UCSC Registrar
Advance Course Information


Fall 2003

This information effective for Fall 2003. Check with instructor the first day of class for any changes.

Anthropology

[ANTH-120]

120. Culture through Film

Instructor: Shelly Errington

Course Description:

Films have been used to document "real life" (rather than create fictional stories) since the movies were invented by the Lumiere Brothers in 1898. Anthropologists immediately saw the possibilities of film (and photography) for documenting ways of life of far-away people, and a tradition of "ethnographic film" was begun. Today, hundreds of documentaries made for a mass audience are available to us on TV, and making them is very expensive and a highly professional enterprise. The mini-DV revolution, however, has made it possible for any anthropologist to make an ethnographic video with fairly good production values—but will it be worthwhile for its substance, its style, its ethics, and the relationships formed in its making?

This course explores the project of recording cultures and lives through film/video—both historically and currently—emphasizing the special responsibilities and possibilities of a filmmaker who wants to do "participant observation" fieldwork with a camera.

An optional video lab with limited enrollment, 2 hrs./week for 2 credits, will be available and will be listed in the Addendum to the course schedule. You will sign up on the first day of class—first priority goes to Anthro Seniors, then to Anthro Juniors, and then it is by lottery. There will be two lab sections:

  • ANTH 120L-01, Mon 4–5:45
  • ANTH 120L-02, Wed 2–3:45

Course Format

The class meets for three hours once a week, plus sections, and an optional (2-credit) video lab. Each class meeting has three components: (1) lecture, (2) film clips with discussion, and (3) a section called "The Nitty-Gritty: technique IS meaning." A limited number of students may elect to take a lab course at the Social Sciences Media Lab for 2 credits, and they will make very short videos, parts of which may be shown to the whole class in some Nitty-Gritty slots.

Homework will include assigned readings and videos, which will be on reserve at McHenry Media Lab. "The Nitty Gritty" will be close "readings" of film editing and information on film vocabulary and techniques. As students in the labs develop films, we will see some of their sequences, rough cuts, and ideas in that slot. Students will keep a "Film Journal" and will write two short analytical papers. There will be a short-answer midterm.

Course Goals

The basic aim is to make you an intelligent viewer of documentary films by encouraging you to think about the relationships between form and meaning on the editing table and about the relationships between the filmmaker and the people who are filmed—even if you don't intend ever to make a movie. Along the way, you'll learn a lot about the history of documentary photography and films, about traditions of making ethnographic films, and about the work of important ethnographic filmmakers (not all of them anthropologists), and you'll view a lot of documentary films.