Ethnographic documentary film, just like ethnography itself, began as a colonial practice. It has relied on unacknowledged biases and personal experiences of the filmmakers to create portraits of cultures and communities around the world. To study documentary film today requires recognizing and acknowledging this lens of otherization; it requires grappling with questions around representation. In this course we look at works that turn the lens inward and offer a self-examination of one's own culture or the land that the makers belong to. This inversion of gaze is the fulcrum of this course. We work through the convergence of thinking and practice as filmmaking process, with an emphasis on how to work with sound to create portraits. For final projects, students work in groups to make 3-5 minute video portraits of individuals or communities of their choice, exploring in the work itself the place of the personal and the place they are looking from.
4 units · Letter (ABCD/NP) · GER: WAY-CE
Ethnographic documentary film, just like ethnography itself, began as a colonial practice. It has relied on unacknowledged biases and personal experiences of the filmmakers to create portraits of cultures and communities around the world. To study documentary film today requires recognizing and acknowledging this lens of otherization; it requires grappling with questions around representation. In this course we look at works that turn the lens inward and offer a self-examination of one's own culture or the land that the makers belong to. This inversion of gaze is the fulcrum of this course. We work through the convergence of thinking and practice as filmmaking process, with an emphasis on how to work with sound to create portraits. For final projects, students work in groups to make 3-5 minute video portraits of individuals or communities of their choice, exploring in the work itself the place of the personal and the place they are looking from.
Offered in Spring 2026 at Stanford University.