Anthropology Advanced Seminar - Department of Anthropology

Date: Thursday 19 July 2012
Time: 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Location: Kirkwood Village, Seminar Room KH07
Contact: For further information regarding this event, please contact Dr Richard Vokes by sending email to richard.vokes@canterbury.ac.nz or by calling 03 364 2982
Audience: University staff and students

Prof. Marcus Banks (Oxford University) - In and Out of the Colonial Film Archive.

In and Out of the Colonial Film Archive

Despite extensive collections of historical film in archives around the world, anthropologists very rarely make use of archival film in their research. In this paper I examine the ways in which archival film can be studied, drawing on my own experiences of studying archival film from colonial India; I also examine the ways in which the archive itself can be studied ethnographically.

Marcus Banks studied anthropology at the University of Cambridge and documentary film at the UK's National Film and Television School. His doctoral research was on the Jain community of western India, and also of Jains as members of the South Asian diaspora and he has maintained interests in India, and in ethnicity and nationalism ever since. He has written or edited several books in the field of visual anthropology and visual research methodologies; the most recent is Made to Be Seen: Perspectives on the HIstory of Visual Anthropology (2011, co-edited with Jay Ruby).