David MacDougall

The idea of my film is to transform anthropology,
the elder daughter of colonialism, a discipline
reserved to those with power interrogating people
without it. I want to replace it with a shared
anthropology. That is to say, an anthropological
dialogue between people belonging to different
cultures, which to me is the discipline
of human sciences for the future.
 

Jean Rouch
 

In September 2012, I was appointed as a member of the International Jury at the XVI Sardinia International Ethnographic Film Festival (SIEFF) in Nuoro [1]. One of the issues raised during the discussions that took place between the participants (most of them anthropologists-filmmakers) was the question as follows: What should be the criteria to distinguish an ethnographic film from (generic) documentary films?
  

Annoyed with such an obsolete and inconclusive issue, I once stressed the uselessness and absurdity of what was a sort of return to the past in my opinion. In fact, my perception was that the most polemic critiques against some of the films screened at the Festival were re-echoing a debate that I thought that had been closed since several decades – at least since the late 1980s. Obviously, the youngsters are too often unaware of the mistakes made by the elders! That is the reason why I consider useful to evoke here what was my outlook at that time.

With a certain irony, “visual” anthropologists – some decades ago – used to speak of themselves as a “small tribe”. We might define that group as the people involved (though certainly not exclusively) with questions about the use of audio-visual media in anthropological research, teaching and museum contexts, and/or those who gathered frequently during international meetings, festivals, and other academic events. Given the present growth of interest in visual anthropology and the consequent increase in numbers of its neophytes, it seems no longer appropriate to speak of a “little tribe” but its “elders” still continue to consider themselves as “referees” of the visual anthropology history and development (thereby adding a dose of pride and self-satisfaction to the irony).

Merely because they are united on this point, one should not believe that they share a more general intellectual homogeneity or solid concurrence about ideas. Of course, there are always conflicts and roughly sketched contrasts between different academic “schools.” However, such distinctions have usually been maintained within the domestic walls and in this context, the family's dirty laundry has always been washed discretely. Until what seems like yesterday, the life of our tribe was one in which respect and reverence for what Jean Rouch always called notres ancêtres totémiques were maintained and at the head of such ancestors sat the father of fathers, Robert Flaherty, immutable and unchangeable, as if he had been deposited there by higher forces.

Suddenly, in the late 1980s, some of the inherited unspoken rules of the game were shattered, and the result was something of a riot – and, as always happens when it is a family quarrel, the turmoil was such that even the blindest and deafest of the family could not fail to notice that it was taking place. I refer to the sudden (though not unexpected) burst of polemical writing about Robert Gardner's film, Forest of Bliss [2].

I will not consider why hostilities about a film that has been possible to see since 1985 emerged only in 1988/89. Rather, I would like to underline that like the kidnapping of Helen for the War of Troy or the murder of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo for the First World War, Forest of Bliss was the pretext or catalyst for a debate whose real purpose was the release of deep and complex tensions, which had created a light illness in the realm of visual anthropology.

And so, the problems have risen to the surface, a good example of which is represented in the counter offensive that Edmund Carpenter launched against Jay Ruby in defence of Gardner [3]. This counter offensive might be reduced to a not very academic response to injuries, which seem to be rather trivial. It appears to be something like a reprimand for Ruby's temerity in having dared to raise doubts about the status of the totemic ancestor Flaherty, for having committed the crime of injuring a divinity by suggesting a “de-mystification” of Flaherty. I do not believe it is very important to continue re-telling stories about the polemical onslaughts that are still going on around Forest of Bliss – it is hardly educational and I cannot enter the fray without making at least some sort of anthropological analysis of Gardner's work. However, that task is neither my intention nor could it be done in the space available to me if it were.

All the same, if we individualise the principal themes of the polemic, in the essential criticisms of Forest of Bliss and the other “ethno-graphic” documentaries of Gardner we can identify a number of general questions about the very nature of what is considered to be the ethnographic film and the future of visual anthropology itself – questions that require facing and resolution. I do not say this to give a sense of drama to these pages. I believe, it is very significant that a discrete domain of “scientific cinematography” has been developed without particular difficulty in the natural sciences, while in the domain of human sciences and in anthropology in particular (even after the promising start during the 19th century and early 20th century), it often created a sentiment of “suspicion” toward the cinema, which was thereby pushed to the margins of scientific and didactic activities. If we do not clarify the nature and the function of “ethnographic film,” the credibility of “visual anthropology” itself risks being compromised. It is important to understand the danger that causes Jonathan Parry in commenting on Forest of Bliss from an “expert” point of view (that is from the position of an ethnographer of Benares, the subject of the film) to observe: “if this genre is all we can expect from the marriage between anthropologist and filmmaker, then I wish for a speedy divorce.”

Although it may not be necessary to formulate a definition of the concept of ethnographic film, it is imperative that we provide a response to the demands implicit in the debate among the members of our tribe. I do not pretend to suggest an answer; rather I propose to indicate some of the problems, which I hold to be prejudicial, as clearly as possible.
 

John Marshall was both ethnographer and creator of the film The Hunters (1957). Without question, he provided the detailed anthropological knowledge about the Bushmen of the Kalahari, while the editing was done by Robert Gardner. John Collier has written about this relationship: “the shooting is an expression of an effort to record the ethnographic reality,” while the editing was an attempt to make a recording of the film as “ethnographic drama” [4]. Writing about Dead Birds (1963) (which is considered one of the major Gardner's masterpieces), he mentions that the filmmaker admits “to have taken the opportunity to speak of some of the fundamental themes of the human life ... the Dani were thus less important for me than those themes....” [5]. Collier observes: “It is evident that the ethnography gives to Gardner the excuse to develop his own philosophic ideas about the unavoidability of the eternal conflict among men.”

The two films cited (which were awarded at the Festival Dei Popoli of Florence, respectively in 1959 and 1964) are generally considered among the “classics” of ethnographic cinema. All the same, we cannot avoid asking ourselves whether we can use them to speak of an ethnographic cinema at all. If we may use a term promoted by Karl Heider, the ethnographicness of a film is not determined by its content. A film made about a “primitive” population is not ipso facto ethnographic, nor is a film made around “complex” society necessarily of a non-ethnographic genre. These are obvious points but they have been frequently forgotten.

On the other hand, this is not a problem pertaining to visual anthropology only but all the ethnoanthropological disciplines in their entirety. In a work of some years ago on “cultural anthropology” I wrote that about “the problem of delimiting with precision the field of cultural anthropology, to pretend to define it in reference to a specific object of research, (would be) misleading.” I concluded by observing that “cultural anthropology does not pose itself today as the study of something, but rather as a method of approach to the human reality” [6].

According to Heider, the value of an ethnographic film is directly proportional to the value of the research and of the analyses which precede the research [7]. Collier is of the same mind, maintaining that the criteria by which to judge an ethnographic film can be found only in the field work that constitutes its basis [8]. And Ruby (1989) asserts on his own behalf that “the fundamental criteria that we should use to measure the value of a film designated as ethnographic are those of anthropology and not of the aesthetic of cinema” [9]. On his own behalf, it is exactly in reference to Gardner's films that Asen Balikci (1989) asks himself why they are classified with an anthropological designation “if we recognize that his films are essentially visual poems that express the free creativity of an artist uninterested in accepting the discipline of the ethnographic method... This certainly does not mean that those films must be banned from our classrooms. On the contrary, they must be shown often, as examples of the perception that an artist has of the diversity of the exotic environments, but not as an example of visual ethnography” [10].

Many other scholars who have expressed similar points of view could be quoted but I believe that it is not necessary. It appears evident that we can consider relatively shared the desire to confirm the primacy of anthropology over cinema, the first being a “science” to which the second can and must serve only as an instrument, important and sometimes irreplaceable though it may be.

One of the recurrent leitmotifs in the controversy over Gardner is in substance the same problematic of the relationship between anthropology and cinema. Our positivist “ancestors” did not have any doubts about the fact that “photo-cinematographic” images furnish an “objective” representation of reality. Paradoxically, today it seems that the attitude has been reversed: the anthropological method (in as much as it is “scientific”) is more objective than images (whose manipulatibility no one doubts now). This sentiment certainly does not get expressed in explicit terms, although it is one possible interpretation of the refusal on the part of the (visual) anthropologists to evaluate ethnographic films according to aesthetic and/or artistic and therefore subjective criteria, while the “anthropological” criteria are less subjected to the interpretive “caprice” of the artist who freely re-elaborates the reality.

From this point of view Radihika Chopra, while intending to defend the value of Forest of Bliss, inadvertently deals a blow to her own criticisms when she affirms that the way in which the film is made limits it to only one possible interpretation: “The film is a textual analysis of Benares, but one which does not impose a single meaning frame upon the viewer; rather it leaves open the levels of interpretation to which the city is subject ... the film provides us the visual words to give voice to the silent structure. But it provides them in the way the city makes them available to us – through images, which demand that we make of them what we choose, but within the paradigmatic frame of the sacred city of Benares” [11]. This position confirms the idea of those who declare that this film is truly an example of “art” rather than of anthropology!

This consideration aside, we need to ask ourselves what will become of that essential function of ethnographic film, which is that of communication. As Collier points out, the value of an ethnographic film is based only on its communicative abilities, that is capacity to permit the spectator to “read and understand” what is happening [12]. Parenthetically, I do not believe that it is useful to add to this proposition that an ethnographic film cannot present events filmed as they unfold “in the same way and in the same time” as they would have unfolded even in the absence of the observer (anthropologist/cineaste), as Jean Dominique Lajoux still suggests [13].

As much as ethnographic film can communicate an interactive situation in general terms, as David McDougall notes, its intercultural character is what distinguishes it from documentary film in general [14]. MacDougall writes: “Its intent to interpret a society to benefit another is the element that reveals its relationship with anthropology.” Even more explicitly he specifies ethnographic film as something “that places itself somewhere within a conceptual space comprised by the film's subject, the filmmaker and the audience.” In other words, the interactive situation does not involve only the filmmaker/anthropologist and the film's subjects but also, in a relatively mediated form, the spectators. Much has been written about this subject, but the tyranny of space does not allow me to conduct a comprehensive review. Nevertheless, the controversy with regard to Gardner's films offers a number of useful indications in formulating a response to the question “what is ethnographic film?”

I would begin by highlighting the question of the nature of the rapport between filmmaker and anthropologist in the process of making a film. The problem has been widely debated and does not need to be rehashed here. I will cite only the very clear position summarized by Timothy Asch in emphasizing the necessity of the anthropologist and the filmmaker in having a common goal: ethnographic film can only become a productive tool for anthropologists if they can influence the creation of the film at every stage from planning to filming and editing [15].

It appears that these conditions are not always respected in Gardner's films. Alexander Moore bases all his criticisms of Forest of Bliss on an initial consideration that merits our maximum attention. Disagreeing with many who maintain that “to see is to know”, Moore argues that “there are clear limitations in the information that can be conveyed by visual images. There are many techniques available today, not used by Gardner, to extend visual information” [16]. These techniques are:

 
As Heider observed, the use of off-screen narration is legitimate only when the information conveyed with images is not sufficient to understand the film text [17]. In particular, he took into consideration two possibilities: the “contextualisation” of the filmed event and the explanation of the “visual mysteries” (for example, in films about ritual where one must consider abstract, symbolic and verbal meanings; words are indispensable means of explanation). No doubt, in Forest of Bliss the “visual mysteries” are many, for most of the audience have little knowledge of Indian culture.
  

  
With an evident provocative purpose, in his book Picturing Culture Jay Ruby complains of the fact that, when hearing the phrase anthropology and film, many people think of the so-called ethnographic films about exotic peoples, and correctly argues that “ethnographic and documentary film, as commonly practiced, is only marginally related to anthropology and that these film forms are actually an impediment to the development of an anthropological cinema” [18]. I indeed agree with him, but what may be the alternative to the traditional descriptive (and often claimed to be “objective”) films? Most of those films actually are products of a hierarchic relation between the anthropologist filmmaker and the filmed subjects, while in Jay's opinion we should adopt Jean Rouch's approach, clearly expressed by the French filmmaker himself: “It is this permanent ethno-dialogue, which appears to me to be one of the most interesting angles in the current progress of ethnography. Knowledge is no longer a stolen secret, devoured in the Western temples of knowledge; it is the result of an endless quest where ethnographers and those whom they study meet on a path, which some of us now call shared anthropology – anthropologie partagée” [19]. If we think that in 1973 Rouch signed, together with Paul Hockings, a “resolution on visual anthropology” [20] that indeed was a manifesto of the so-called urgent (visual) anthropology – a document that has great responsibilities in the long supremacy of the “butterfly-collection” mode in ethnographic filmmaking, I cannot avoid to complain how great was the misunderstanding of his “revolutionary” approach to the anthropological cinema.
  
In my perspective, Anthropology (ethimologically anthropos+logia = the study of man) does not have simply the goal of knowing men and their cultures: that knowledge in itself is somehow endless. As the Italian scholar Carlo Cattaneo (1801–1869), who represents the totemic ancestor of modern Italian Cultural Anthropology [21], stated that the study of humankind is inspired “by that sublime sympathy that makes us see in every human individual the Man … (and is the path) that reveals how the origin of any human progress is the cultural contact.” 
    

After the Second World War Italy had to create a new society: institutions, industrial production, social relations, even the family structure had been disgregated. My concern here focuses on the need of a complete cultural reconstruction. After twenty years of dictatorship and the tragic years of civil war following the military defeat and the creation of a separatist “social (fascist) republic” in the northern regions of the country, people were bewildered, and emphasis was given to the cultural renewal necessary to repair the great damages of the autarkic myth of an invented Italian race. I like to see the revival of Cultural Anthropology as a symbolic new renaissance. And, as happened since 1869 when, after the Italian unification, the first university chair of Anthropology was established in Florence [22], once again Florence became the most important town – primarily for the development of a large interest towards Visual Anthropology, and of a more general attention to the interaction between cinema and social sciences.

In the 1950s, the political and cultural climate in Florence was deeply influenced by the ideas of its Mayor, Giorgio La Pira [23], obstinate advocate of his town's “universal and pacifist vocation”. In 1952, he organised the First International Conference for Peace and Christian Civilization; in 1955, he invited the Mayors of all the world's capital cities; in 1958, he promoted the Mediterranean Dialogues, where also Israeli and Palestinian representatives were invited. It would be too long to list all his numerous initiatives and his personal contacts with the most important political leaders all around the world.... I only wished to give some examples of his commitment for the promotion of an effective dialogue between peoples and between cultures, in the era of the so-called “cold war” – and even of a number of actual “peripheral” wars.

No wonder if a group of scholars – in cinema and in social sciences – decided to organize in Florence an international film festival devoted to “sociological and ethnographic documentary films.” And no wonder if the chosen label was: Festival dei Popoli (Festival of the Peoples) – a label that was a conscious implicit reference (masked as ecumenical utopia) to the Third World independist movements [24].

Since the beginning, a number of conferences were organized focusing primarily on ethnographic film: its methodology, and its cultural and political purpose. For decades multiculturalism and the promotion of intercultural dialogue have been the main issues proposed to discussion, not limited only to “visual anthropology”; the mainstream anthropology and its relation to cinema and photography was also in the agenda of the organisers of the anthropological section of the Festival until the 1990s; specific conferences were devoted to political and to economic anthropology. A special attention was also devoted to urban anthropology and inter-ethnic relations during the two international conferences of 1986 and 1990 related to the growing migrations towards Western European countries from non-European areas [25]. Besides, a special attention was given also to the teaching of visual anthropology, that in those times was absent from the Italian university courses in anthropology [26].

But a special emphasis must be given to the presence, at the 1959 Festival, of both Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin. Members of the jury, they awarded John Marshall's film about the Kalahari Bushmen The Hunters (1958): that film was – as we read in the statement of the motives of the award -“an hymn to the human species”. Later Morin wrote: “May we hope to see films alike on men and women of our own enormous cities? Or that people must be for us more stranger than the Esquimo Nanook or the Bushman hunter? Can't the cinema be a mean for breaking the wall that isolates each of us from others in the metro, on the street, or on the staircase of our mansion?” [27]. It was a challenge whose effect was the film Chronique d'un été, made by himself and Jean Rouch in Paris, the first step towards the so-called cinéma-verité. But also the dawn of a new approach to the anthropological cinema [28].
  

  
Following Jay Ruby, “in a (classic) ethnographic film, we never see the world through the eyes of the native, but if we are lucky, we can see the native through the eyes of the anthropologist” [29]. Nevertheless, he points out what he calls his fantasy. As he explains, “it is a fantasy in which an anthropological cinema exists – not documentaries about 'anthropological' subjects but films designed by anthropologists to communicate anthropological insights. It is a well-articulated genre distinct from the conceptual limitations of realist documentary. It borrows conventions and techniques from the whole of cinema – fiction, documentary, animation, and experimental...” [30]. First, I want to emphasize, from fiction. As the wellknown british anthropologist Edmund Leach once declared, “all ethnography is fiction”: in his opinion any ethnographic text is much more similar to a “historic novel” than to a natural sciences treatise [31].
  
Nothing new – we could remark. Some decades earlier, that was generally acknowledged within visual anthropology. Let me remember, as example, Sol Worth, to whom we are in debt for having made clear that all images (photo, films, and any other kind of visual representation) are not “copies of reality”, but visual statements. He agrees with John Berger's idea that any image is “manmade”, therefore it is always a sight which has been recreated and reproduced. Thus, “every image embodies a way of seeing” [32]. Images are therefore non-objective representations/interpretations of the observed reality.
  
Worth was a semiologist, but his collaboration with anthropologists – first of all with John Adair – was essential for the development of visual anthropology. Explaining their Navajo Project, they refer to Bronislav Malinowski's statement that “the final goal, of which an ethnographer should never loose sight …. is, briefly, to grasp the native's point of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision of his world” [33]. Their purpose is the understanding of the way people use visual modes of expression and communication to express their relationship with their environment – a pre-condition for the implementation of a cross-cultural visual communication [34]. Worth defines such way of filming bio-documentary: a film made by a person to show how he/she feels and how he/she perceives his/her world, he argues, “often captures feelings and reveals values, attitudes, and concerns that lie beyond conscious control of the maker” [35].
  
Robert Flaherty – one of visual anthropology's “totemic ancestors” – introduced a collaborative mode of filming, mainly in his film Nanook of the North: the filmmaker asked the observed subject to “help” him choose what, when, how he should film. Furthermore, they decided together, which events could be “reconstructed” for filming them: a good example are the sequences apparently filmed “inside” an igloo, while only a part of it was manufactured (in a larger scale) to make possible the shooting of the family's home life. In such approach, the collaboration between the anthropologist-filmmaker and the observed subjects discloses its importance, mainly because filming is a shared process.
  
But is that enough? I mean, may we actually talk of intercultural communication – that is communication between people culturally diverse? Answering can help us to realize the difference between collaborative and participatory visual media production, as Richard Chalfen suggests: the collaborative film/photography is a process were the researcher works with a group of participants to create a visual narrative, while the participatory approach involves a group of participants primarily constructing their own visual texts with only minimal assisance from the research team [36].
  
It is participation that actually makes the difference, as Chalfen points out, for the simple reason that “a central aim of the participatory visual media process is to create pictorial narratives that convey what (subjects) want to communicate in the manner they wish to communicate.” The introduction of the participatory visual media method in multi-cultural contexts can be very effective in promoting a mutual knowledge between the groups involved. My own experience in Italian primary and secondary schools, where pupils are of several different ethnic/cultural origins, offers a witness. A collaboration between the Department of Anthropology of the University of Florence, the Italian State TV (RAI), and of course the directors and the teaching staff of the schools involved allowed to develop a number of video production projects. Groups of pupils were asked to produce their own videos on issues related to their life within a multicultural social environment – both inside and outside their school. The result has always been the implementation of mutual respect, knowledge, even friendship.
  
 

NOTES
 

[1] Since 1982, the SIEFF takes place every two years organised by the Sardinian Regional Ethnographic Institute (ISRE). At present, it is the most important ethnographic film festival in Italy and one of the majors in Western Europe. The members of the Selection Committee – David MacDougall (filmmaker, Australian National University, Canberra), Marc-Henri Piault (École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris), Paolo Piquereddu (General Director of the ISRE) – had selected 43 films for the competition section (17–23 September). The Jury members were: Paolo Chiozzi (visual anthropologist, University of Florence), Judith MacDougall (filmmaker, Canberra), Antonio Marazzi (cultural anthropologist, University of Padua), Colette Piault (Société Française d'Anthropologie Visuelle), Rossella Ragazzi (visual anthropologist, University of Tromsø).
  
[2] See SVA Newsletter, vol. 4, no. 2 and vol. 5, no. 1; Moore, A. The Limitations of Imagist Documentary: A Review of Robert Gardner's Forest of Bliss, in: SVA Newsletter, 1988, vol. 4 (2), pp. 1-3; Ostor, A. Is that what Forest of Bliss is all about? A response, in: SVA Newsletter, 1989, vol. 4 (2), pp. 4-8; Parry, J. Comment on Robert Gardner's Forest of Bliss, in: SVA Newsletter, 1988, vol. 4 (2), pp. 4-7.
  
[3] Carpenter, E. Assassins and Cannibals, in: SVA Newsletter, 1989, vol. 5 (1), pp. 12-13.
  
[4] Collier, J. Visual Anthropology and the Future of Ethnographic Film, in: Rollwagen, J. (ed.), Anthropological Filmmaking,  N.Y.: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1988, pp. 73-96. 

  
[5] Gardner, R., Heider K. The Dani of Western Irian: an Ethnographic Companion to the Film “Dead Birds”, Andover: Warner Modular Publications, 1972.
  
[6] Chiozzi, P. Introduzione all'antropologia culturale, Firenze: Le Monnier, 1980, p. 2.
  
[7] Heider, K. Ethnographic Film, Austin: University of Texas Publications, 1978.
  
[8] Collier, J. Op. cit.
  
[9] Ruby, J. The Emperor and His Clothes, in: SVA Newsletter, 1989, vol. 5 (1), pp. 9-11; Ruby, J. Robert Gardner und der anthropologische Film, in: Kapfer, R., Petermann, W., Thoms, R. (eds.), Rituale von Leben und Tod, München: Trickster Verlag, 1989, pp. 51-67.

  
[10] Balikci, A. Kurze Anmerkungen zu Robert Gardners Filmen, in: Kapfer, R., Petermann, W., Thoms, R. (eds.), Rituale von Leben und Tod, München: Trickster Verlag, 1988, pp. 34-39.
  
[11] Chopra, R. Robert Gardner's “Forest of Bliss”, in: SVA Newsletter, 1989, vol. 5 (1), pp. 2-3.
  
[12] Collier, J. Op. cit.
  
[13] Lajoux, J.-D. Le film ethnographique, in: Cresswell, R., Godelier, M. (eds.), Outils d'enquete et d'analyse anthropologiques, Paris: Maspero, 1976, pp. 105-131. 

  
[14] Mac Dougall, D. Prospects on Ethnographic Film, in: Film Quarterly, 1969, XXIII (2), p. 70.
  
[15] Asch, T. Collaboration in Ethographic Film, in:  Rollwagen, J. (ed.), Anthropological Filmmaking… pp. 1-29.

  
[16] Moore, A. Op. cit.
  
[17] Heider, K. Op. cit.
  
[18] Ruby, J. Picturing Cultures: Explorations of Film & Anthropology, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000, p. 2.
  
[19] Rouch, J. On the Vicissitudes of the Self, in: Studies in Visual Communication, 1971, vol. 5, 1, pp. 2-7.
  
[20] In 1973, the 9th International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (ICAES) held in Chicago, had for the first time a specific section devoted to visual anthropology. See: Hockings, P. (ed.), Principles of Visual Anthropology, The Hague: Mouton, 1975.

  
[21] See: Chiozzi, P. (ed.),  Etica e Metodo. Considerazioni sull'antropologia visual, Acireale-Roma: Bonanno Editore, 2011; Chiozzi, P. Manuale di Antropologia Visuale, Milano: Edizioni UNICOPLI, 1993; Chiozzi, P. Taccuini architettonici, Acireale-Roma: Tipheret Editore, 2011. In 1839, Carlo Cattaneo founded the famous journal Il Politecnico: Repertorio mensile di studi applicati alla prosperita e cultura sociale.

  
[22] In 1869, Paolo Mantegazza was appointed Professor of Anthropology and Ethnology at the University of Florence.
  
[23] Giorgio La Pira, professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Florence, has been Mayor of the town from 1951 to 1965, with only a short interruption in 1958–1961.
  
[24] See: Tasselli, M.P. Il Cinema dell'Uomo. Festival dei popoli 1959–1981, Roma: Bulzoni Editore, 1982, p. 14.
  
[25] The proceedings of some of the main conferences were published: Chiozzi, P. (ed.), Etnicita e Potere, Padova: CLEUP Publisher, 1989; Chiozzi, P. (ed.),  Teaching Visual Anthropology, Firenze: Editrice Il Sedicesimo – European Association for the Visual Studies of Man, 1989; Chiozzi, P. (ed.),  Antropologia Urbana e Relazioni Interetniche, Firenze: Angelo Pontecorboli, 1991; De France, C. Studi filmici sul quotidiano, in: Catalogo del 29°Festival dei Popoli, Firenze, 1988, pp. 163-168.

  
[26] The first course in Visual Anthropology was introduced only in 2001, within the programme on “Methodology and Empirical Research in the Social Sciences”, Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, University of Florence.
  
[27] Morin, E. Pour un nouveau cinéma-verité, in: France Observateur, 1960, n. 506, 14 janvier.
  
[28] See: Chiozzi, P. Guardare... guardarsi... guardare..., in: Gregorini, A. (ed.), Un'amorosa visione. Il cinema della realta fatto da ragazzi e ragazze, Bergamo: Il Lavoro Editoriale, 2008, pp. 89-97.

  
[29] Ruby, J. Picturing Cultures… p. 2.
  
[30] Ibid., p. 279 (my italics).
  
[31] See: Leach, E. Tribal Ethography: Past, Present, Future, in: Tonkin, E., McDonald, M. (eds.) History and Ethnicity , M. Chapman, L., Routledge, 1989. 

  
[32] Berger, J. Ways of Seeing, N. Y.: Viking Press, 1972.
  
[33] Quoted from: Malinowski, B. Argonauts of the Western Pacific, L.: Routledge, 1922.
  
[34] The “Navajo Project” focuses on the natives' use of a camera to represent their daily life in Pine Springs, Arizona. The whole project and the methodology adopted by the authors are explained in the book: Worth, S., Adair J. Through Navajo Eyes: An Exploration in Film Communication and Anthropology, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1972.
  
[35] Worth, S., Adair J. Op. cit., p. 25. The same happens with photography (bio-photography).
  
[36] See: Chalfen, R. Differentiating Practices of Participatory Visual Media Production, in: Margolis, E., Pauwels, L. (eds.),  The SAGE Handbook of Visual Research Methods, L., SAGE Publications, 2011, pp. 186-200. On participation in social research, in social planning and in intercultural communication see also: Hart, R. Children's Participation: from Tokenism to Citizenship. Florence: UNICEF International Child Development Centre, 1992, Innocenti Essays n. 4; Farina, F. Ricerca sociale e progettazione partecipata, Acireale-Roma: Bonanno Editore, 2012.

 
© Paolo Chiozzi, 2012

Paolo Chiozzi,
Professor of Visual Anthropology  
and of Anthropology of Contemporary World,
the Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Florence,
Scientific Director of the Centre for Intercultural Communication (Italy)
e-mail: comintercul@gmail.com