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Back in the mid-’00s, ethnographic cinema had been largely ignored by the general public. Even when it started gathering attention in the academic as well as the festival circuits of Europe, it remained relatively unknown in Greece. This cinematic hybrid, which strikes a balance between documentary and anthropology, was finally introduced properly to the Greek public in 2008 by a group of young anthropologists in collaboration with Platforma Video Festival. Together, they hosted a special session of Ethnographic Student Films, aiming to open up a dialogue on the place and potential of the particular genre we now refer to as Visual Anthropology.

A few years later, that same group of young anthropologists would constitute the core of Ethnofest, founded in 2010. After two years of successfully collaborating with Platforma Video, it was obvious that the audience was ready and the timing was right. Festival retrospectives, films that were self-branded as ‘ethnographic’, relative academic courses and PhD dissertation titles were multiplying around the world, proving a shift in focus.

Ethnofest chose to highlight ethnographic cinema through its present and past in its first year as an autonomous event. In addition to contemporary works, programming included a tribute to the British Documentary Film Movement of the ’30s. The tribute was held with the valuable support of the British Film Institute and included 10 films, such as masterpieces Night Mail and Song of Ceylon, representative of the artistic movement that had an enormous influence on ethnographic cinema.

Through its thoughtfully planned programming, Ethnofest managed to open up a fruitful dialogue on the relation between anthropology and imagery, thus establishing a strong basis for its further development.