Film Process as a Site of Critique

Over the last decades the documentary image has given
international attention. Mostly studied by film or
art critics, the documentary is generally analyzed
via the finished product. By contrast, van. Dienderen
shifts the attention towards a critical research on
the mediated interactions between the main agents.
Through fieldwork conducted during three film
productions (e.g. Trinh Minh-ha) she describes how
the author , the other and the viewer engage
with one another within a (documentary) film context,
which is the result from particular technological,
social and ideological forces. She stresses the
importance of attending ethnographically to the
processes, relationships and identities that are
integral to its production. By this ethnography of
(documentary) film production processes she
challenges assumptions of pivotal importance of
western representational systems, such as this odd
addiction to realistic modes of representation. She
thus adds an investigative tool in the examination of
the visual construction of the self, on the one hand,
and the formation of sodalities through those media,
on the other, both presenting consequently important
challenges to anthropology.

Autorentext

With her partner Didier Volckaert, An van. Dienderen made
internationally awarded films. She holds a MA as Film Director
(Art College Brussels), a PhD in Comparative Cultural Sciences
(Ghent University) and was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley. She
is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Royal Academy of Art,
University College Ghent.

Klappentext

Over the last decades the documentary image has given
international attention. Mostly studied by film or
art critics, the documentary is generally analyzed
via the finished product. By contrast, van. Dienderen
shifts the attention towards a critical research on
the mediated interactions between the main agents.
Through fieldwork conducted during three film
productions (e.g. Trinh Minh-ha) she describes how
the 'author', the 'other' and the 'viewer' engage
with one another within a (documentary) film context,
which is the result from particular technological,
social and ideological forces. She stresses the
importance of attending ethnographically to the
processes, relationships and identities that are
integral to its production. By this ethnography of
(documentary) film production processes she
challenges assumptions of pivotal importance of
western representational systems, such as this odd
addiction to realistic modes of representation. She
thus adds an investigative tool in the examination of
the visual construction of the self, on the one hand,
and the formation of sodalities through those media,
on the other, both presenting consequently important
challenges to anthropology.