Paper short abstract:

The paper addresses issues that have been opened by a long term project of visual ethnography, and places them in the context of contemporary debates in visual anthropology.

Paper long abstract:

What can be gained by twenty years of continuous filming, apart from a heap of videocassettes? This paper discusses different forms of knowledge and experience gained by applying a specific, regionally characteristic type of fieldwork practice - the short-term, event-focused approach - in a multi-cultural rural region of Vojvodina during an extended time frame of twenty years. Can the length of contact with the local communities compensate the shortcomings of not being a "true" participant observer? Which cultural and mediatic expectations of the local communities should be satisfied, and what are the research related "costs" of such exchanges? What are the consequences of introducing TV crews and local public screenings? Does a community change if it can continually observe its behaviour, and can feedback from the community mold the "lonely videographer" in any research-significant way? What are the visual expressions of attitudinal changes in the communities concerning global, regional and local political transformations? What happens if students are introduced, and become "initiated" by local actors into the filmed events and practices? Can what has been filmed contain all the necessary information in order to be intelligible to an "innocent spectator"? Can new technologies bridge the informational gap between the visual and the theoretical? By opening such questions, I will try to juxtapose one rather particular experience with some of the central dilemmas that have been fuelling debates in visual anthropology in the last two decades.