Experimental film and ethnographic film have long been considered autonomous practices on the margins of mainstream cinema. By exploring the interplay between the two Forms, Catherine Russell throws new light on both the avant-garde and visual anthropology. Russell analyzes more than thirty-five films and videos from the 1890s to the 1990s and discusses a wide range of film and videomakers, including Georges Melies, Maya Deren, Peter Kubelka, Ray Birdwhistell, Jean Rouch, Su Friedrich, Bill Viola, Kidlat Tahimik, Margaret Mead, Tracey Moffatt, and Chantal Akerman. Arguing that video enables us to see film differently -- not as a vanishing culture but as i bodies inscribed in technology, Russell maps the slow fade from modernism to postmodern practices. Combining cultural critique with aesthetic analysis, she explores the dynamics of historical interruption, recovery, and reevaluation. As disciplinary boundaries dissolve, Russell contends, ethnography becomes a means of renewing the avant-gardism of experimental film, of mobilizing its play with language and, farm for historical ends. Ethnography likewise becomes an expansive term in which culture is represented from many different and fragmented perspectives. Copyright (C) Muze Inc. 2005. For personal use only. All rights reserved.