What happens when anthropology meets television? In Techniques of Representation: Lessons from TV, anthropologist Anne-Sylvie takes us behind the camera to reveal what it really means to represent others on screen. Join her as she shares insights and field stories from years of documentary work around the world.
When: 4 November, 09:00 – 11:00
Where: Impulse Speakers Corner
In her lecture, Anne-Sylvie will explore and reveal the logics and pitfalls of documentary making, that she gradually discovered as a young anthropologist freshly out of her doctoral work. Drawing from her experience over 35 shoots (and counting) in more than 20 countries and stretching over 8 years, she will regale you with “behind the camera” anecdotes, illustrated with clips, and explain some mechanisms pertaining to the representation of otherness for a wide, non-specialist audience, and lament the concessions she was (and still is) forced to make. While this anthropologist understood that entering the world of journalists would become a work of ethnography in and of itself, she also found redeeming features in the industry and now, as scientific advisor, strives to give reality its due place, representing others as faithfully as possible to their own being, rather than through the lens of what television wishes to project.
Bio:
“Anne-Sylvie Malbrancke (PhD) is an anthropologist, writer and presenter of three series of documentaries aired on Arte, focusing on rituals and festivities around the world. She has authored three books, Rituels du monde (Dépaysage), The Gebusi 5th edition (cowritten with Bruce Knauft, Waveland Press), Les Désillusions de l’Ailleurs (Presses Universitaires de France).”
Centre for Space, Place and Society 