Videokaameraga Siberis: vaatlev dokumentaalfilm kui audiovisuaalne etnograafia

In Siberia with a camera: observational documentary as audio-visual ethnography.

The dissertation consists of an introduction to the epistemology and methodology of observational cinema and of four previously published articles that are based on experience gained in course of making three documentary films in different Siberian communities. Observational cinema is a specific ethical-aesthetic methodology of documentary filmmaking that favours long takes of spontaneous action, avoids directing and interviews, and relies on narrative and performative power of the film medium. The author of an observational film, who is usually the director and cinematographer as well as the editor, does not observe people’s lives from a distance but participates actively in the filmed events with a camera. Making an observational ethnographic documentary can be an effective means to study certain anthropological issues that are difficult to analyse and represent through written text alone. Observational ethnographic documentary has a particularly good potential for studying issues that are dealt with within phenomenological anthropology. Phenomenological anthropology emphasises the need to understand a person’s “lived experience”. In phenomenological anthropology, the body is not only an object of research, but also a platform for understanding the world – it is through relating corporeally to the embodied experience of research subjects that both the researcher and his or her audience are able to understand the cultural other. Filmmaking as a phenomenological research strategy is best suited to describing and understanding the role of the senses, emotions and individual agency in a specific socio-cultural context. Observational ethnographic filmmaking is a hybrid form that stands on the borderline between anthropology and cinema, encouraging the researcher-filmmaker to take advantage of the best features of both of these ways of understanding the world.