Description David Mac Dougall is a pivotal figure in the development of ethnographic Cinema and visual anthropology.
Formerly, he was the editor of the journal Vis.
Lucien Taylor is the author, with Ilisa Barbash, of Cross-Cultural Filmmaking: A Handbook for Making Documentary and Ethnographic Films and Videos (California).
About the Author David Mac Dougall is Queen Elizabeth II Fellow and Convenor, Program in Visual Research, Centre for Cross-Cultural Research at the Australian National University, Canberra.
The three longest pieces, including the title essay, are new.
Although influential among filmmakers and critics, some of these essays were published in small journals and have been until now difficult to find.
The author ultimately disputes the view that ethnographic filmmaking is merely a visual form of anthropology, maintaining instead that it is a radical anthropological practice, which challenges many of the basic assumptions of the discipline of anthropology itself.
Refreshingly free of jargon, each piece belongs very much to the tradition of the essay in its personal engagement with exploring difficult issues.
In fact, these works provide an overview of the history of visual anthropology, as well as commentaries on specific subjects, such as point-of-view and subjectivity, reflexivity, the use of subtitles, and the role of the Cinema subject.
The essays collected here address, for instance, the difference between films and written texts and between the position of the filmmaker and that of the anthropological writer.
As a theorist, he articulates central issues in the relation of film to anthropology, and is one of the few documentary filmmakers who writes extensively on these concerns.
His prize-winning films (many made jointly with his wife, Judith Mac Dougall) include The Wedding Camels, Lorang\'s Way, To Live with Herds, A Wife among Wives, Takeover, Photo Wallahs, and Tempus de Baristas.
As a filmmaker, he has directed in Africa, Australia, India, and Europe.
Description David Mac Dougall is a pivotal figure in the development of ethnographic Cinema and visual anthropology
