Roundtable on Ethnographic Film Archiving as a Tool for Research in Contemporary Visual Anthropology

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This award to Documentary Educational Resources (DER) will support a one-day Roundtable on Archiving Ethnographic Films. The meeting will bring together anthropologists, archivists and ethnographic media producers from leading Visual Anthropology programs, and institutions such as the Smithsonian Institution and Library of Congress, to strategize about how ethnographic film archives can best support contemporary research in visual anthropology. Roundtable outcomes include 1) recommendations for the design of Ethnographic Film databases (using the DER collection as a case study) and 2) discussion of frameworks, priorities, and next steps for the preservation and accessibility of ethnographic films. Beginning from a notion of ethnographic film as a cultural product, the Roundtable will assess existing standards for describing anthropological subject matter content, filmmaking practices and genres, and technologies used in the production of film and video recordings. Further discussion, leading to development of a white paper, will address key concerns and priorities for the field related to the preservation and access of both existing collections and new ethnographic media. The extensive body of films and footage that have been created as part of ethnographic research and teaching constitute a significant record of human cultures and societies. The project will improve access to these materials for individuals ranging from individuals interested in identifying films for teaching, museum exhibitions, film festivals and community screenings. An improved infrastructure for the preservation and accessibility of ethnographic films will help to extend understanding of the anthropological project, of film as a medium of documentation, and of our diverse human heritage. Further, the consideration of archiving practices for film materials understood as texts rather than as recorded data has significance for the broader field of archiving.