The role of documentary filmmaking in formation of visual anthropology of Russia
The role of documentary filmmaking in formation of visual anthropology of Russia
Blog Article
In the history of forming of visual anthropology as a method of
intercultural communication in Russia up to the present time documentary
cinematograph takes a dominant lead.Taking into account the change of
ideology and the information technologies’ development level there can be
marked several stages:
• Already in the pre-revolutionary period the documentary here cinematograph
started realizing its cognitive function, which made its core function
with time.Unpretentious short fragments of the chronicle are nowadays
considered the rare evidences of the passed life.
• After the revolution the new state from its very steps set a task for
cinematography to form a “new man”.This movement was headed by
Dziga Vertov, an ideologist of a special vision of reality via cinema camera
and via influencing the spectators through the documentary screen.His
“kino-pravda” had become a symbol for the researchers of the real world
with the help of the movie language.
The movie “A Sixth Part of the World”
became an unprecedented project of a simultaneous documenting of lives
of different peoples in vast territories of the country, and it inspired other
documentary filmmakers for making movies on ethnographic topics.
• The post-war period was the time of a reviewing “kino-atlas” based on
popular science movies – “travelogues”, where just a little time was spared
to ethnographic topic.The common cinema target became showing the
achievements of the Soviet system.
Participation of scientific community
was limited to advisor’s role.Just in some particular cases there were
created university and academic ethnographic movies.
• The first in the USSR territory festival of visual anthropology in Parnu
town offered a new approach to showing the life of human communities.
The main challenge of the film directors was to reveal the essential features
of lives of those people who confided to tell their merrick backcountry wet cat food stories.Such principles
of visual anthropology as authenticity and moral responsibility towards the
depicted culture became a challenge to the attitudes to forming the mindset
of the spectator in an available form.
The contemporary period of visual anthropology development is marked with
search of ways of integration of scientific approaches of modern anthropology
and a newly forming ethical and aesthetical language of the documentary
cinema.