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  1. Dartmouth Libraries
  2. Research Guides
  3. Dartmouth Libraries Guides
  4. Film Genres
  5. Ethnographic films

Film Genres

This guide highlights library resources for some of the more popular film genres.
  • Introduction
  • Streaming services
  • Action films
  • Amateur films
  • Animation
    • Stop-motion animation
  • Animé
  • B movies
  • Biographical films
  • Blaxploitation films
  • Children's films
  • Comedies
  • Cult films
  • Crime films
    • Gangster films
  • Detective & mystery films
  • Documentary films
  • Ethnographic films
  • Experimental films
  • Exploitation films
  • Film noir
  • Historical films
  • Horror films
    • Slasher films
  • Independent films
  • Indigenous films
  • James Bond films
  • LGBTQIA+
  • Mockumentary films
  • Musicals
  • Newsreels This link opens in a new window
  • Police films
  • Religious films
    • Bible films
  • Road films
  • Science fiction
    • Star Trek films
    • Star Wars films
  • Science films
  • Shakespeare on film
  • Short films
  • Silent films
  • Sports films
  • Superhero films
  • War films
    • Anti-war films
  • Vampire films
  • Westerns
  • Zombie films

Film Studies Librarian

Profile Photo
Lucinda M. Hall
Email Me
Contact:
Evans Map Room, Baker-Berry Library
Dartmouth College
25 N Main ST
Hanover, NH 03755
(603) 646-0962
Website Skype Contact: d1128r8@kiewit.dartmouth.edu
Social: LinkedIn Page LibraryThing Page
Subjects: Film and Media Studies, Geography, Polar Studies

Other library resource(s)

  • Resource logoAnthropological documentaries from Digitalia Film Library by Digitalia
    • Video
    • On Campus or VPN
    Call Number: Streaming video
    A small collection of anthropological documentaries from around the world.
  • Resource logoEthnographic film from Oxford Bibliographies Online by Pamela Wilson
    • On Campus or VPN
    Call Number: Electronic resource
    ISBN: 9780199791286
    The relationship between visual media and anthropology has a long history growing out of the imperializing impulses of the 19th century, and anthropologists—as well as others such as cultural explorers, scientists, geographers, journalists, and travel writers—have long used forms of visual media to document their impressions of and perspectives about what we might call the cultural “Other”: cultures that have seemed different, exotic, or fascinating to us.
  • Resource logoEthnographic video online: volumes 1 & 2 by Alexander Street Press
    • Video
    • On Campus or VPN
    • Database
    Call Number: Streaming video
    Ethnographic Video Online is a comprehensive online resource for the study of human culture, behavior and society around the world. The collections contain over 1,300 hours of streaming video, including ethnographic films, documentaries, select feature films, and previously unpublished fieldwork.

A short definition for ethnographic films

A practice of documentary film and of visual anthropology informed by the theories, methods, and vocabulary of the discipline of anthropology, involving use of the film camera as a research tool in documenting whole, or definable parts of, cultures with methodological awareness and precision. In its strictest definition, ethnographic film constitutes a form of academic research, with an intended audience of scholars of anthropology.

Kuhn, A. & Westwell, G. (2012). "Ethnographic film." In A Dictionary of Film Studies. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 23 Dec. 2015.

Finding library resources for ethnographic film

Resources about ethnographic film are scattered throughout the GN 347's and PN 1990's. To see what our catalog has, click on one of the following subject searches:

  • ethnographic films
  • indigenous films
    You can add a country's name to the search to see what we may have in the collections.
  • motion pictures in ethnology
  • video recording in ethnology
  • visual anthropology

Introductory reading(s)

  • Cover artAmerican ethnographic film and personal documentary: the Cambridge turn by Scott MacDonald
    • On Campus or VPN
    • E-Book
    Call Number: eBook
    ISBN: 9780520275621
    American Ethnographic Film and Personal Documentary is a critical history of American filmmakers crucial to the development of ethnographic film and personal documentary. The Boston and Cambridge area is notable for nurturing these approaches to documentary film via institutions such as the MIT Film Section and the Film Study Center, the Carpenter Center and the Visual and Environmental Studies Department at Harvard. ...
  • Cover artEthnographic film by Karl G. Heider
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry GN 347 .H44 2006
    ISBN: 9780292714588
    Publication Date: Rev. ed.
    Even before Robert Flaherty released Nanook of the North in 1922, anthropologists were producing films about the lifeways of native peoples for a public audience, as well as for research and teaching. In this new edition, Karl G. Heider thoroughly updates Ethnographic Film to reflect developments in the field over the three decades since its publication, focusing on the work of four seminal filmmakers--Jean Rouch, John Marshall, Robert Gardner, and Timothy Asch.
  • Cover artHandbook of participatory video by E-J Milne; Claudia Mitchell; Naydene de Lange
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry GN 347 .H36 2012
    ISBN: 9780759121133
    Participatory video is a growing area of research and an increasingly popular tool among practitioners, researchers, and NGOs working with communities around the world.
  • Cover artReturn to the land of the head hunters: Edward S. Curtis, the Kwakwạkạ'wakw, and the making of modern cinema by Brad Evans; Aaron Glass, eds.
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry GN 347 .R47 2014
    ISBN: 9780295993447
    Photographer Edward Curtis's 1914 orchestrally scored melodrama In the Land of the Head Hunters was one of the first US films to feature an Indigenous cast. This landmark of early silent cinema was an intercultural product of Curtis's collaboration with the Kwakwạkạ'wakw of British Columbia meant, like Curtis's photographs, to document a supposedly vanishing race. But as this collection shows, the epic film is not simply an artifact of colonialist nostalgia. In recognition of the film's centennial, and the release of a restored version, Return to the Land of the Head Hunters brings together leading anthropologists, Native American authorities, artists, musicians, literary scholars, and film historians to reassess the film and its legacy. ...
  • Cover artWondrous difference: cinema, anthropology & turn-of-the-century visual culture by Alison Griffiths
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry GN 347 .G73 2002
    ISBN: 9780231116978
    The ethical and ideological implications of cross-cultural image-making continue to stir debate among anthropologists, film scholars, and museum professionals. This innovative book focuses on the contested origins of ethnographic film from the late nineteenth century to the 1920s, vividly depicting the dynamic visual culture of the period as it collided with the emerging discipline of anthropology and the new technology of motion pictures. ...

Selected book titles

  • Default cover artA bibliography of ethnographic film by Rolf Husmann, ed.
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry GN 347 .B53 1992
    ISBN: 9783894733520
  • Cover artDecolonizing the lens of power: indigenous films in North America by Chris Holmlund and Justin Wyatt, eds.
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1995.9 .I48 K67 2008
    ISBN: 9789042025431
    The book explores how members of colonized groups use the medium of film as a means for cultural and political expression and thus enter the dominant colonial film discourse and create an answering discourse.
  • Cover artThe fast runner: filming the legend of Atanarjuat by Michael Robert Evans
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1997.2 .A73 E93 2010
    ISBN: 9780803222083
    One of the most important Native films of all time, Atanarjuat, the Fast Runner tells a powerful and moving story about honor, betrayal, vengeance, and redemption.
  • Cover artMemories of the origins of ethnographic film by Beate Engelbrecht
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry GN 347 .M46 2007
    ISBN: 9783631507353
    Ethnographic film, which combines documentary filming and anthropological research, originated in the late 19th century. Early on, anthropologists used film to record cultures.
  • Cover artNavajo talking picture: cinema on native ground by Randolph Lewis
    • Book
    • On Campus or VPN
    Call Number: eBook
    ISBN: 9780803238411
    Navajo Talking Picture, released in 1985, is one of the earliest and most controversial works of Native cinema. It is a documentary by Los Angeles filmmaker Arlene Bowman, who travels to the Navajo reservation to record the traditional ways of her grandmother in order to understand her own cultural heritage.

Finding articles & journals

Articles and other writings about movies can be found in many publications. Our collection doesn't include publications which look exclusively at ethnographic films, however there is a journal for visual anthropology.  You can search Film & Television Literature Index to find articles or use the search box at the top of the page.

  • Issue cover artVisual anthropology review by Center for Visual Anthropology; Society for Visual Anthropology
    • On Campus or VPN
    Call Number: Electronic journal
    Visual Anthropology Review presents research on visual studies, broadly conceived. Within its scope, the journal encompasses both the study of visual aspects of human behavior and the use of visual media in anthropological research, representation and teaching.
  • Journal logoVisual ethnography by Edizioni Museo Pasqualino
    • On Campus or VPN
    Call Number: Electronic journal
    The topics of Visual Ethnography cross visual anthropology, anthropology of media, digital and visual cultures, museography, contemporary art, photography, film studies, cultural studies, anthropology of the senses, anthropological theory.
  • Resource logoFilm & television literature index by EBSCO Publishing
    • On Campus or VPN
    • Database
    Call Number: Electronic resource
    Use this index to find articles about ethnographic film.
  • Resource logoWeb of science citation databases by Clarivate
    • On Campus or VPN
    • Database
    Call Number: Electronic resource
    The online version of 3 separate ISI indexes: Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Science Citation Index and, Social Sciences Citation Index.

Selected movie titles

For more ethnographic films, search the library's online catalog.

  • Cover artAbundance on a dry land by Jocelyn Demers
    • Video
    • On Campus or VPN
    Call Number: Streaming video
    In California and other regions affected by drought, agriculture is suffering from a lack of water and farms are being abandoned at an alarming rate. But some people have developed solutions to capture the rains that DO fall. In this state and in many other dry regions around the world, land restoration helps water penetrate healthy soils and in turn increase crop yields. This film explores the work of Erik Ohlsen, Geoff Lawton and other growers, permaculture designers and educators, showing how intentional design can benefit both humans and nature.
  • Cover artBitter roots: the ends of a Kalahari myth by Adrian Strong
    • DVD
    Call Number: Jones Media DVD #13456
    Shot in 2007, two years after Marshall's death (and including footage from his films), Bitter Roots documents the return of Strong and Ritchie to Nyae-Nyae where they observe the erosion of a community-led development process following the imposition of a new agenda led by the World Wildlife Fund, which prioritizes wildlife conservation and tourism over subsistence farming. Communities voice their dissatisfaction with the new Conservancy, which has done little to help people farm and improve their lives.
  • Cover artFishing at the Stone Weir by Asen Balikci; Guy Mary-Rousselière; Quentin Brown; Kevin Smith
    • DVD
    Call Number: Jones Media DVD #13080
    The film documents a group of Netsilik Eskimo setting up camp by a major stream and preparing for fishing. Shows construction of fish traps, spears and other implements for catching, cleaning, and preparing fish. The nomadic way of life of "The people of the seal" lasted into the 1960s.
  • Movie poster artMy crasy life by Jean-Pierre Gorin
    • DVD
    Call Number: Jones Media DVD #1959
    Documentary and scripted drama meet in this intense, introspective, and expectation-shredding treatment of the lives of Samoan street gang members in Long Beach.
  • Cover artStanding on sacred ground. Fire and ice by Christopher McLeod
    • DVD
    Call Number: Jones Media DVD #17318
    ISBN: 9781937772963
    From Ethiopia to Peru, indigenous customs protect biodiversity on sacred lands under pressure from religious conflicts and climate change. In the Gamo Highlands of Ethiopia, scientists confirm the benefits of traditional stewardship even as elders witness the decline of spiritual practices that have long protected trees, meadows and mountains. Tensions with evangelical Christians over a sacred meadow erupt into a riot. In the Peruvian Andes, the Q'eros, on a pilgrimage to a revered glacier, are driven from their ritual site by intolerant Catholics. Q'eros potato farmers face a more ominous foe: global warming is melting glaciers, their water source. ...
  • Cover artYurumein = Homeland by Andrea E. Leland
    • DVD
    Call Number: Jones Media DVD #18671
    Yurumein follows members of the Garifuna Diaspora as they attempt to rekindle a disappeared culture and revitalize its language, dance and music. The film reveals signs of resilience as local Caribs come together to celebrate and honor their Garifuna past, and in doing so, begin the journey of healing, rebuilding, and preserving the homeland.
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  • Last Updated: Apr 14, 2025 4:06 PM
  • URL: https://researchguides.dartmouth.edu/filmgenres
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