Days of Ethnographic Film

Contact

Dnevi etnografskega filma

http://www.def.si/

info@sed-drustvo.si

Organised byAudiovisual Laboratory, Institute of Slovene Ethnology

Naško Križnar

nasko@zrc-sazu.si

Frequencyannual

First introduced in 2007, the international Days of Ethnographic Film (DEF) are organised as a joint venture by Slovene Ethnological Society, Slovene Ethnographic Museum and the Scientific Research Centre (ZRC SAZU), Slovene Academy of Science and Arts. The festival aims to bring ethnographic film, a curious intersection of scientific research and video media, to a wider, both specialised and casually interested audience.

Currently going on in the premises of Slovene Ethnographic Museum and Scientific Research Centre (ZRC SAZU), it also used to take place in Kinodvor Cinema and the City Museum of Ljubljana. The festival's director is Naško Križnar, a professor of visual anthropology and research and himself an ethnographic film maker for more than four decades.

Background

Ethnographic film, with a history dating back for about a century, is a very specialised sub genre and is as such a rarely seen and hard to find form of video production. To present its uses, horizons and even existence as such outside the specialised, mostly scientific community and the sporadic television broadcasts, the first more ambitiously set public screenings were organised in 2001, when the first Ethnovideo marathon was set up. Besides showing the current Slovenian ethnographic film productions by institutions such as the audio-visual laboratory of Scientific Research Centre (ZRC SAZU), Goriška Museum, Celje Museum of Recent History, Slovene Ethnographic Museum and various amateur associations

the following editions (2004, 2005, 2006) of the marathon were prolonged for another day.

A student film section was then also set up

The next few Ethnovideo marathons happened in the years 2004 - 2006 and were already extended to two days because of the vast selection of avaiulable material. The institutions that contributed material were vdiovizualnem laboratoriju ZRC SAZU, Muzeju novejše zgodovine Celje, Goriškem muzeju in SEM; besides them, the second day was posvečen to students films. The differentiation and the place - SEM, laid down the foundation for the next step, the five day international Days of Ethnographic Film.

Set up as a non-competitive event,

Programme sections

The festival is always trying to present s balanced selection of international repertoire and local films. Its prefered film length is 40 minutes, which enables the programme to be dynamic and colorfoul representation of the various technical and strategic ways etnographic film can work. Following the templetae set by its precedeesor, the festival presents its screenings in four sections, which our at least partly followed but sometimes also divided into subsections.

The first section is reserved for student films. Some are made during the students faculty studies and can represent the first steps towards serious scientific use of the media, where FF represents the foremost learning poligon. Other are already mature works that vary from microcase studioes to more ambitious, even activistic pristopi.

"Research footage" figures as the second section. It used to also feature visual footage with commenatrie commentaries by the authors and was more of a look into thew work in progress, but has now been widened into a moree sprejemajočo VIsual etnography.

In the context of special programme, focus has till now been given to posamezni authors and researchers (the photographer Stojan Kerbler), to posamezni spatialo contexts (Barcelona) or countries (Slovakia). An additional section posvečena to museums also appeared once.

The last is the main festival programm, unbound by country or theme, examing social tensions, nonmaterial cultural heritage, the social construction of rural and urban spaces. Well over over a hundered filmshave been sceened till now, and each year there are more applicants sending their films and omogočati a diverese and quality presentations of etnographic films.

The Niko Kuret Award

Herta Maurer-Lausegger dr. Boris Kuhar posthumous Andrej O. Župančič ter dosegel vrhunec s podelitvijo nagrade Nika Kureta za zaslužke pri razvoju etnografskega filma in vizualne antropologije v Sloveniji. Današnja etnografska filmska produkcija v Sloveniji je namreč rezultat prizadevanj etnologa Nika Kureta, ki je konec petdesetih let prejšnjega stoletja postavil temelje za znanstveno uporabo filma in bil eden prvih sodelavcev mednarodnega odbora za etnografski film.

Nagrajenca letošnjega festivala sta tako Allison Peters Jablonko, katere mentorica je bila znana ameriška antropologinja Margaret Mead, in Asen Balikci, ki je bil med drugim 11 let predsednik mednarodne komisije za vizualno antropologijo. Obema je skupno to, da sta vizualna antropologa, ki imata za sabo več člankov v znanstvenih glasilih in vodenje Poletne šole vizualnega v Novi Gorici.

• Slovene Ethnological Society
• Slovene Ethnographic Museum
• Scientific Research Centre (ZRC SAZU), Slovene Academy of Science and Arts

External links

• Days of Ethnographic Film website
• Slovene Ethnographic museum website
• Visual Anthropology Network website