Research Catalog

Transcultural cinema

Title
Transcultural cinema / David MacDougall ; edited and with an introduction by Lucien Taylor.
Author
MacDougall, David.
Publication
Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, ©1998.

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StatusFormatAccessCall NumberItem Location
TextUse in library GN347 .M33 1998Off-site

Details

Additional Authors
Castaing-Taylor, Lucien
Description
x, 318 pages : illustrations; 23 cm
Summary
"Sherpas are portrayed by Westerners as heroic mountain guides, or "tigers of the snow," as Buddhist adepts, and as a people in touch with intimate ways of life that seem no longer available in the Western world. In this book, Vincanne Adams explores how attempts to characterize an "authentic" Sherpa are complicated by Western fascination with Sherpas and by the Sherpas' desires to live up to Western portrayals of them. Noting that diplomatic aides at world summit meetings go by the name "Sherpa," as do a van in the U.K. built for rough terrain and a software product from Silicon Valley, Adams examines the "authenticating" effects of this mobile signifier on a community of Himalayan Sherpas who live at the base of Mount Everest, Nepal, and its "deauthenticating" effects on anthropological representation." "This book speaks not only to anthropologists concerned with ethnographic portrayals of Otherness but also to those working in cultural studies who are concerned with ethnographically grounded analyses of representations. Throughout Adams illustrates how one might undertake an ethnography of transnationally produced subjects by using the notion of "virtual" identities. In a manner informed by both Buddhism and shamanism, virtual Sherpas are always both real and distilled reflections of the desires that produce them. Book jacket."--Jacket.
Subjects
Genre/Form
  • documentary film.
  • Documentary films
  • Criticism, interpretation, etc.
  • Documentary films.
  • Documentaires.
Bibliography (note)
  • Filmography: p. [293]-302.
  • Includes bibliographical references (p. [279]-292) and index.
Contents
The fate of the cinema subject -- Visual anthropology and the ways of knowing -- The subjective voice in ethnographic film -- Beyond observational cinema -- Complicities of style -- Whose story is it? -- Subtitling ethnographic films -- Ethnographic film : failure and promise -- Unprivileged camera style -- When less is less -- Film teaching and the state of documentary -- Films of memory -- Transcultural cinema.
ISBN
  • 0691012342
  • 9780691012346
  • 0691012350
  • 9780691012353
LCCN
98021197
OCLC
  • ocm38989847
  • 38989847
  • SCSB-537632
Owning Institutions
Princeton University Library