Pre-orientation Training for Students Leiden Meeting 4-10 February 2009 // Download PDF

Delegation of the European Commission to Turkey
http://www.avrupa.info.tr

Central Finance & Contracts Unit
http://mfib.gov.tr

Promoting Civil Society Dialogue
http://www.csdproject.net

News and Resources for Visual Anthropology
http://www.visualanthropology.net/

Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology
http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/socialanthropology/visualanthropology/

The Sensory Ethnography Lab (SEL) at Harvard University
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~mediaant/index.htm

The Ethnographic Film Unit at University of British Columbia
http://anthfilm.anth.ubc.ca/

RAI International Festival of Ethnographic Film
http://raifilmfest.org.uk/film/festival/2009/home

European Association of Social Anthropologists
Visual Anthropology Network
http://www.iwf.de/easa/easa.html

AnthroSource
A Service of the American Anthropological Association
http://www.anthrosource.net/Default.aspx

NAFA Nordic Anthropological Film Association
http://nafa.uib.no/pls/apex/f?p=123:1:1370548800963391

Comité du film éthnographique
http://www.comite-film-ethno.net/contacts.htm

The Society for Visual Anthropology (SVA)
http://societyforvisualanthropology.org/

Visual Anthropology Review
http://people.virginia.edu/~ds8s/VAR/

ETHNODOC Cultural Organization, Italy
http://www.ethnodoc.org/mission.php

Visualising Ethnography
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ss/visualising_ethnography/

DER Documentary Educational Resources
http://www.der.org/films/index-by-filmmaker.html

ISEFF International Student Ethnographic Film Festival
Goldsmiths, University of London
http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/iseff/films.php

Beeld voor Beeld
Documenatry Film Festival on Culture and Representation
http://www.beeldvoorbeeld.nl/

and Images of the Project Activities
http://www.flickr.com/photos/29090445@N08/

On the evening of the first day of the Steering Committee Meeting a Kick-Off Meeting was held at Bilkent University which enabled universities and institutions from our project partners Netherlands and France to be introduced to other persons and parties concerned.

The Steering Committee Meeting began with Head of Committee Andreas Treske summarizing the meeting agenda, project schedule and working plan. Following this, participants who are to work as the project’s academic advisors debated predominantly on questions of methodology. One of the fundamental components of the Project “Toward a Deeper Understanding of Rural Europe” is to conduct research on the 6 villages to be chosen in the 3 partner countries (the Netherlands, France and Turkey). This research will be carried out under the consultancy of academicians working for the project’s partner universities and/or academicians and specialists selected by these universities, but will be executed by students. According to the results of the first meeting, research methods used in the domains of anthropology/sociology and history will be applied during fieldwork envisaged to be conducted at the beginning of 2009; however, a method which is relatively new especially for Turkey will be adopted, which is the use of audiovisual tools during fieldwork, both for gathering data and for presenting and disseminating the information gathered. Therefore, students participating in the project will be from the fields of anthropology/sociology, history, and media and visual arts.

For this reason, the training of students to participate in research methods and fieldwork is a predominating subject for the project and was extensively discussed at the meeting.

A second topic that was debated was how to select the villages in which fieldwork will be conducted. The Committee decided that the selection of villages would be done in two stages; in addition to the general criteria that would be determined for choosing the villages and to which all partners would conform, special criteria should also be taken into consideration, which each partner would apply according its country’s historical, sociological and economic conditions. Within this framework, all partners agreed that they would prepare a short list of a specific number of villages – or regions – by the end of August.

Throughout the months of September and October the short lists prepared by each partner will be pared down by the Project Coordinator and partner Project Officers, by visiting the locations if need be, and the 2 villages in which fieldwork will be conducted in each partner country will be determined by the end of October at the latest. After debating for quite some time, social scientists and historians of the Steering Committee agreed upon the general criteria for selecting the villages, which were formulated by Mahmut Mutman, Ph.D. Within this framework, the Committee decided that villages would be selected according to the following criteria while also representing the country’s rural life as much as possible: arid/fertile, East-West/North-South (regional-economic differentiation according to each country), whether or not prior research has been conducted in the area, conservativeness/open-mindedness, and practicality for researching.

Though, as the project states, the general principle for selecting anthropology/sociology, history, and media and visual arts students to take part in fieldwork is that they be graduate students, it was pointed out that selecting media and visual arts students at the undergraduate level (proficient in using audiovisual tools) would have its practical advantages. Also, although resources are insufficient for the project budget and providing we are able to obtain other resources, it was decided that all partners would strive to determine the fieldwork teams by the end of September to increase the possibility for all or part of the students that are to participate in fieldwork to attend the “Visual Ethnography” course at the Leiden University between October 1 – December 6.

The aim is that fieldwork begin in January 2009 in accordance with the Schedule for Fieldwork that will be finalized at the end of November.

Besides the aforesaid topics, the Steering Committee mentioned possible names for the Scientific Advisory Council which will be composed of one or two academicians from each partner country; it was decided that this council of 3 or 6 persons would be determined by the beginning of September. In addition to this, the Committee discussed that EU specialists could be consulted for certain issues and decided that the Project Coordinator would look into the possibilities regarding this matter.

The Committee decided that 10 villager representatives from Turkey, and 5 each from the Netherlands and France would take part in the European Rural People’s Assembly, one of the project’s most important outputs within the framework of the aim for civil society dialogue; however, in order to ensure participation from other EU and candidate countries the Committee agreed to look into all possible resources and contact all relevant organizations.

Each group has begun working in its own country with the intention of completing the designated tasks until the next meeting, which will be held in Strasbourg in October, and of making fundamental decisions regarding the Best Practices seminar to be given in Strasbourg at the same time.

Ana Isabel, A. & László, K. & Pink, S.

2004 Working Images: Visual Research and Representation in Ethnography. London: Routledge.

Banks, M. & Morphy, H.

1997 Rethinking Visual Anthropology. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Banks, M.

2003 Visual methods in social research. London: Sage Publications.

Barbash, I.

1997 Cross-cultural filmmaking: a handbook for making documentary and ethnographic films and videos. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Boonzajer Fleas, R & Harper, D.

1993 Eyes across the water, two: essays on visual anthropology and sociology. Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis.

Collier, J.

1986 Visual Anthropology: photography as a research method. Albuqueque: University of new Mexica Press

Crawford, P.I. & Turton, D.

1992 Film as ethnography. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Crawford, P.I. & Postma, M.

2005 Reflecting Visual Ethnography: using the camera in anthropological research. Leiden: CNWS Publications, Hoberg: Intervention Press.

MacDougall, David

1998 Transcultural Cinema

Princeton University Press, New Jersey.

MacDougall, David

2006 The Corporeal Image

Princeton University Press, New Jersey.

De Bromhead, Toni

1996 Looking two ways

Intervention Press.

Devereaux, L & Hillman, R.

1995 Fields of Vision: essays in film studies, visual anthopology, and photography. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Grimshaw, A.

2001 The Ethnographer’s eye: ways of seeing anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

2002

Hastrup, Kirsten

1992 Film as Ethnography.

Intervention Press, Aarhuss.

Heider, K.

1976 Ethnographic film. Austin: University of Texas

1995 Films for Anthropological Teaching

1997 Seeing Anthropology: culturla antrhopology through film. Boston: Pearson/Allyn an Bacon.

Hockings, P.

1975 Principles of Visual Anthropology. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Loizes, P.

1993 Innovation in ethnographic film: from innocence to self-consciousness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

MacDougall, D.

1998 Transcultural cinema. Princeton, New York: Princeton University Press.

2006 The Corporal image: Film, Ethnography, and the senses. Princeton, New York: Princeton University Press.

Pink, S.

2001 Doing visual ethnography: images, media and representation in research. London: Sage Publications.

2007 Visual Interventions: Applied Visual Anthropology. New York: Berghan Books.

Place, Linda Marie.

The experience of self among Turkish village women: an ethnographer’s journal

UMI Ann Arbor, MI 1989

Prosser, J.

1998 Image-based research: a sourcebook for qualitative researchers. London, Bristol: Falmer Press.

Ruby, J.

1999 Picturing Culture: Explorations of Film and Anthropology. Chicage: University of Chicago Press.

Taylor, Lucien

Visualizing theory : selected essays from V.A.R., 1990-1994

Routledge New York 1994

Visual anthropology review : journal of the Society for Visual Anthrop

Center for Visual Anthropology Los Angeles 1058-7187 1991

Journal of Visual Culture

Selected Books on Documentary Filmmaking

Braverman, Barry: Video Shooter: Storytelling with DV, HD, and HDV Cameras (DV Expert Series), CMP Books; Pap/Dvdr edition (January 15, 2006)

Ellis, Jack C.: A New History of Documentary Film, Continuum (August 30, 2005)

Rabiger, Michael: Directing the Documentary, Focal Press; 4 edition (April 13, 2004)

Rosenthal, Alan: Writing, Directing, and Producing Documentary Films and Videos, Southern Illinois University Press; 4th edition (June 13, 2007)

Visual Anthropology Films List

Robert Flaherty, Nanook of the North (1922)

Dziga Vertov, Man with the moving camera (1929)

John Marshall, The hunters (1958)

Jean Rouch, Chronicle of Summer (1961), Moi un Noir (1961), Jaguar (1967)

William Klein, Muhammad Ali, the Greatest (1969)

Robert Gardner, Dead birds (1963), Forest of Bliss (1986), The Nuer (1970)

Timothy Asch, The Ax Fight (1975)

Philo Bregstein , Jean Rouch and His Camera In the heart of Africa (1979)

Trin T. Minh-Ha, Reassamblage (1982), Surname Viet, Given Name Nam (1989)

William Klein, In and Out of Fashion (1998)

Harun Farocki, Images of the World and The Inscription of War/Bilder der Welt und Inschrift des Krieges (1989), Videogrammes d’une révolution roumaine/Videogramme einer Revolution/Videogram of a Revolution (1992), I Thought I Was Seeing Convicts/Ich glaubte Gefangene zu sehen (2000)

Contemporary Visual Anthropology Films

Jayasinhija Jhala, Close Encounter of No Kind (2002)

Matt McCormick, The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal (2002)

Byambasuren Davaa, The Story of the Weeping Camel (2003)

Chris Marker, Chats Perches (2004)

Michael Glawogger, Workingman’s Death (2005)

Alan Berliner, Wide Awake (2006)

Pierre Lamarque, The King Never Dies (2007)

Ton Otto & Christian Suhr Nielsen, Ngat is Dead: Studying Mortuary Traditions (2007)

Kerstin Feurle, Happens to be blind (2008)

Julia Kurc, In skirts they go (2008)

* Project should be finished not in November but October (even possibly September).

* TR students come to FR in May (2^nd or 3^rd week). If it is financially possible, all students will go to each country.

TR fieldwork ends in March and April. NL could come at the end of March (Kefken) and FR students the last week of April (Soğanlı).

* Another practical aspect: the evaluation of all material.

TR students must start to do this in May and start editing in June.

Length of the films: approximately 30 min for each film.

* Screenings: Correction in project text (Lot 3) > For individual films Lot 3 states 3 films, it is actually 6 films, and from June it will be moved to July. All 6 films will be shown in all 6 villages. The point is to show the films to the villagers.

* The Assembly will take place in the first half of October, with 5 villagers from each country.

* Final editing when all are coming to TR:

* Making Of will be done in August-September.

* Must start to engage in publication in August > articles, research

Content:

* Students need to know what to include in the end result.

- Separate films for each villages

- One final film

- Plus one “making-of”

* The language of the films: Every film in its own language of course, but final DVD will have subtitles in all four languages (TR, FR, NL, plus ENG.).

* List of probable outcomes of the project:

- 6 films, one for each village + 1 global film

- Conference proceedings (as book)

- Exhibition

- TV program

- A DVD (presentation of the project)

But each can have separate outcomes.

Plus what goes on the Internet etc…

* Training of students: Do they apply their own style, and to what extent?

The style depends on the perspective:

- habits etc. > observational

- influence of policies etc. > interview

* Visibility:

Building a network for visual ethnography for rural Europe: Especially for countries whose rural areas are still “rural” in the traditional sense like Poland.

Format of the TV program (depends on the format of the channel – a single 1-hr film or 4 x 30 min…). Could also be different for each country > has to be decided by this summer.