Examines key works, filmmakers, and theorists, from Andre Bazin and the Italian neorealists, to American documentary films of the 1960s, to extended discussions of the ethnographic films of Herb Di Gioia, David Hancock, and David MacDougall. This book describes the importance of observational work in experimental anthropology.

ContentsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsPart One. 1. What Is Observational Cinema? 2. Social Observers: Robert Drew, Albert and David Maysles, Frederick WisemanPart Two. 3. Observational Cinema in the Making: The Work of Herb Di Gioia and David Hancock 4. Observational Cinema on the Move: The Work of David MacDougallPart Three. 5. Rethinking Observational Cinema 6. Toward an Experimental AnthropologyNotesFilmographyBibliographyIndex

Arguing from the works of André Bazin, Colin Young, Herb Di Gioia, and others, the authors make a case for continuous long shots, respectful engagement with subjects, a humanistic perspective that values the quotidian of people's lives, and a reluctance to indulge in pre-information about the subject matter of films' targeted topics. . . . Recommended.July 2010

Challenging those who dismiss realism as a basis for an experimental anthropological cinema, Grimshaw (liberal arts, Emory Univ.) and Ravetz (art and design, Manchester Metropolitan Univ., UK) argue that the text-based (or textual) and conceptual ethnographic film imposes meaning on its subjects rather than drawing it from them in the process of filming. Arguing from the works of André Bazin, Colin Young, Herb Di Gioia, and others, the authors make a case for continuous long shots, respectful engagement with subjects, a humanistic perspective that values the quotidian of people's lives, and a reluctance to indulge in pre-information about the subject matter of films' targeted topics. ...More about filmmaking than anthropology, this short book is apparently a response to poststructuralist critiques of interpretive anthropology and its conceptual frameworks. Aiming for a universalist argument of letting film audiences become participants in evolving meaning, the authors reiterate their litany of observational practice and camera to argue for ethnography by filmmaking rather than films that are ethnographic. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. —Choice