(9 January 2017, Alexandria, VA) Alexander Street today announced the launch of the latest installment in its Ethnographic Video Online Series, Volume IV: Festivals and Archives. This new collection of contemporary anthropological films provides a space for today’s visual anthropologists to showcase and disseminate their most compelling work. With a focus on titles screened at contemporary ethnographic film festivals, this newly released content will engage students by connecting them with topics familiar to their own time and place.
Additionally, Volume IV unlocks access to rich repositories of previously difficult-to-discover content. Visual anthropology programs at over a dozen universities and institutions around the world house repositories of student and faculty field recordings and edited films. These visual records make significant contributions to cultural and scholarly dialogues, but are otherwise difficult to access. Volume IV will bring such resources together in one place.
At completion, the collection will contain 500 hours of contemporary video content, 90% of which was created within the last 10 years. Content highlights include the complete catalogue of anthropology films from Berkeley Media (formerly the University of California’s Extension Center for Media) and the repository of work created at University of Manchester’s Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology. The collection will also feature a selection of 2016 and 2017 films screened at the Margaret Mead Film Festival, the Society for Visual Anthropology Festival, and the RAI Ethnographic Film Festival, among others.
“Anthropological research is cumulative. Just as Margaret Mead learned from Ruth Benedict and Tim Asch learned from Margaret Mead, today’s generation of scholars continues to build on the work of its predecessors. This next chapter in the Ethnographic Video Online Series enables the work of teachers and students to exist side-by-side, creating new insight into longitudinal studies and multi-generational restudies,” said Jenna Makowski, Anthropology Editor at Alexander Street.
The Ethnographic Video Online Series is an indispensable, four-volume series of films that provide over 2,200 hours of comprehensive coverage. Ethnographic Video Online, Volume IV: Festivals and Archives is available for purchase or annual subscription. Librarians and faculty may request a free 30-day trial at alexanderstreet.com/anth.
