Experimental Film and Anthropology urges a new dialogue between two seemingly separate fields. The book explores the practical and theoretical challenges arising from experimental film for anthropology, and vice versa, through a number of contact zones: trance, emotions and the senses, materiality and time, non-narrative content and montage. Experimental film and cinema are understood in this book as broad, inclusive categories covering many technical formats and historical traditions, to investigate the potential for new common practices.

An international range of renowned anthropologists, film scholars and experimental film-makers engage in vibrant discussion and offer important new insights for all students and scholars involved in producing their own films. This will be indispensable reading for students and scholars in a range of disciplines including anthropology, visual anthropology, visual culture and film and media studies.

Table of contents: Introduction - Caterina Pasqualino, CNRS, France and Arnd Schneider, University of Oslo, Norway Photofilm and Anthropology - Arnd Schneider, University of Oslo, Norway Parallel Visions: Adventures in Altered States of Consciousness - Caterina Pasqualino, CNRS, France Contemporary Experimental Documentary and the Premises of Anthropology: The Work of Robert Fenz - Nicole Brenez, University of Paris-1/Panthéon-Sorbonne, France Our Favourite Film Shocks - Rane Willerslev, University of Oslo, and Christian Suhr, University of Arhus, Denmark Do No Harm – The Cameraless Animation of Anthropologist Robert Ascher - Kathryn Ramey, Emerson College, USA Asynchronicity: Rethinking the Relation of Ear and Eye in Ethnographic Practice - Jen Heuson, New York University, USA, and Kevin T. Allen, New School University, USA Memory Objects, Memory Dialogues: Common-Sense Experiments in Visual Anthropology - Alyssa Grossman, University of Gothenburg, Sweden Beyond the Frames of Film and Aboriginal Fieldwork - Barbara Glowzcewski, CNRS, France Visual Media Primitivism: Toward a Poetic Ethnography - Martino Nicoletti, University of Derby, UK From the Grain to the Pixel, Aesthetic and Political Choices - Nadine Wanono, CEMAf: Centre D'etudes des Mondes Africains / CNRS, France Notes Bibliography Index

Reviews “This collection of essays examines the history and points to the future of experimental ethnography. Full of insights into experimental forms and new cultural knowledges produced through experiments in audio-visual media, this book explores an eclectic group of films. Voices of anthropologists and filmmakers come together for a fresh new perspective on the intersections of experimental and ethnographic film practices.” – Catherine Russell, Concordia University, Canada