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«
This event allows us to screen, to discuss,
to hate, to love films which come from all over
the world most often with their directors ready
to defend themselves or to discover with emotion
that their message - how ever difficult it is)
– was seen and understood » |
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Thus,
for 24 years, « the Bilan du Film Ethnographic
» has taken place at the Musée
de l’Homme In Paris in the screening room
now named « Jean Rouch ». The aim
of the Ethnographic film Panorama to show the
most recent tendencies of Visual Anthropology
in the world. |
| Each
screening is followed by discussions with the
film’s directors or a specialist of the
topic or the area shown. |
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| New
Waves… |
It
is now a year since Jean Rouch withdrew into the
silence of the Nigerian Sahel, but I believe that
his voice continues to speak to us, provoking
and thus prompting us to continue seeking out
fresh encounters and discoveries, comparing different
approaches and objectives. He used to say that
“research takes the lifetime not of one
researcher but of generations of researchers”.
Which is why we must keep going even if we have
no idea what the ending will be and have no script
to follow. We must take encounters as we find
them, we must look at, listen and exchange words
and pictures, music and sounds, emotions, pleasures
and vexations. The different worlds around us
are all undergoing some form of metamorphosis,
be it conflict, collapse, expansion or decline,
and nobody today would dare to predict the outcome
as we claimed to do with ingenuity, arrogance
and passion only a few years ago. It is precisely
this blank script that allows us to go out and
improvise, watching the action as it unfolds and
identifying new actors in new situations instead
of constantly repeating the same tired old lines.
For some time now, I have been hearing mutterings
about a “crisis in visual anthropology”,
but for what I believe are entirely the wrong
reasons. As far as I am concerned, any crisis
that exists is the product of unalloyed continuity,
coupled with overweening and triumphalist constructivism
in a rarefied atmosphere of truth and obvious
facts. |
By
contrast, renewal, fresh approaches, hesitations,
the singular mechanisms of new languages, the
grinding and juddering of novel types of machinery,
unforeseen associations, illuminations that escape
the overworked forms of naturalism and the aesthetics
of the museum, all disturb and intrigue, reminding
us that invention is borne along by a deep and
constant undercurrent of provocation. As anthropology
never has been and never will be about embalming,
it equips our gaze so that we can see through
those walls of facile truths and those well-lit
corridors leading straight to the tidy cemeteries
of categories, cultures and communities that have
been predigested, packaged and frozen into neat
portions by knowledge wholesalers. We are free
to wander and roam as we please, even if we occasionally
lose our way, for what matters are encounters
and dialogues, questions not answers. Our task
is to call into question not put into pigeonholes.
There must be experiments, hesitations and active
contradictions. Doubt, rather than certainty or
closure. The important films are those that refuse
to state the obvious. Their meaning is never immediately
apparent for the simple reason that what they
mean today is only a rough draft, a relative proposition
which tomorrow will be formulated otherwise, sending
us in new directions. |
The
Twenty-Fourth Ethnographic Film Panorama will
be attended by many new anthropologists and will
provide an opportunity to discover fresh approaches,
projects that are beginning to emerge or are already
taking shape in fields invented differently from
yesterday. |
So
where is this so-called crisis?
Are we still afraid some “disturbing objects”? |
Marc-Henri
PIAULT
Chairman of the Ethnographic Film Committee |
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| New
Faces, New Expectations |
| Jean
Rouch has a worthy successor and there is a general
feeling of responsibility towards both the past
and the future. Marc Henri Piault intends to keep
the emphasis firmly placed on research and has
declared his faith in the emergence of innovative
approaches and different styles. The CNRS can
only subscribe to this view, as its backing for
the Ethnographic Film Committee is certainly not
based on any nostalgia for the methods of the
early pioneers. |
The
Panorama is an important event precisely because
it opens a window onto so many different visions.
The hope now must be that the Committee will continue
to bring people together. Its spirit of openness
favours fresh encounters and opportunities. New
talents and new research topics will always find
a home there. |
The
CNRS, together with the Ecole des Hautes Etudes
en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), has committed itself
to helping young researchers make their first
films. However, we also need to find ways of preserving
earlier works and introducing them to new audiences.
We can be proud of this precious corpus, which
has an increasingly important role to play in
our society.
Visual anthropology provides a means of encountering
others. In a society that has become accustomed
to short-cuts and caricatures, its methodical
yet benevolent approach is particularly crucial.
We must do everything we can to develop this attitude
and thereby meet the ever greater expectations
of our fellow citizens. |
| Our
final thanks should go to all those who, armed with
their cameras, brought this movement into being. |
Pierre
Saliot
Director of CNRS Images |
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| Pour
tous renseignements contacter : Françoise Foucault -
Responsable du Bilan du Film Ethnographique - Tél : 01
47 04 38 20 - Fax : 01 45 53 52 82 - E-mail : cfe@mnhn.fr
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©
Comité du film Ethnographique 2001-2004 |
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