American Ethnographic Film and Personal Documentary

Scott MacDonald teaches film history at Hamilton College and Harvard University and in 2011 was named an Academy Scholar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He is the author of many books for UC Press, most recently Adventures in Perception: Cinema as Exploration (2009).

"Inestimable addition to the film-studies canon." 10 Best Film-Studies Books of 2013. -- Clayton Dillard Slant Magazine "Intimacy is rarely a word connected to published academic work, and yet I can't think of a better word to distinguish MacDonald's thoroughly researched and rigorously annotated tome from all previous books I've reviewed on these pages." -- Cynthia Close Documentary "This book does justice to a significant and extensive body of documentary filmmaking." Critical Inquiry "MacDonald's connection between the ethnographic and the personal documentary is a fitting and eloquent book topic that draws attention to the blurring of lines between filmic categories and styles." Jump Cut

• Introduction A Tentative Overview of Boston-Area Documentary Filmmaking * Ethnographic Film and Personal Documentary * Pragmatism: Learning from Experience * The Mission of American Ethnographic Film and Personal Documentary: The Cambridge Turn * Subjects for Further Research * Acknowledgments 1. Lorna and John Marshall Beginnings: Lorna Marshall and First Film * John Marshall: The Hunters * Idylls of the !Kung * Pedagogy * Expulsion from Eden: Bitter Melons and N!ai, the Story of a !Kung Woman * The Pittsburgh Police Films and Brakhage's Eyes * Putting Down the Camera and Picking Up the Shovel * The Road Taken: A Kalahari Family * A Process in Time 2. Robert Gardner East Coast/West Coast: Early Experiments * Gardner and the Marshalls * Dead Birds * The Experience of Filmmaking as Thought Process * Robert Fulton: Reality's Invisible--"Serious Playing Around" * Screening Room: Midnight Movies * City Symphony: Forest of Bliss * The Return of the Repressed: Ika Hands * Still Journeying On: Unfinished Examinations of a Life * Studio7Arts: Sharon Lockhart's Double Tide and Robert Fenz's Correspondence 3. Timothy Asch Dodoth Morning and the Ethnographic Deadpan * Asch and the Yanomamo * The Ax Fight 4. Ed Pincus and the Emergence of Personal Documentary The Miriam Weinstein Quartet and Richard P. Rogers's Elephants: Fragments of an Argument * Ed Pincus's Diaries (1971--1976) * Alfred Guzzetti: Family Portrait Sittings * Guzzetti: It's a Small World * Guzzetti: Time Exposure 5. Alfred Guzzetti and Personal Cinema Air * Experimental Video: "Language Lessons" * Scylla and Charybdis * Still Point 6. Ross McElwee Finding a Muse: Charleen * Finding a Voice: Ann Schaetzel's Breaking and Entering and McElwee's Backyard * Doppleganger: Sherman's March * Nesting Dolls: Time Indefinite * On the Road Again: Six O'Clock News * Occupational Hazards: Bright Leaves * Orpheus: In Paraguay and Photographic Memory 7. Robb Moss Riverdogs: A Possible Eden * The Tourist: "Freelance Editing" * Voyage of Life: The Same River Twice 8. Panorama: Other Approaches to Personal Documentary Steve Ascher and Jeanne Jordan: Families in Transition * Michel Negroponte: Getting Involved * Leacock and Lalonde * The Subject Rebels: Nina Davenport's Films and Ed Pincus and Lucia Small's The Axe in the Attic * The Political Is the Personal: John Gianvito's Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind and Jeff Daniel Silva's Balkan Rhapsodies * Alexander Olch's The Windmill Movie: "This Little Seance of Flickering Light" * Amie Siegel's DDR/DDR 9. Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Sensory Ethnography Ilisa Barbash, Lucien Castaing-Taylor, and Sweetgrass * "Sheeple": Castaing-Taylor's Audio-Video Installations * The Sensory Ethnography Lab: J. P. Sniadecki, Stephanie Spray, Verena Paravel, and Leviathan Epilogue Appendix: Film Sources Notes Index