Ethnofiction

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Ethnofiction is 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 academic works. [1] [2] [3]

Contents

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. It is a film type in which, by means of fictional narrative or creative imagination, often improvised, the portrayed characters (natives) play their own roles as members of an ethnic or social group.

History

Ethnologist Jean Rouch is considered to be the father of ethnofiction, [4] with Robert Flaherty as an ancestor. [5] Rouch discovered that a filmmaker interferes with the event he registers: the behavior of the portrayed individuals, the natives, will be affected by the camera's presence. Contrary to the principles of Marcel Griaule, [6] [7] [8] [9] his mentor, Rouch considers it impossible for a non-participating camera to record "pure" events in ethnographic research. [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] Rouch thus introduced the actor as a tool in research. [17] [18] [19] [20]

Ethnofiction has also been developed in Portuguese cinema. Ethnic films have been common in Portugal since the 1930s, particularly from the 1960s to the 1980s [21] and in the early 21st century. The remote Trás-os-Montes region in Portugal and the former Portuguese colonies of Guinea-Bissau and the Cape Verde islands are common subjects of such films. These films depict local realities along with legends and surreal imagery, producing works of ethnofiction.[ citation needed ]

Chronology

1910s

1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

See also

Footnotes

  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. ↑ Henley, Paul (2010). The Adventure of the Real: Jean Rouch and the Craft of Ethnographic Cinema. University of Chicago Press. pp. 252–253. ISBN   978-0-226-32716-7.
  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. ↑ Imagining Rurality: Portuguese Documentary and Ethnographic Film in the 1960s and 1990s [ usurped ] – Abstract for a conference by Catarina Alves Costa at Comité du Film Ethnographique [ usurped ]
  22. ↑ Terra Longe, David & Golias
  23. ↑ David González (2019-11-22). "Review: Work, or to Whom Does the World Belong". Cineuropa.
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