. It is intended to provide student and professional anthropologists with an overview of the kinds of digital camcorders currently available on the market and to highlight several key features that one ought to consider when investing in or upgrading their field equipment.

Why a Stand-Alone Camcorder? 
As in the previous installments, we begin with a simple question: Why do I need this device? For most anthropologists, the answer is simple. You don’t. If you own a smartphone, tablet, or digital camera that will capture relatively high quality audio and video, these devices will suffice for most basic applications.

For many ethnographers, video footage functions as a secondary medium—a means to create better written texts. You might use video footage as a kind of audio/visual set of jottings, a tool for generating transcriptions that better attend to the embodied or material dimensions of a particular cultural practice, or a resource that could be incorporated into a conference presentation. In each of these instances, video footage is a means to an end, but not the end itself. If these are the sorts of methodological practices that your research demands, you almost certainly don’t need a professional grade camcorder.

If you intend to use video footage as a primary medium through which to produce and disseminate ethnographic knowledge, you’ll want to learn to use and invest in professional grade tools. This caliber of equipment will offer you precision controls, the highest quality audio and video content possible, long battery life, adaptable design features, and an ergonomic form factor. The downside to all of this is that it is going to cost you.

What To Look For
If you are on the market for a prosumer, or professional grade digital camcorder, there are several features that are essential for ethnographic research.

1. Onboard stereo audio inputs with manual controls is a must. Minimally, you’ll want to have two channels (hence stereo) with independent gain or volume controls of each channel. While many small camcorders will feature a single 1/8” stereo input, this won’t be sufficient for your professional audio needs. You ideally want two separate XLR inputs (large round connectors that typically house three pin connectors) and “phantom power” (the ability to send power from your battery through your XLR cables to your microphones or other equipment).
2. While automatic control features have become amazingly adept, you’ll nonetheless want to have manual control over your white balance, zoom, focus, and again, your audio. Although you might be tempted by touch screen technology, manual buttons are your friends. When you’re in the field, you’ll want to reduce the amount of work that you have to do to adjust a parameter on the fly—physical controls are simple, effective, and reliable and they will prevent you from missing a shot.
3. If you are going to invest money in a professional camcorder, you owe it to yourself to try several devices out in person. You want a camcorder that feels good and balances well in your hands. You’re going to be holding this hunk of metal and plastic in the air for hours at a time, so finding an ergonomic and well balanced camera will help you reduce camera shake and will minimize the inevitable pain you’ll feel the next day after a 10 hour shoot (trust me on this). Your camcorder-to-be shouldn’t feel like a plastic toy. It needs to have some weight to it, but shouldn’t be too heavy. You’ll want to look for camcorders that fall in the range of 3-6 lbs. excluding the weight of the battery, microphones, and cables.
4. Ensure that your camcorder records its data in a format that is compatible with your preferred editing software.
5. Finally, although high-definition audio and video recording has become the new standard for digital camcorders, new 4k resolution devices are quickly flooding the market. While you might want to invest in these products—and this isn’t meant to discourage you from doing so—keep in mind that recording raw data at this quality will require that you have massive amounts of storage.

The DSLR: The Contemporary Ethnographer’s Swiss Army Knife 
If you are a investing in their your first camcorder, don’t underestimate the power and value of DSLR cameras. These devices are an excellent alternative to digital camcorders for several reasons.

1. They are capable of producing both high-resolution still photographs and video. While some camcorders can produce still images (the Sony NEX series for example), they aren’t suited to this application.
2. They have interchangeable lens systems unlike most prosumer level camcorders (exceptions are noted below).
3. Although most DSLRs do not have XLR inputs or phantom power, you can easily sync audio captured from a stand-alone digital audio recorder to the video content that you generate with your DSLR.
4. The price point of a suitable video capable DSLR is far below that of a professional digital camcorder.

Options At Various Price Points 
$100-$500

• GOPro Hero4 (especially, though not exclusively for Point of View footage)
• Any entry level DSLR camera, especially the Nikon D5500 or Canon EOS 7D.

$1,000-$2,000

• Canon XA10
• Canon XA 20
• Panasonic AG-AC90A
• Sony 96GB HXR-NX30 Palm Sized
• Sony PXW-X70

$2,100-$5,000

• Canon EOS C100 (interchangeable lens system)
• Canon XA25
• JVC GY-HM600
• JVC GY-LS300CHU (interchangeable lens system)
• Sony HXR-NX3/1
• Sony NEX-VG30H  (interchangeable lens system)
• Panasonic AG-AC 160

DOCLAB Workshop – Face to Face: Refugees in Europe

November 11-14, 2015 /// CEU MEDIA LAB /// OSA Archivum

In 2015 Verzio DocLab will be focusing on the refugee crisis in Europe. Every single face has a name and a story but in the current flow of refugees they are often lost. We want DocLab participants to reveal these individual faces, voices, stories, and to show people escaping war and destruction as fellow human beings.

The workshop participants will make short films about one person or one family. The film can also be about a place, a situation or attitudes represented by the citizens in European countries. These portraits and short videos are imagined as personal statements calling for understanding and action. There is no restriction on form, the stories however should be well researched and based on real stories. The work can be experimental but should foreground individual personalities and aim for impact. The workshop participants should arrive with footage shot prior to the workshop and will get tutoring in editing and narrative structure. The resulting works (or extracts from work in progress) will be screened at the festival and circulated on-line. We aim at raising awareness and calling for a change in attitudes towards refugees.

The workshop is free and open to filmmakers and students interested in documentary and human rights. Basic filming experience is required. To apply send a project description and CV to info@verzio.org with the title DocLab Application until October 25.