Days of Ethnographic Film

First introduced in 2007, the international festival Days of Ethnographic Film (DEF) is organised in a joint venture by the Slovene Ethnological Society and the Scientific Research Centre (ZRC SAZU), Slovene Academy of Science and Arts. DEF aims to bring ethnographic film, with its curious intersection of scientific research and video media, to a wider audience of both professionally and casually interested viewers. The festival is a member of CAFFE, a network for coordinating anthropological film festivals in Europe.

Venues

Previously held at the Scientific Research Centre (ZRC SAZU), the Slovene Ethnographic Museum, Kinodvor Cinema and the City Museum of Ljubljana, DEF currently takes place at the Slovenian Cinematheque.

Background

With a history dating back about a century, ethnographic film is a very specialised subgenre and, as such, is a rare form of video production. To present its uses, horizons and existence outside the specialised, mostly scientific community (and the sporadic television broadcasts), the first more ambitious public screenings were organised in 2001, when the first Ethnovideo Marathon was set up.

The marathon presented the current Slovenian ethnographic film productions by institutions such as the Audiovisual Laboratory, Institute of Slovene Ethnology, the Goriška Museum, the Celje Museum of Recent History, the Slovene Ethnographic Museum and various amateur associations. A second programme section was also set up, which screened only films made by students.

As the marathon evolved and substantial public interest grew, the idea of extending it into an international festival with a much more ambitious scope led to the first edition of the Days of Ethnographic Film in 2007. For many years, Naško Križnar, a professor of visual anthropology and ethnographic filmmaker for more than four decades, directed the festival.

Q&A session with anthropologist and filmmaker Gregory Gan, held by Manca Filak, Days of Ethnographic Film 2019. Author: Žiga Gorišek

Programme sections

The festival's non-competitive programme tries to present a balanced selection of international and local productions, student and professional films and films of different lengths. The organisers strive to give a dynamic and colourful representation of the ethnographic film genre's various approaches and methodologies.

DEF presents an unbound scope of themes such as intangible heritage, social tensions, particular social groupings, political activism, and artistic practices. As more applicants send their films each year, the diversity and quality of presented ethnographic films are rising.

The festival has been a biennial event since 2015. In the intervening years, the organisers reflect on topics from the fields of visual ethnography, visual research and ethnographic film and prepare thematically focused events such as film seminars.

The Niko Kuret Award

Ethnologist Niko Kuret (1906–1995) set the foundations for the scientific use of film in Slovenia in the 1950s. During the festival, the Niko Kuret Award is given by the Slovene Ethnological Society to individuals whose contributions have made a mark in ethnographic film and visual anthropology in general.

Until now, the award has been given to Herta Maurer-Lausegger, Boris Kuhar, Andrej O. Župančič (posthumously), Allison Peters Jablonko, Asen Balikci, Naško Križnar and Nadja Valentinčič Furlan. The festival also featured a selection of film works by these prominent and innovative researchers and pedagogues.