Paper short abstract:

I'm intended to present a brief history of the first audio-visual fieldwork in Iran; based on the life, work, and legacy of Dr. Nader Afshar-Naderi. He was a pioneer in the history of anthropology in Iran, due to his trailblazing methodology and benefiting from audio-visual mediums.

Paper long abstract:

Afshar Naderi was an Anthropology professor at the University of Tehran, focusing on nomads and development. Before Afshar Naderi, the fieldwork involved participation and company with the aim of, in Malinowski's words (1992), "learning about the locals' perspective and their relationship with life and understanding their vision to their world" (p. 19). What is referred to in anthropology as the goal of the fieldwork is more or less neglected by the anthropologists. The highlight of his work was making the first Iranian Ethnographic film in Iran (Balut, 1966) based on a research project. Balut narrates the daily life of a tribe with an emphasis on the division of labor during the three seasons of autumn, winter, and spring. And a narration of the life of Bahmaei's tribe and the importance of Zagros oak trees in their lives based. Moreover, his approach and legacy in Visual Anthropology at that time were unique and progressive. He tried to provide all the facilities for anthropology students to use audio-visual material in their fieldwork and start teaching them how to enrich their fieldwork with film and images. At that time, it was a distinctive approach, especially before the digitalization era and in a time when they used 16mm cameras. With the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1978, like many others, he was expelled from the university on charges of affiliation with the former regime. And some months later, his heart could no longer bear the pressure of this event.

Paper short abstract:

This is the story of my numerous attempts at researching the “unexpected” in relation to shocking, surprising and unprecedented life situations in mine and other people's lives. The study runs parallel to the author’s cancer diagnosis and its subsequent treatments from 2017 to 2022.

Paper long abstract:

This article tells the story of my numerous attempts at researching the role and meanings associated with the notion of the “unexpected” in relation to shocking, surprising and unprecedented life situations. The study runs parallel to the author’s cancer diagnosis and its subsequent treatments from 2017 to 2022, and it is roughly divided in three phases: the first one, an exploratory qualitative study, based on biographical interviews and informal conversations with a sample of twenty people from all walks of life. This initial phase of the research focused on the role of religion and spirituality in making sense of the unexpected. The second phase focuses on the study of resilience through the exploratory use of counselling techniques including drawings. The third and concluding phase looks at the author’s emotional and personal responses during the research process through auto-ethnographic account of what happened during these attempts and the writing process that followed.

The narrative proposed shows the creative, therapeutic and intellectual potential of intersecting qualitative methodologies, restating the importance of subjectivity and positionality while accounting for research failures and successes, shifting motivations and emotions.

Paper short abstract:

What ethical dilemmas emerge, or are negotiated, when filmmakers show their audiovisual materials to the ethnographic subjects appearing in them? What are the implications—social and aesthetic—in the recording of ethnographic subjects seeing images of their cinematic selves?

Paper long abstract:

What ethical dilemmas emerge, or are negotiated, when filmmakers show their audiovisual materials to the ethnographic subjects appearing in them? Dubbed by Jean Rouch “feed-back screening” or “audio-visual counter-gift,” the phenomenon of ethnographic subjects seeing themselves onscreen has been traditionally considered a collaborative and participatory method in the process of construction of anthropological knowledge.

In this presentation, I track what I call the “screen encounter” as a filmmaking strategy and viewing practice that traverses different historical periods and geographical contexts. I place it within a broader history of film reception practices that has one of its roots in fin-de-siècle local films, actualities that appealed to the audiences’ curiosity at seeing themselves onscreen. Local films conflated on and off-screen individual selves, but they also engaged in collective formations of publics and counter-publics, often holding the potential for complex and multivalent social (re)configurations.

From Sol Worth’s and John Adair’s 1960s audiovisual work with Navajo communities in Arizona to Vincent Carelli’s 1980s project “Video nas Aldeias” in Brazil to the films of contemporary global artists like Filipa César or Mati Diop, the screen encounter has been a generative device for non-fiction filmmakers for a range of different purposes and ends. As some of these projects show, the encounter between ethnographic subjects and their cinematic selves also holds the potential to offer a critique of the screen encounter itself as an operation that reinforces the colonial relations it tries to dissipate.

Paper short abstract:

Why Jorge Prelorán not subtitle the voice of those protagonists? The objective of this presentation will be to review the works, and denials, of the Argentine ethnographic filmmaker, as an example of a canonic filmmaker deliberately staying out of technological change.

Paper long abstract:

Prelorán paid special attention to the dubbing of his films, generally using his own voice for it. He preferred not to use subtitles, unlike filmmakers like David MacDougall or John Marshall, who often left the original native voice with subtitles. For his part, Jean Rouch did not require the presence of subtitles for his ethnofictions, since his protagonists spoke French and not the language of their ancestors (Henley says that the reason he chose his protagonists was because they spoke French -2009 : 307-). His excuse in this regard was that the subtitles "mutilate the image"; with which many parliaments and dialogues. "This was one of the most significant limitations of his praxis," says Henley (2009: 210-242). The same could be said of Jorge Prelorán and his films, in which there are no protagonists who speak in indigenous languages. David MacDougall makes the caveat that Prelorán, in Imaginero, utters a translation of the words of his protagonist (in the English version), but trying to be spontaneous, taking care not to silence the original speech (1998: 166). But, why not subtitle the voice of those protagonists? The objective of this presentation will be to review the works, and denials, of the Argentine ethnographic filmmaker.