Instructional Resources for Teaching with Film

The Lacuna Project of the University of Edinburgh is dedicated to using ethnographic film in the teaching of anthropology. Anthropology instructors who visit this site are asked to complete an online survey on their use of media in the classroom.

The Haddon Catalogue of Archival Ethnographic Film is a classic resource for early films. Follow links at this site to read "Anthropology and Multimedia" by Marcus Banks and other materials used in a workshop taught by Banks and others on how to teach visual anthropology.

For ideas on how to teach with film, see instructors' online syllabi for their anthropology or ethnography courses.

Read "Anthropology on the Internet: A Review and Evaluation of Networked Resources" by Brian Schwimmer. See also an article by Richard Williams, "The Internet in the Teaching of Anthropology."

The University of Southern California's E-Lab is the ethnographics laboratory for the Center for Visual Anthropology and offers a wide variety of resources, information, and services.

The Society for Visual Anthropology reviews ethnographic films, publishes papers on visual anthropology, and offers suggestions for teaching with film.

The National Anthropological Archives (NAA) offers extensive holdings of teaching photos, slides, drawings, field notes, and papers from every ethnographic area. See, for example, historic photos of Philippine Islanders by R. E. Ahlborn and of Africans by H.R. Acebes. This site contains substantive descriptions of the resources and explains how to access them.

The University of Michigan's Film and Video Library Mediagraphy has huge holdings in anthropology, including "The Disappearing World" Series. Descriptions and access information are given online. For instance, York University Libraries' Film and Video Recordings of the South Pacific is the source of "Ongka's Big Moka," a film in The Disppearing World Series about the Kawelka people of New Guinea.

Read Jay Ruby's 1996 articles on "Visual Anthropology" and "Speaking in Tongues: Locating a New Voice for Ethnographic Film."

An excellent resource is Karl G. Heider's ethnographic guide, "Looking at Life through the Lens: Ethnographic Film."

See this comprehensive bibliography for a course in visual anthropology at the University of Kopenhagen Institute of Anthropology.