The ethnographic B movie: Centering the uncertain, absurd and low quality in collaborative filmmaking

Abstract

This paper discusses an experimental modality of ethnographic filmmaking that my interlocutor/collaborator and I came to call the ‘ethnographic B movie’. I explore what I mean by the term and describe its use as novel approach to collaborative multimodal research. I argue that this approach – which encourages unprofessionalism, low quality, absurdity and caprice – provides an opportunity to centre research contexts, ontologies and epistemologies on the fringes or margins of conventional anthropological content, thought and context. Through situating the approach within ideas of arts-based research or research-creation the ethnographic B movie becomes a way to take the process of filmmaking as ethnography for the sake of an open and co-imaginative world. In the ethnographic B movie as filmic approach and representational frame, communicable meaning and narrative coherence are substituted for the spirit of co-creation, and interlocutor-driven content.