The Ethnological View

The news of his Niger­ian father’s death catch­es Jar­reth Merz off guard. Now living and work­ing as a the­ater actor in Los Ange­les, his par­ents had orig­i­nal­ly met in Nige­ria. … read more

Cameroon, 2005. A man is seized, dragged to a seclud­ed loca­tion, tied to a tree, and left to suffer a tor­tur­ous death by star­va­tion accord­ing to the pre­cepts of local … read more

When our own image becomes the image of oth­er­ness: Ama­zo­nia, 1980. Imag­ine: Deep in the jungle, images of every­day life in Ger­many appear out of the dark­ness – images of … read more

What do anthro­pol­o­gists mean when they claim to study the cul­tur­al tra­di­tions of others by par­tic­i­pat­ing in them? This film fol­lows the Dutch anthro­pol­o­gist Ton Otto, who has been adopt­ed … read more

Asen Balik­ci and Visual Ethnography
A por­trait of this clas­sic figure in visual anthro­pol­o­gy, taking us into the worlds inhab­it­ed by Cana­di­an Inuit, Afghan nomads, vil­lagers in Bul­gar­ia and in the moun­tains of Nepal. Asen Balik­ci has been a lead­ing figure in making ethno­graph­ic films for many decades. The film takes us from Asen’s youth in Istan­bul to his career in Canada where he became famous for making the Net­si­lik Eski­mos Series, to film­ing in Afghanistan and then turn­ing to two other activ­i­ties of him: as a net­work­er for the Com­mis­sion on Visual Anthro­pol­o­gy (CVA) and as a teacher of Summer Schools in Siberia and Bul­gar­ia. His film work among the Bul­gar­i­an Pomak and his still ongo­ing work in Sikkim (India) con­clude the film which is not only the por­trait of a famous expert in Visual Ethnog­ra­phy, but also more gen­er­al­ly touch­es upon vital issues of ethno­graph­ic filmmaking.