'Victims of foolish pleasure' : film, ethnography, and coloured women making music in the Great Karoo.

[摘要] In 2003 I made a documentary film called Karoo Kitaar Blues with South Africansongwriter and guitarist, David Kramer, on the rare musicians, music, andinstruments of scattered coloured communities in the Northern Cape. When I setout, seven years ago, to make the film I had no intention of making an ethnographicfilm or producing a visual ethnography in the anthropological sense (I am adocumentary filmmaker), but two academic reviews, critical of its lack of'ethnographic context' caught my intention. This dissertation attempts to respond totheir critique. I explore the territory of visual anthropology and ethnographicmethodology in order to understand why my film, with hindsight, is and is not'ethnographic', and to establish how ethnographic practice could enhance my workas a filmmaker. I use Karoo Kitaar Blues as my visual monograph and examine thedifferences between ethnographic film and documentary (in the observationalmode) with reference to ethnographic methodologies and theory inethnomusicology, and consider how film can be used 'as' ethnography or 'in'ethnography. I conclude that Karoo Kitaar Blues film lies somewhere betweenethnographic and observational filmmaking.

[发布机构] University of the Witwatersrand