The Visual and the Written in Anthropology: Fruzzetti's Documentary Films and Ethnographic Research

A seminar that analyses the making of films in the light of ethnographic research in rural India. The course addresses fifty years of research covering the journey of an anthropologist’s work in a rural Bengali town, documenting the voices and narratives of women. The research is immersed in traditional anthropological fieldwork, followed by the publication of books and articles that complement Fruzzetti's films. Documentary films and texts will demonstrate a continuity between visual and written works. Do films inform or deviate from our understanding of written ethnography (and vice versa)? What distinguishes early documentary films from later ethnographic ones? Do films record "reality" or interpret just as written works do? Should ethnographic study come before the making of documentary films? Can anthropological theory develop in relation to or separate from ethnographic films?