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- Convenors:
-
Lisa Stefanoff
(CDU UNSW)
Naomi Offler (University of Adelaide)
Send message to Convenors
- Format:
- Laboratories
- Location:
- Napier 209
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 13 December, -, -, Thursday 14 December, -, -, Friday 15 December, -
Time zone: Australia/Adelaide
Short Abstract:
Screenings of short and feature documentaries, student and experimental films from around the world, talks on Australian collaborative media projects and a special session on photography in anthropology. Two of four curated days in the conference's Screen/Media/Art program: 13/12 and 15/12
Long Abstract:
Screenings of short and award-winning feature documentaries, student and experimental films from Australia, NZ, USA, Brazil, and Denmark presenting stories from Central Australia, Gapuwiak, Antarctica, New York, West Virginia, Zimbabwe, Timor Leste, Peru and Aotearoa with filmmaker talks and Q&As.
Special sessions by Anangu and Yolgnu people and the anthropologists they've worked with about the creation of new films and other collaborative media projects.
The program also features a session on the role of photography in two recent Australian projects and in a research undertaking in India.
Two of four curated days in the conference's Screen/Media/Art program.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 12 December, 2017, -Naina Sen
Paper short abstract:
Documentary l 84 mins l Australia l 2017 With: Rachel Clements and Trisha Morton-Thomas
Paper long abstract:
In the small Lutheran churches of Central Australia, a hidden musical legacy of ancient Aboriginal languages, sacred poetry and baroque music is being preserved by four generations of song women who make up the Central Australian Aboriginal Women's Choir. Against all odds and with the help of their charismatic conductor, the choir embarks on a historic tour of Germany to take back the hymns that were given to their great grandparents by missionaries, now sung in their own languages. Together they share their music and stories of cultural survival, identity and cross-cultural collaboration.
Discussant: Ute Eickelkamp (University of Sydney)
With: Rachel Clements and Trisha Morton-Thomas
Brindle Films / Sacred Song Productions.
Contact: rachelclements@ozemail.com.au
Diana James (ANU)
Paper short abstract:
This presentation explores the recursive reflective process of translation involved in researching and filming Western Desert Kungkarangkalpa song, story and performance traditions and sharing these with museum audiences. Co-presented by Inawinytji Williamson and Lee Brady, APY lands.
Paper long abstract:
The creation of the multi-media presentations of ancient Western Desert Kungkarangkalpa song, story and performances in the national exhibition Songlines Tracking the Seven Sisters involved recursive acts of translation. The Aboriginal elder storytellers and the ethnographic researchers, the filmmakers and the exhibition curators used the NPY Women's Council action research model Maru munu piranpa tjungu nyinara wangkara kulilkatinyi - Black and White sitting together discussing and considering over a long period of time - to make Kungkarangkalpa films and other media.
Thinking and talking over the ever present dilemmas of translation across culturally different spiritual and scientific conceptualisation of creation, time, place, person and ownership or custodianship of knowledge is a complex recursive process of translation and retranslation for different audiences. The Elders' vision was to enhance intergenerational transmission of oral and ephemeral performance knowledge to written and multimedia communication modalities accessible and attractive to future generations. The researchers and filmmakers were tasked with translating the Elders' vision of sharing their Tjukurpa stories, song, dance and art into films that convey the integrity of their cultural knowledge and the beauty and power of their Kungkarangkalpa performance tradition with their descendants and the wider world.
Co-presentation with Inawinytji Williamson and Lee Brady from the APY lands, co-researchers in the Songlines of the Western Desert ARC Project.
Caro Macdonald
Paper short abstract:
What happens when anthropologists experiment with filmic tropes and fiction, as well as new technologies, within filmmaking practice? This paper poses anthropological knowledge can still be conveyed through embracing filmic and fictional devices, however with qualitatively different results.
Paper long abstract:
Whilst the stylistic mode of observational / participant observational filmmaking is still entrenched in ethnographic filmmaking practice, the world of generalist documentary filmmaking is experiencing a surge of stylistic experimentation, pushing the boundaries of what makes a documentary. This paper looks at the anthropological possibilities of experimenting with filmic tropes and fictional modes, including new technologies, within contemporary ethnographic film. The paper poses that anthropological knowledge can still be conveyed with a self-conscious embrace of filmic and fictional devices, however that this type of anthropological knowledge may be qualitatively different, serving different research questions and different ethnographic contexts. This paper runs alongside short film 'Waters of the Songline: Minyipuru Seven Sisters' in Martu Country as an example of practice.
Sarah Riccardi-Swartz (New York University)
Paper short abstract:
Documentary l 15 mins l USA l 2017
Paper long abstract:
Icons, sacred religious art, are vital to Russian Orthodox religious practice and culture. Traditionally, icons are images of religious figures, such as the saints and Christ, which are hand painted by highly trained artists. In recent years, the method of producing icons has changed to include digitally produced icons. Father Jonah Campbell, an outgoing, spirited priest and family man based in Wayne, West Virginia is leading that change in the American landscape. This documentary wrestles with what happens when the sacred is transformed into megapixels, and ancient forms of religious art are brought into the digital age.
A student film from the NYU Program in Culture and Media.
Contact: cheryl.furjanic@nyu.edu
Jennifer Deger (Charles Darwin University) Paul Gurrumuruwuy (Miyarrka Media) Enid Gurunulmiwuy (Miyarrka Media)
Paper short abstract:
Yolngu people use photography to make themselves feel alive and active. Western cultural theorists have long elaborated the relationship between photography and death. In this session we want to highlight the relationship of photography with life.
Paper long abstract:
In this talk we will show how Yolngu use mobile phones, and the photographs we make with them, to renew our law and connections to country. This is a new way to feel alive and full of energy: to see our past and future coming together, full of meaning and power. Our collective, Miyarrka Media, is now also using photography to share Yolngu life with others. We are making digital collages that show how wide and deep we can see, to reveal a shared world of pattern, colour, story, family and feeling.
Naomi Offler (University of Adelaide)
Paper short abstract:
During a decade of fieldwork I built close working partnerships with a group of Ngarrindjeri people living in south eastern South Australia. My role as a photographer and our work with photographs catalyzed these relationships. This paper looks at these images and their powers as socializing agents.
Paper long abstract:
The discussion in this paper is framed by my fieldwork which spanned just over ten years and involved building close working partnerships and friendships with a group of Ngarrindjeri men and women who live in and around The Coorong in south eastern South Australia. My role as a photographer and our work with photographs catalyzed these relationships.
This paper explores how a series of black and white photographs taken during the early part of my fieldwork that document the reburial of the skeletal remains of Ngarrindjeri 'old people', repatriated from museums around the world became an entry point for connection and the building of key relationships. The reburial was a very significant event for the Ngarrindjeri people involved and the images that came from it became important markers for the reinforcement of relationships with the living and those that had passed away. This series of photographs provides a map for charting how particular photographs were used by people in multiple forums to reinforce specific relationships —with myself, with people who had recently passed away and with the 'old people' who had been returned to 'country' in the reburial ceremony who it was important to remember. The multiple ways in which photographs were used during my fieldwork points to the significance of the role played by photography in anthropology.
Marcus Banks (University of Oxford)
Paper short abstract:
Based on photographs taken by myself and others in the 1920s, the 1980s & 90s, and in 2017 in the Indian city of Jamnagar, this paper explores photography as both practice and representation, but also as a means of history-making and history-denying in the colonial and post-colonial state.
Paper long abstract:
Over the past thirty years I have been visiting the city of Jamnagar in western India. During the 1980s I took many photographs in the city and its inhabitants, and on a recent visit (February 2017) I asked some of my research informants from the 1980s what they thought about my photographs from that period. I also showed them a selection of images of the city taken in the 1920s. Finally, I observed and asked them about their own digital (camera phone) photographic practices today. My aim in the paper is to explore photography as both practice and representation, but more importantly as a means of history-making and history-denying in the colonial and post-colonial state.
Camilla Nielsson (Upfront Films)
Paper short abstract:
Documentary l 100 mins l Denmark/Zimbabwe l 2014
Paper long abstract:
Over the course of more than three years Camilla Nielsson, a graduate of the NYU Department of Anthropology Program in Culture and Media, was up close in the inner circles of politics in politically unstable Zimbabwe. DEMOCRATS closely observes a new constitution being put together by the ruling ZANU-PF party of strongman Robert Mugabe and the divided opposition headed by Morgan Tsvangirai. Various political, local and personal interests try to bog down the process.
Winner Best Feature Documentary 2015 Tribeca Film Festival and many other international film and human rights awards and prizes.
Contact: camilla@upfrontfilms.dk
Vicente Cueto (New York University)
Paper short abstract:
Documentary l 12 mins l USA/Peru l 2017
Paper long abstract:
More than 15,000 people were disappeared during the Internal Armed Conflict in Peru (1980-2000), and their relatives are still looking for them. In this film, they explore new ways of remembering their loved ones, fighting impunity and indifference, and demanding justice.
A student film from the NYU Gallatin program.
Contact: cheryl.furjanic@nyu.edu
Sebastian J. Lowe (James Cook University Aarhus University) Alistair Fraser
Paper short abstract:
'Te Ao Nui O Ngā Hui' (The Wide World of the Gourd) is a short experimental film that explores how taonga pūoro practitioners (traditional Māori instruments) come into dialogue with the voices of the atua, or the multiple deities.
Paper long abstract:
'Te Ao Nui O Ngā Hui' (The Wide World of the Gourd) (2016) explores mimetic empathy as a method of musical composition used by taonga pūoro musicians (Māori musical instruments). Emphasising the players' awareness of the natural environment and how they harness and utilise empathy to create music, this short film looks at how the musicians come into contact with and subsequently connect to the natural world through Māori whakapapa (genealogy), both human and non-human, such as rivers, rocks, trees and birds. 'Te Ao Nui O Ngā Hui' (The Wide World of the Gourd) (2016) accentuates how the musicians utilise their senses to imagine and furthermore empathise with something, before punctuating these mimetic experiences into music.
This project was made in collaboration with taonga pūoro practitioner Alistair Fraser and visual artist Russell G. Shaw, as part of a wider audiovisual ethnomusicological research project on musical composition and perception with taonga pūoro in Aotearoa/New Zealand (2016/2017). A previous cut of this film was part of Lowe's master's thesis at Aarhus University.
Juan Francisco Salazar (Western Sydney University)
Paper short abstract:
Documentary l 92 mins l Australia/Antarctica l 2015
Paper long abstract:
In April 2043, Dr. Xue Noon finds herself stranded in the GAiA International Antarctic Station. As the polar night closes in she connects herself to the Ai-system to scavenge digital memories and archives.
'Nightfall on Gaia' is a speculative ethnographic film that depicts the lives and visions of human communities living in the Antarctic Peninsula. Grounded in ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Antarctica, the film is an experimental meditation on the future of the Antarctic as a new extreme frontier for human inhabitation, the complexities of a fragile planet at the verge of ecological collapse, and the vicissitudes of an uncertain geopolitical future for the region.
Contact: j.salazar@westernsydney.edu.au
Jacqueline Hazen (Department of Anthropology, Program in Culture and Media, New York Universit)
Paper short abstract:
Documentary l 24 mins l USA l 2016
Paper long abstract:
In the fall of 2015, Kris Kato, an emerging filmmaker, and Keoni DeFranco, the founder of a communications technology start-up, were initiated as kahu oli, caretakers of Hawaiian chant. Both young men live and work in New York City—but now, with the dual responsibilities to safeguard and to share this indigenous, familial tradition. This short documentary highlights the voices of Kris, Keoni, and other members of the Hawaiian diaspora community who are integrating oli into the sounds of the island of Manhattan.
A student film from the NYU Program in Culture and Media.
Contact: jlh604@nyu.edu
Daniel Simiao (Universidade de Brasília)
Paper short abstract:
Documentary l 80 mins l Brazil/Timor-Leste l 2015
Paper long abstract:
Following two stories of broken hearts among the youth of an East-Timorese village, this film explores local forms of conflict resolution and their effects on kinship and family in contemporary Timor-Leste. The film offers a visually dynamic backdrop to understanding key anthropological issues, including the importance of gift exchanges to the making of personhood and repairing social relations among local groups; the strong relation between justice and signs of sacredness; the role of local authorities in mediating between culture and the state; the emergence of a sense of self and the ideology of romantic love; and the challenges for balancing local forms of justice and the respect for human rights in a newborn country.
Contact: daniel.schroeter.simiao@gmail.com