Paper Short Abstract:

This communication argues that a phenomenological reinterpretation of certain techniques and processes involving the 'duration of embodied ethno-filmic practices' is valuable for a (pre)comprehensive understanding of ethno-filmic modes of affective knowing.

Paper Abstract:

This communication benefits from the Pecha Kucha format to engage, by means of existential phenomenology, with the non-observable in ethno-filmmaking. Firstly, I propose to look at key theoretical notions coming from Heidegger’s and Merleau-Ponty philosophies, namely being-there and being-in-the-world, and the body-proper, respectively. These ontological notions cannot equate to the Subject, as often assumed in anthropology. They must, therefore, be undone and reinterpreted as either preobjective or presubjective, that is, prior to the distinction of subject and world, for they represent lived modes or existential spaces of relating to, and signifying of, the precomprehensive experience of the world. It is in these existential spaces or lived modes where we can find the coordinates of our embodied and emotionally pre-oriented signification of experience. The existential phenomenological framework is thus the suggested starting point to develop a comprehension of non-observable processes and techniques that produce ethno-filmic modes of aesthetic knowing. Secondly, I propose to reinterpret the simple and modest (yet powerful) aesthetic resources of the audio-visual language we often work with in ethno-filmic methodologies. Thus, processes and techniques like ‘frame commitment’, ‘embodied rhythm’, and ‘shot duration’ will be presented in the light of successful scenes from either independent cinema, contemporary Hollywood, or ethnographic cinema, in contrast to some unsuccessful scenes identified in the rushes of my own ethno-filmic work. In sum, this communication argues that a phenomenological reinterpretation of certain non-observable techniques, which involve the duration of embodied practices, can be valuable to ethno-filmic modes of knowing.