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Beyond Observation is structured by the argument that the ‘ethnographicness’ of a film should not be determined by the fact that it is about an exotic culture – the popular view – nor because it has apparently not been authored – a long-standing academic view – but rather because it adheres to the norms of ethnographic practice more generally. On these grounds, the book covers a large number of films made in a broad range of styles across a 120-year period, from the Arctic to Africa, from the cities of China to rural Vermont.
Paul Henley discusses films made within reportage, exotic melodrama and travelogue genres in the period before the Second World War, as well as more conventionally ethnographic films made for academic or state-funded educational purposes. The book explores the work of film-makers such as John Marshall, Asen Balikci, Ian Dunlop and Timothy Asch in the post-war period, considering ideas about authorship developed by Jean Rouch, Robert Gardner and Colin Young. It also discusses films authored by indigenous subjects themselves using the new video technology of the 1970s and the ethnographic films that flourished on British television until the 1990s. In the final part of the book, Henley examines the recent work of David and Judith MacDougall and the Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab, before concluding with an assessmentof a range of films authored in a participatory manner as possible future models.
An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.
'The scope of this book is extraordinary and, in my experience, unprecedented in the published record. [...] I suggest that this book will be of interest to practising ethnographic film-makers, film historians, and social anthropologists who would be interested in looking at the historical record for insights on how to develop their craft.'
Carlo Cubero, Social Anthropology
' Paul Henley’s latest book examines filmic productions ranging from the end of the 19th century to the 2010s. Not only is Beyond Observation impressive for its sheer size (it is uncommon to see books of this length in the current academic publishing scene) and for the variety of epochs and styles that it covers, it is also brave of the author for trying to systematize these examples under different declinations of the idea of authorship. [...] His prose is always straight to the point and the crucial concepts are always defined in accessible but rigorous terms, something increasingly rare nowadays and that will make this book very useful to students of visual anthropology and of ethnographic film in particular.'
Lorenzo Ferrarini (Department of Social Anthropology, University of Manchester), Visual Anthropology
'Beyond Observation is subtitled A History of Authorship in Ethnographic Film, and its first part, brilliantly and indispensably, is just that. It offers a balanced and insightful account of the archive, warts and all, focused on its basically European, indeed (especially as we approach the present, Anglophone) makers.'
Brian Winston (University of Lincoln), Studies in Documentary Film
Introduction: Authorship, Praxis, Observation, Ethnography
Part I: Histories: Ethnographic film in the twentieth century
Introduction
1 The long prehistory of ethnographic film
2 Expeditions, melodrama and the birth of ethnofiction
3 The invisible Author: films of re-enactment in the postwar period
4 Records, not movies: the early films of John Marshall and Timothy Asch
5 Reflexivity and participation: the films of David and Judith MacDougall in Africa and Australia
6 Entangled voices: the complexities of collaborative authorship
7 The subject as Author: indigenous media and the Video nas Aldeias project
Part II: Authors: Three key figures
Introduction
8 Jean Rouch: sharing anthropology
9 Robert Gardner: beyond the burden of the real
10 Colin Young: the principles of Observational Cinema
Part III: Television as meta-author: Ethnographic film in Britain
Introduction
11 Ways of doing ethnographic film on British television
12 Beyond the ‘disappearing world’ – and back again
13 The decline of ethnographic film on British television
Part IV: Beyond observation: Ethnographic film in the twenty-first century
Introduction
14 The evolution of Observational Cinema: recent films of David and Judith MacDougall
15 Negative capability and the flux of life: films of the Sensory Ethnography Lab
16 Participatory perspectives
An epilogue: Return to Kiriwina: the ethnographic film-maker as Author
Appendix: British Television Documentaries produced in collaboration with Ethnographic Researchers
Textual references
Film references