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A Conversation with D avid M ac D ougall: Reflections on the Childhood and Modernity Workshop Films
Author(s) -
Potts Rowena
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
visual anthropology review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.346
H-Index - 18
eISSN - 1548-7458
pISSN - 1058-7187
DOI - 10.1111/var.12081
Subject(s) - conversation , facilitator , film director , visual anthropology , ethnography , sociology , visual arts , filmmaking , anthropology , art history , media studies , art , psychology , movie theater , communication , social psychology
This interview with ethnographic filmmaker and theorist D avid M ac D ougall focuses on his most recent collaborative research project: an ongoing, five‐year enterprise entitled C hildhood and M odernity: I ndian C hildren's P erspectives . In the project, which emerged from his earlier work documenting the social worlds and experiences of children in diverse institutions across I ndia, M ac D ougall directs a series of workshops that equip small cohorts of boys and girls between the ages of 10 and 13 with basic video skills. These young, first‐time filmmakers produce short films based on their investigation of research topics they select and design themselves. The process recognizes and amplifies the perspectives of children at a time of transformation and change in I ndia. In a conversation with filmmaker R owena P otts, a doctoral student in cultural anthropology at N ew Y ork U niversity and facilitator of a C hildhood and M odernity workshop in K olkata, M ac D ougall describes the evolution and contours of this project and its implications for ethnographic film, visual anthropology, and global studies of childhood.