This book places observational filmmaking in the context of the rapidly developing landscape of creativity and arts based research in education. The author uses observational filmmaking as a lens to address debates surrounding video based and arts based research. Utilising the work of Dewey and Deleuze as the theoretical underpinnings of the volume, this is combined with numerous practical examples of observational filmmaking in schools. The author argues that observational video camera and editing techniques combine careful observation with rigorous visual analysis: they place sensory, affectual and aesthetic qualities in experience centre stage. While observational filmmaking in itself has enormous potential as a methodology for education research, it may also become a fulcrum for children’s learning. Children record their experiences in the world around them as they look carefully with a video camera. This pioneering yet practical book will be of interest and value to students and scholars of creativity, learning, and education research methods, as well as constituting a useful guide for teachers, arts practitioners and education policy makers.

Once hailed as a radical breakthrough in documentary and ethnographic filmmaking, observational cinema has been criticized for a supposedly detached camera that objectifies and dehumanizes the subjects of its gaze. The author's provide a critical historyand in-depth appraisal of this movement.

The Routledge International Handbook of Ethnographic Film and Video is a state-of-the-art book which encompasses the breadth and depth of the field of ethnographic film and video-based research. With more and more researchers turning to film and video as a key element of their projects, and as research video production becomes more practical due to technological advances as well as the growing acceptance of video in everyday life, this critical book supports young researchers looking to develop the skills necessary to produce meaningful ethnographic films and videos, and serves as a comprehensive resource for social scientists looking to better understand and appreciate the unique ways in which film and video can serve as ways of knowing and as tools of knowledge mobilization. Comprised of 31 chapters authored by some of the world’s leading experts in their respective fields, the book’s contributors synthesize existing literature, introduce the historical and conceptual dimensions of the field, illustrate innovative methodologies and techniques, survey traditional and new technologies, reflect on ethics and moral imperatives, outline ways to work with people, objects, and tools, and shape the future agenda of the field. With a particular focus on making ethnographic film and video, as opposed to analyzing or critiquing it, from a variety of methodological approaches and styles, the Handbook provides both a comprehensive introduction and up-to-date survey of the field for a vast variety of audiovisual researchers, such as scholars and students in sociology, anthropology, geography, communication and media studies, education, cultural studies, film studies, visual arts, and related social science and humanities. As such, it will appeal to a multidisciplinary and international audience, and features a dynamic, forward-thinking, innovative, and contemporary focus oriented toward the very latest developments in the field, as well as future possibilities.

"In these engaging, challenging and beguiling dialogues, Pamela Cohn expertly draws from her subjects, personal biography and conceptual intent, process and nearly subconscious motivation, personal revelation and political mission. The result is a work that not only provides a road map to the furthest regions of cinematic possibility in the early 21st century but one whose spirited back-and-forth inspires the reader to think anew about artistic possibility." —Scott Macaulay, editor-in-chief of Filmmaker Magazine “Pamela Cohn has curated and conducted a series of interviews that simultaneously invite you to turn the page, and pause for a moment of reverie. Her interviews furrow the grounds where sensibilities become cinema, and attitudes become forms." —Luke Moody Lucid Dreaming is an unprecedented global collection of discussions with documentary and experimental filmmakers, giving film and video its rightful place alongside the written word as an essential medium for conveying the most urgent concerns in contemporary arts and politics. In these long-form conversations, film curator and arts journalist Cohn draws out the thinking of some of the most intriguing creators behind the rapidly developing movement of moving-image nonfiction. The collection features individuals from a variety of backgrounds who encounter the world, as Cohn says, “through a creative lens based in documentary practice.” Their inspirations encompass queer politics, racism, identity politics, and activism. The featured artists come from a multiplicity of countries and cultures including the U.S., Finland, Serbia, Syria, Kosovo, China, Iran, and Australia. Among those Cohn profiles and converses with are Karim Aïnouz, Khalik Allah, Maja Borg, Ramona Diaz, Samira Elagoz, Sara Fattahi, Dónal Foreman, Ja’Tovia Gary, Ognjen Glavonic, Barbara Hammer, Sky Hopinka, Gürcan Keltek, Adam and Zack Khalil, Khavn, Kaltrina Krasniqi, Roberto Minervini, Terence Nance, Orwa Nyrabia, Chico Pereira, Michael Robinson, J. P. Sniadecki, Brett Story, Deborah Stratman, Maryam Tafakory, Mila Turajlic, Lynette Wallworth, Travis Wilkerson, and Shengze Zhu. Can nonfiction film be defined? How close to reality can or should documentary storytelling be, and is film and video in its less restrictive iterations “truer” than traditional narratives? How can a story be effectively conveyed? As they consider these and many other questions, these passionate, highly articulate filmmakers will inspire not only cinema enthusiasts, but activists and artists of all stripes.

This creative volume demonstrates the urgent importance of engaging students cognitively and affectively with the climate crisis and environmental education, underpinning the vital role the language arts play in expanding this engagement for a better future. Moving beyond the basic modalities of English, chapters written by an internationally diverse group of contributors advocate for the integration of language arts with environmental education through broad representation of creative subdisciplines: drama, visual literacy, philosophy, poetry, student voice and more. These subdisciplines are explored to suggest the context in which environmental degradation, forest ecologies, carbon literacy and indigenous knowledges are taught, further helping students to develop a comprehensive view of how they can effect change. Ultimately, the book makes a compelling argument by emphasising the significance of interdisciplinary learning in fostering a holistic understanding of environmental issues. This volume will appeal to scholars, researchers and postgraduate students in the field of environmental and sustainability education, English and literacy/language arts and teacher education more broadly. Undergraduate students, policymakers, environmental educators and curriculum designers may also benefit from this volume.

This collection aims to give insight to the reader as to how poetic approaches to documentary filmmaking have helped to develop the documentary form into a rich and diverse way of representing the real world in film. As such, it is the aesthetics of documentary filmmaking that becomes the primary focus of discussion within this collection. The majority of the chapters are written by documentary filmmakers who give insight into how poetics have influenced their own approach to documentary filmmaking, while other chapters are written by film scholars who analyse the work of others, in order to uncover how poetics are manifested in existing documentary films. This book will be of interest to those who produce documentary films, as well as those who have an interest in the work of other documentary filmmakers.

The work of environmental educators and activists in India and South Africa offers new models for schooling and environmental activism. Education has never played as critical a role in determining humanity’s future as it does in the Anthropocene, an era marked by humankind’s unprecedented control over the natural environment. Drawing on a multisited ethnographic project among schools and activist groups in India and South Africa, Peter Sutoris explores education practices in the context of impoverished, marginal communities where environmental crises intersect with colonial and racist histories and unsustainable practices. He exposes the depoliticizing effects of schooling and examines cross-generational knowledge transfer within and beyond formal education. Finally, he calls for the bridging of schooling and environmental activism, to find answers to the global environmental crisis. The onset of the Anthropocene challenges the very definition of education and its fundamental goals, says Sutoris. Researchers must look outside conventional models and practices of education for inspiration if education is to live up to its responsibilities at this critical time. For decades, environmental activist movements in some countries have wrestled with questions of responsibility and action in the face of environmental destruction; they inhabited the mental world of the Anthropocene before much of the rest of the world. Sutoris highlights an innovative research methodology of participatory observational filmmaking, describing how films made by children in the Indian and South African communities provide a window into the ways that young people make sense of the future of the Anthropocene. It is through their capacity to imagine the world differently, Sutoris argues, that education can reinvent itself.

American Ethnographic Film and Personal Documentary is a critical history of American filmmakers crucial to the development of ethnographic film and personal documentary. The Boston and Cambridge area is notable for nurturing these approaches to documentary film via institutions such as the MIT Film Section and the Film Study Center, the Carpenter Center and the Visual and Environmental Studies Department at Harvard. Scott MacDonald uses pragmatism’s focus on empirical experience as a basis for measuring the groundbreaking achievements of such influential filmmakers as John Marshall, Robert Gardner, Timothy Asch, Ed Pincus, Miriam Weinstein, Alfred Guzzetti, Ross McElwee, Robb Moss, Nina Davenport, Steve Ascher and Jeanne Jordan, Michel Negroponte, John Gianvito, Alexander Olch, Amie Siegel, Ilisa Barbash, and Lucien Castaing-Taylor. By exploring the cinematic, personal, and professional relationships between these accomplished filmmakers, MacDonald shows how a pioneering, engaged, and uniquely cosmopolitan approach to documentary developed over the past half century.

David MacDougall is a pivotal figure in the development of ethnographic cinema and visual anthropology. As a filmmaker, he has directed in Africa, Australia, India, and Europe. His prize-winning films (many made jointly with his wife, Judith MacDougall) include The Wedding Camels, Lorang's Way, To Live with Herds, A Wife among Wives, Takeover, PhotoWallahs, and Tempus de Baristas. As a theorist, he articulates central issues in the relation of film to anthropology, and is one of the few documentary filmmakers who writes extensively on these concerns. The essays collected here address, for instance, the difference between films and written texts and between the position of the filmmaker and that of the anthropological writer. In fact, these works provide an overview of the history of visual anthropology, as well as commentaries on specific subjects, such as point-of-view and subjectivity, reflexivity, the use of subtitles, and the role of the cinema subject. Refreshingly free of jargon, each piece belongs very much to the tradition of the essay in its personal engagement with exploring difficult issues. The author ultimately disputes the view that ethnographic filmmaking is merely a visual form of anthropology, maintaining instead that it is a radical anthropological practice, which challenges many of the basic assumptions of the discipline of anthropology itself. Although influential among filmmakers and critics, some of these essays were published in small journals and have been until now difficult to find. The three longest pieces, including the title essay, are new.

Introduction to Cinematography offers a practical, stage-by-stage guide to the creative and technical foundations of cinematography. Building from a skills-based approach focused on professional practice, cinematographer and author Tania Hoser provides a step-by-step introduction for both cinematographers and camera assistants to the techniques, processes, and procedures of working with cameras, lenses, and light. She provides hands-on insight into negotiating with production constraints and understanding the essentials of the image workflow from shot to distribution, on projects of any scope and budget. Richly illustrated, the book incorporates exercises and sample scripts throughout, exploring light, color, movement, ‘blocking’, and pacing scenes. The principles and techniques of shaping and controlling light are applied to working with natural light, film lamps, and, as with all areas of cinematography, to low budget alternatives. This makes Introduction to Cinematography the perfect newcomer’s guide to learning the skills of cinematography that enables seamless progression from exercises through to full feature shoots. Assessment rubrics provide a framework to measure progress as the reader’s ability to visually interpret scripts and enhance the director’s vision develops. The book also teaches readers: To understand and develop the combination of skills and creativity involved in cinematography; Photographic principles and how they are applied to control focus exposure, motion blur, and image sharpness; To identify the roles and skills of each member of the camera department, and how and when each are required during a shoot; The order and process of lighting on all scales of productions and the use and application of the four main types of lamps; How to use waveforms, false color, and zebras for monitoring light levels, and meters for guiding exposure choices; The principles of the color wheel, color palettes, and the psychological effects of color choices; How to shoot for different types of fiction and nonfiction/documentary films and how to apply these skills to other genres of TV and film production; Strategies for both starting and progressing your career within cinematography and the camera department. **Winner of 'Best new Textbook in Humanities and Media Arts' in the Taylor and Francis Editorial Awards 2018**