A whole year has already passed with the new paradigm. The pandemic has set the foundations of a new way of communication and expression while the global and local turmoil has shaped our disposition towards the world and our place in it. Under these circumstances, we are more urged than ever for the 12th edition of the Athens Ethnographic Film Festival which returns in the winter of 2021, ready to adjust to the demands of a new era and give space to new and established voices of ethnographic filmmaking.
The 12th edition of Ethnofest – Athens Ethnographic Film Festival will take place from November 25 to December 2, 2021.
The festival looks for films that observe, feel and reflect upon cultures and the human condition, using approaches and tools of anthropology, ethnography and social sciences.
The call is addressed to anthropologists and other social scientists who employ audiovisual means in their research, as well as to documentary filmmakers who employ an ethnographic approach and sensitivity in their filmmaking. We are looking for ethnographic and anthropological films, as well as for ethnographically-minded documentary films on social issues that might challenge the conventional boundaries of the genre. We are also looking for student films made by anthropologists or social scientists, as a part of their BA, MA or PHD dissertation or within the framework of other educational programmes.
Eligible for submission are films produced as of 2019 and you may submit your film in one of the four open sections:
Student Films, Panorama, Filmic Experiments in Ethnography and this year’s Themed Section “Romanticism: Cameras, Enchantment and the Real“.
The submission deadline is May 31, 2021.
To submit your film, please read the terms and conditions and fill in the entry form here.
You may read more about the open sections below.
Sections
Student films: Α most interesting aspect of educational programmes on Visual Anthropology – or related programmes in the social sciences that have a focus on the visual – is the fact that students produce films as part of their study/dissertations. These films are often pioneering, bold and incisive projecting the future of visual ethnography and, in general, of social sciences.
Panorama: In this section, we invite, explore and showcase the forefront in ethnographic and documentary filmmaking on social issues from around the world, created by established as well as by new, talented filmmakers.
Filmic Experiments in Ethnography: The aim of this section is to present films that experiment with the mediums, forms, narrative techniques and practices of ethnographic filmmaking. These films create new visual and sensorial experiences and provide new pathways to anthropological analyses.
Themed Section: Wishing to initiate a dialogue on the value and relevance of visual anthropological perspectives on contemporary social life, the Festival introduced a themed section of screenings relating to social issues and visual/anthropological viewpoints about them. These screenings underline the significance of documenting and analysing the contemporary social reality and its topical aspects.
Themed Section 2021
Romanticism: Cameras, Enchantment and the Real
In its daily use, romanticism is associated with emotion and sentimentality, often seen as naïve and misguided, as well as the search for purity, authenticity, and higher meaning in the mundane. At the same time, the term references a complex cultural history comprising trends that emerged mostly in the European 19th century and that encompass modalities ranging from art practice and poetry to nationalism. Elements commonly associated with romanticism include: fascination with death and the mystical, an interest in blood and soil, an opposition to industrialism, rationalism and bureaucratic formality, nostalgia for a lost past, pleasure in the grandeur of nature, an adoration of resistance and creativity, the coexistence of hope with melancholia.
Most importantly, romanticism relates to a key ingredient in transculturation and the encounter between a self and an Other, a traveler and a native, a filmmaker (or ethnographer) and their subject. At the hands of Western travelers, romanticism’s historical subject is the noble savage; a figure often represented at the juncture of admiration and rejection. Romanticism is thus kindred to terms such as exoticism, Orientalism and primitivism. In the last forty years, these notions have been the target of anthropological critiques concerning the role of representation in the power relations between centers and peripheries. Locally, romanticism also becomes highly relevant at present as official Greek institutions are preparing commemorative events for the 200-year-anniversary of the Greek War of Independence; a romantic event par excellence, foundational for the creation of the Greek nation-state, while represented in literature and art through tropes of heroism and rebirth. As an epistemology, romanticism may be even said to permeate the current Covid-19 context. Many commentators express a yearning for authentic, sensorial sociality as opposed to the supposedly mechanized, sterile digital interactions on the internet, while others describe the present as immersed in death and darkness.
This year’s themed section takes romanticism and its everyday uses seriously and seeks to critically unpack its underlying themes of idealization, alterity, transcendence and Othering: from infatuation with others as sexual subjects, to travel and the quest for pristine landscapes; from the exaltation of the resistant community to fantasies of return to natural lifestyles. We are interested in films that explore and trouble the relationship between idealization, exoticization and the camera in contexts including, but not limited to: tourism, “romantic relationships” and love, environmentalism, activism, archaeophilia, memory, folklore and the recording of rural lifeworlds. At the same time, we invite films that critically capture traditional romantic subjects and themes and thus problematize romanticism’s politics and aesthetics of exaltation and transcendence. We are thus also interested in films that propose a rejection of romantic principles or articulate positions for deromanticizing the world.
The guest curator of the 2021 Themed Section is anthropologist Konstantinos Kalantzis, assistant professor at the department of Culture, Creative Media and Industries, University of Thessaly. www.konstantinoskalantzis.com