Paper short abstract:

David MacDougall's participatory and transcultural cinema placed the ethnographic film at the center of a social exchange. How can current trends, the possibilities of 360°, AR and nonlinear videos connect to this conception of participatory knowledge through film?

Paper long abstract:

The film work and the theoretical reflection of David MacDougall, which began in the late sixties and still in progress, had as their cornerstone the idea that the film should have a relationship of respect and coexistence with the reality of everyday life . The notion of participation, conceived in the sense of a strong social enhancement of the film, a place of "commensalism" between filmmakers, subjects and spectators, as it can dialogue with the current findings of technological enlargement on the one hand and of the trend on the other hand an 'exotic' gaze, which many festivals bear traces of?

The problem arises because the ways and terms of participation and collaboration in producing visual anthropological knowledge are articulated today in very different ways and no longer forced to the conception of the linearity of the film as a communicative object. In them, on the other hand, it is sometimes difficult to find traces of that direct relationship between sensory experience and anthropological knowledge that was the main objective of MacDougall cinema. The paper will try to offer some answers starting from the comparison between MacDougall's film ethnography and some examples taken from the most recent ethno-visual productions.