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Visual Anthropology in Sardinia

by Silvio Carta (Author)
©2015 Monographs XIV, 214 Pages
Series: New Studies in European Cinema, Volume 19

Summary

Visual Anthropology in Sardinia explores the technique, style and methodology of documentary films about Sardinia, investigating how such films construct different experiences and identities, and reflecting on the advantages of the medium of documentary film over written ethnographic texts.
Following a discussion of theoretical developments in the area of visual anthropology in the twentieth century, the author turns to case studies of documentary filmmaking related to Sardinia from the fascist era onwards, offering a survey of the particular and somewhat peculiar filmic ethnographic discourse established in relation to Sardinia, which has been constructed to a large extent as an ‘Other’ to peninsular Italy. The subject is a complex one, ranging across the fields of film studies, anthropology, literary and cultural studies and, to some extent, philosophy. The book enriches scholarship not only on the cultural construction of Sardinia in the popular, political and intellectual imaginary and in its relation to Italy, but also on visual epistemologies and the ethics and practice of ethnographic filmmaking.

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • About the author
  • About the book
  • Dedication
  • This eBook can be cited
  • Table of Contents
  • Figures
  • Acknowledgements
  • Chapter 1: Documentary Film and Observational Cinema in Sardinia
  • Problems of Perspective
  • Visual Anthropology
  • Rethinking Anthropology
  • A Difficult Marriage
  • Ethnographic Film: Between Art and Science
  • Observational Style
  • Historical Overview
  • Chapter 2: Representation of Culture through Ethnographic Film
  • The Illustrative versus the Revelatory
  • A Difference of ‘Another Order’
  • Nature and Nurture: Pictures and Language
  • Chapter 3: Illustrative Documentaries: A Dominant Way of Seeing
  • Sardinia in Fascist Documentary Films (1922–1945)
  • Fascism and Documentary Film
  • The Illustrative Mode of Fascism
  • The Città di Fondazione (New Towns)
  • Carbonia
  • Mussolinia di Sardegna
  • The ‘Old’ and the ‘New’
  • Fertilia di Sardegna
  • A ‘Colonial’ Gaze
  • Voice-over and the Picturesque
  • Il regno del silenzio
  • Viaggio in Sardegna
  • Chapter 4: Banditi a Orgosolo: An Anthropological Film
  • Banditi a Orgosolo
  • The Themes of Banditi
  • Italian in Place of Sardinian Speech
  • De Seta’s Working Practice as Ethnographic Filmmaker
  • The Copernican Camera
  • Chapter 5: Tempus de Baristas: Transcultural Cinema
  • Tempus de Baristas
  • Between Observational and Participatory Cinema
  • Epistemology and Open-endedness
  • Filmmaker, Subjects and Ethics
  • Unprivileged Camera and Long Take
  • The Position of the Spectator
  • A Different Kind of Knowledge
  • Corporeal Images
  • Ethnography as Self-Inscription
  • The ‘Eye’ and the ‘I’
  • Speech and Existence
  • Silence and Beyond
  • Conclusion
  • Filmography
  • Bibliography
  • Index
  • Series index

← viii | ix → Figures

Figure 1. Still from Fernando Cerchio’s Carbonia. Credit: Cineteca Sarda.

Figure 2. Still from Mussolinia di Sardegna by Raffaello Matarazzo. Credit: Cineteca Sarda.

Figure 3. Still from Ignazio Figus’s Fonni: S’Urthu. © Archivio ISRE.

Figure 4. The painting of vessels in Ignazio Figus’s Brokkarios: una famiglia di vasai. © Archivio ISRE.

Figure 5. Miminu and Pietro Balisai Soddu in Tempus de Baristas. Credit: David MacDougall.

Figure 6. Ziu Chiccheddu during the filming of Tempus de Baristas. Credit: David MacDougall.

Figure 7. Franchiscu Balisai Soddu in Tempus de Baristas. Credit: David MacDougall.

Figure 8. Franchiscu Balisai Soddu during the filming of Tempus de Baristas. Credit: David MacDougall.

Figure 9. Still from the opening sequence of Fernando Cerchio’s Carbonia. Credit: Cineteca Sarda.

Figure 10. Still from the opening sequence of Fernando Cerchio’s Carbonia. Credit: Cineteca Sarda.

Figure 11. Vista of Sardinia before Fascist intervention in Fernando Cerchio’s Carbonia. Credit: Cineteca Sarda.

Figure 12. Still from the opening sequence of Fernando Cerchio’s Carbonia. Credit: Cineteca Sarda.

Figure 13. Mussolini’s speech in Fernando Cerchio’s Carbonia. Credit: Cineteca Sarda.

← ix | x → Figure 14. Church tower of Carbonia during Mussolini’s visit in Fernando Cerchio’s Carbonia. Credit: Cineteca Sarda.

Figure 15. Diagram showing the areas near Carbonia where ‘colonists’ will be moved and supported in Fernando Cerchio’s Carbonia. Credit: Cineteca Sarda.

Figure 16. Diagram showing the areas near Carbonia where ‘colonists’ will be moved and supported in Fernando Cerchio’s Carbonia. Credit: Cineteca Sarda.

Figure 17. Still from Mussolinia di Sardegna by Raffaello Matarazzo. Credit: Cineteca Sarda.

Figure 18. Still from Mussolinia di Sardegna by Raffaello Matarazzo. Credit: Cineteca Sarda.

Figure 19. Still from Mussolinia di Sardegna by Raffaello Matarazzo. Credit: Cineteca Sarda.

Figure 20. Still from Mussolinia di Sardegna by Raffaello Matarazzo. Credit: Cineteca Sarda.

Figure 21. Still from Mussolinia di Sardegna by Raffaello Matarazzo. Credit: Cineteca Sarda.

Figure 22. Still from Fernando Cerchio’s Carbonia. Credit: Cineteca Sarda.

Figure 23. Church tower of Carbonia during Mussolini’s visit in Fernando Cerchio’s Carbonia. Credit: Cineteca Sarda.

Figure 24. Still from Fernando Cerchio’s Carbonia. Credit: Cineteca Sarda.

Figure 25. Still from Il regno del silenzio. Credit: Ilisso.

Figure 26. Still from Il regno del silenzio. Credit: Ilisso.

Figure 27. Still from Il regno del silenzio. Credit: Ilisso.

Figure 28. Still from Il regno del silenzio. Credit: Ilisso.

Figure 29. Still from Il regno del silenzio. Credit: Ilisso.

Figure 30. Still from Il regno del silenzio. Credit: Ilisso.

Figure 31. The Supramonte in Banditi. Credit: Cineteca Sarda.

← x | xi → Figure 32. Michele Cossu in Banditi. Credit: Cineteca Sarda.

Figure 33. A scene from Banditi. Credit: Cineteca Sarda.

Figure 34. Michele Cossu in Banditi. Credit: Cineteca Sarda.

Figure 35. The town of Urzulei, in Sardinia’s interior. Credit: David MacDougall.

Figure 36. Miminu’s cuile during the filming of Tempus de Baristas. Credit: David MacDougall.

Figure 37. Codula landscape during the filming of Tempus de Baristas. Credit: David MacDougall.

Figure 38. Miminu during the filming of Tempus de Baristas. Credit: David MacDougall.

Figure 39. Franchiscu and Pietro Balisai Soddu during the filming of Tempus de Baristas. Credit: David MacDougall.

Figure 40. Miminu with goats during the filming of Tempus de Baristas. Credit: David MacDougall.

Figure 41. Still life in baracca during the filming of Tempus de Baristas. Credit: David MacDougall.

Figure 42. Pietro Balisai Soddu during the making of Tempus de Baristas. Credit: David MacDougall.

Figure 43. David MacDougall and Pietro Balisai Soddu, during the making of Tempus de Baristas. Credit: David MacDougall.

Figure 44. Franchiscu Balisai Soddu with his goats during the filming of Tempus de Baristas. Credit: David MacDougall.

Figure 45. Pietro skinning kid in Tempus de Baristas. Credit: David MacDougall.

Figure 46. Pietro and Franchiscu Balisai Soddu in Tempus de Baristas. Credit: David MacDougall.

Figure 47. Pietro and Franchiscu Balisai Soddu during the filming of Tempus de Baristas. Credit: David MacDougall.

Figure 48. Miminu in Tempus de Baristas. Credit: David MacDougall.← xi | xii →

← xii | xiii → Acknowledgements

My primary thanks go to the Australian filmmaker and anthropologist David MacDougall for his continuing encouragement, Prof. Paul Hockings, Dr Clodagh Brook, the University of Birmingham, the Ethnographic Institute of Nuoro (ISRE) and the Cineteca Sarda of Cagliari. I am also grateful to Jennifer Kirwan and Barbara Hallam for helping proofread earlier drafts of this work.

Some of the material used in this book has already appeared in print in somewhat different form. A modified and much shorter version of Chapter 2 appeared as ‘Orientalism in the Documentary Representation of Culture’, Visual Anthropology 24/5 (2011), 403–20. The first half of Chapter 3 was published in a slightly different version as ‘Sardinia in Fascist Documentary Films (1922–45)’, Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies 1/2 (2013), 171–87. Chapter 4 is based on ‘Vittorio De Seta’s Banditi a Orgosolo (1961): An Ethnographic Film’, Studies in Documentary Film 7/1 (2013), 61–77. Chapter 5 is a combination of two shorter articles, ‘Visual Anthropology and Sensory Ethnography in Contemporary Sardinia: A Film of a Different Kind’, Modern Italy 17/3 (2012), 305–24, and ‘Ethnographic Film as Filmic Autobiography: David MacDougall’s The Age of Reason’, Visual Studies 28/1 (2013), 17–28. I would like to thank the editors of these journals for granting permission to reprint the articles in part. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from the original Italian are mine.← xiii | xiv →

← xiv | 1 → CHAPTER 1

Documentary Film and Observational Cinema in Sardinia

This book is specifically devoted to the largely under-researched area of documentary cinema in Sardinia. One of its aims is to redress the scholarly marginalisation of Sardinian documentaries and to introduce a little known subject area to an academic audience. Sardinian documentaries have not received critical attention in English scholarship and have received almost none in Italian. The limited body of work undertaken so far has been mainly by non-academics. Historically, this lack of attention has to do with the classification of documentary film as a minor subset of Italian cinema and, more specifically, the limited circulation and commercial availability of Sardinian documentaries.

Details

Pages
XIV, 214
Year
2015
ISBN (PDF)
9783035306774
ISBN (ePUB)
9783035394856
ISBN (MOBI)
9783035394849
ISBN (Softcover)
9783034309981
DOI
10.3726/978-3-0353-0677-4
Language
English
Publication date
2014 (December)
Keywords
technique style documentary film ethnographic filmmaking methodology
Published
Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Wien, 2015. XIV, 214 pp., 26 b/w ill., 22 coloured ill.

Biographical notes

Silvio Carta (Author)

Silvio Carta completed his PhD in Italian Studies at the University of Birmingham. His articles and reviews have appeared in Visual Anthropology, Visual Anthropology Review, Visual Studies, Visual Ethnography, Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Political Communication and Studies in Documentary Film.

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