Film Society: An Anthropology of the Cinema for the Society of the Screen

How can the insights from the anthropology of the cinema help us understand our contemporary society? Despite with the arrival of streaming services and personal screens, the cinema continues to provide us with significant aesthetic and social forms. In this paper I will argue for the value of the anthropology of the cinema in providing insight into our everyday practices of engaging the screen in a time when digital media and society are so deeply entwined it is no longer meaningful to speak of them as separate entities. I will draw on my long-term ethnographic engagement with the film society movement in Bangladesh to illustrate how the anthropology of the cinema can help us understand the society of the screen.

Departmental Seminar Series Trinity 2023

3.15pm, Fridays of Weeks 1-3 and 5-6. 

Teams link and in person in 64 Banbury Road.

Convened by Akanksha Awal.

The Seminar is replaced in Week 4 by the lecture 'Anthropology, Philosophy and Symmetrisation', given by Philippe Descola in Maison Française d'Oxford at 3pm.