VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY - CINEMA

The course is divided into an introductory part on the politics of images and representations during which the main theories of image anthropology will be examined. This analysis of the circulation of images and their weight in shaping cultural landscapes and everyday ecologies will be deepened by focusing on the case study of the Venice lagoon and the regime of hyper-representation in which it is embedded. Starting from different kinds of visual media, art history, art without names, photography, moving images, the stratification of different visual practices of representation of the lagoon will be analysed, relating the tourist, hedonistic, exotic imaginary with practices of living and with local, individual, associative, community self-representations.
The course enables students who are pursuing a Master's degree in Cultural Anthropology, Ethnology and Ethnolinguistics, or who are interested in the ethnographic method, to hone visual analysis skills and to familiarise themselves with a participatory research approach attentive to the construction of the imaginary and the politics of representation.

Attendance and active participation in the course (lectures, short written assignments), viewing ethnographic documentaries and visual materials, workshop participation in discussions and study of examination material will enable students to:
1. Get to know anthropological theories and methods applied to the study of images
2. Acquire knowledge and understanding skills to experiment with image-centred ethnographic research methods
3. To acquire the basic analytical tools necessary to be able to analyse and evaluate image production as a method of anthropological research
4. Deepening of anthropological theory and familiarisation with audio-visual analysis
5. Being able to organise and critically summarise themes and ideas learned during the lectures and in the preparation of examination material.

Students will be at an advantage in attending the course if they have a basic knowledge of the ethnographic method and the main concepts of anthropological theory.

The course introduces students to the main topics of the anthropology of images: definition and theoretical approaches to the study of images; the method of visual field research; ethnocentrism, cultural relativism and the construction of images; the study of montage and framing; the analysis of ethnographic documentary and ethnographic photography. Theoretical issues will be addressed with reference to visual documents from different societies, exhibitions and the production and circulation of images in everyday life.

Filmography of reference:

"Nanook del Nord" di Robert Flaherty
"L'Atalante" di Jean Vigo
"La taranta" di Mingozzi.
"Stendalì. Suonano ancora" di Cecila Mangini
"Il Male di San Donato" di Di Gianni
"Guanabacoa. Cronica de mi familia", di Sara Goméz
"Los del baile" di Nicolás Guillén Landrián
"Traces" di Fiamma Montezemolo
"Venezia Minore", "La gondola" e "Piccioni a Venezia" di Francesco Pasinetti
"I Vagantivi" di Stefano Enzo
"Lagunaria" di Giovanni Pellegrini

Reference texts (most of which will be made available on Moodle)
Obligatory texts
Hans Belting. Antropologia delle immagini, Carocci Editore, 2011, Introduzione e capitolo 1.
Francesco Faeta, "A partire da un taglio. Immagini, allocronia, anacronismo" in Le ragioni dello sguardo, Bollati Boringhieri, 2011, pp. 50-67
Walter Benjamin, Piccola storia della fotografia in L'opera d'arte nell'epoca della sua riproducibilità tecnica, Einaudi, 2000, pp. 57-78.
“Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson on the Use of the Camera in Anthropology” in Studies in Visual Communication 4, n. 2, pp. 78–80.
Silvia Paggi, “Considerazioni sulla mediazione della parola in antropologia filmica”, in Voci, 95, 2015, pp. 95-108.
Aby Warburg, Il rituale del serpente, Adelphi.

Gianfranco Bettini, Venezia, nascita di una città, Neri Pozza, 2006, Capitoli 1 e 2, pp. 13-57.
Cristina Baldacci, Shaul Bassi, Lucio de Capitani, Pietro Omodeo, Venezia e l’antropocene, Wetlands, 2022, Introduction and section "Paesaggi d'acqua".
Serenella Iovino, "Leggere i corpi di Venezia. Viaggi attraverso le narrative materiali della laguna", in Vesper,1, 2019, pp. 138-156.

Optional study texts
Roland Barthes, La camera chiara. Note sulla fotografia. Torino, Einaudi, 1980.
Nadia Breda, I respiri della palude, Cisu, 2020.
Cavallo, F, F. Vallerani e F. Visentin, Arcipelago delle maree, Venezia, Libreria Editrice Cafoscarina, 2021.
Jenny Chio, “Visual anthropology”. In The Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology, edited by Felix Stein, (2021) 2023, pp. 1-23.
Alfred Gell, Art and agency. An anthropological theory, Clarendon Press, 1998, Capitoli 1 e 2.
Silvia Paggi, Voix-off et commentaire dans le cinéma doumentaire et ethnographique, in Cahiers de narratologie, 20, 2011.
Veronica Strang, Water Beings: from nature worship to the environmental crisis, London, Reaktion Books, 2023.
Rita Vianello, Global Climate Changes in Venice Lagoon. The Phenomenon of “acqua alta” and the Perception of the Safeguards Works in Archivio Antropologico del Mediterraneo, n. 19, 2017, pp. 82-96.

In-person exam in addition to spoken lectures or written assignments that will be determined on various course topics.

In-class viewing and commentary of selected documentaries and films; possible educational trips to museum spaces; possible field research workshops in the Lagoon. In-depth texts are uploaded in MOODLE

Italian

written and oral

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Natural capital and environmental quality" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development