The emerging non-fiction genre of Visual Anthropology aims to promote the use of images for the description, analysis, communication and interpretation of human (and sometimes non-human) behavior. Visual Anthropology films explore kinesics, proxemics and related forms of body motion communication (e.g. gesture, emotion, dance, sign language) as well as visual aspects of culture, including architecture and material artifacts.

The films in this program belong to the Visual Anthropology genre. At the same time, they contain a strong reflexive component to their content. The auteur is acknowledged as a participant observer within the context of the films. From image to image, the makers lead us through their personal journeys while exposing the filmmaking process for the subjective nature of the medium that the non-fiction genre tries hard to conceal.

Hello Photo 55min, 16mm, 1994
Director: Nina Davenport

Photographer and filmmaker Nina Davenport spent one year traveling throughout India with her 16mm hand-crank movie camera. In one unforgettable image after another, she leads us through countless places and moments: a jute factory straight out of the industrial age, a rooftop kite festival, cows stuck in traffic jams, elephants blessing people. We're taken behind the scenes of a traveling circus to the sidelines of a polo match, inside the classrooms of a school for blind boys to a ceremony for an arranged marriage. We return now and then to the sets of Bombay's thriving film industry and to the streets where crowds of people stare back at the filmmaker. Hello Photo is not just a revelatory visual experience of India; it is also about the truths and deceptions inherent in making movies.

"Electrifying power... Davenport has an extraordinary eye for surreal juxtapositions, for understated epiphanies." - Boston Phoenix

Nina Davenport grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and received a B.A. in Visual & Environmental Studies from Harvard College in 1990. Her senior thesis Slain in the Spirit, a portfolio of photographs about faith healing, received the distinction of summa cum laude and The Boston Globe's J. Edward Fitzgerald Award for Photojournalism. Upon graduating from Harvard, Davenport won a Gardner Fellowship to go to India. She shot Hello Photo, her first film, with a silent movie camera, applying her still photographer's vision to filmmaking, as she documented her journey through India. When she returned, she worked as a teaching assistant at Harvard while editing the film. Hello Photo premiered at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in 1996 and has played at many other festivals throughout the world, including Seattle, Chicago, Sydney, St. Petersburg, Créteil and Montreal. It garnered numerous awards as well: "Best Documentary" from Melbourne, Australia, "Best Black & White Cinematography" from Cork, Ireland, "Outstanding Independent Film" from the New England Film & Video Festival, and the "Kodak Award" from the New York Expo, among others. It was also one of six films chosen for Southern Circuit, a tour of films throughout the southern United States. In 1996, Davenport received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to go to Mexico where she filmed Los Pericos (The Parrots), a documentary about a pair of blind street musicians, due to be finished in late 2000. Davenport began shooting Always a Bridesmaid also in 1996, which was funded primarily by HBO/Cinemax and Channel Four in England and is Davenport's first feature-length film. The Film Study Center of Harvard University has also provided Davenport with immeasurable support on all three of her films. Currently, in addition to finishing Los Pericos, Davenport is also working on a screenplay for a fictional adaptation of Always a Bridesmaid.

Ojos Viajeros 30min, video, 1999
Director: Jeff Silva

Filmed throughout Central America and Mexico over a six-month period, Ojos Viajeros explores the visual and auditory memory of a journey. Presented in 5 vignettes (silence, Whispers, Voices, Screams, and Songs), Ojos Viajeros meditates on the complex and unusual nuances of the observer with the viewed. Completely wordless; simply through image and an original soundscape (created by Johnathan LaMaster, Ricardo Frota, Dane Johnson, and John Voight), Ojos Viajeros presents an uncompromised portrait of Central American life as well as the life of a curious traveler.

Jeff Silva is a filmmaker and visual artist from Boston. Jeff produces works ranging from experimental films, documentaries, live visual performances, and multi-channel installations. His projects challenge cinematic conventions of storytelling, composition, editing, and sound design; blurring the boundaries between genres. Jeff teaches Film and Video production and editing courses at BFVF (Boston Film and Video Foundation) and CCTV (Cambridge Community Television), and is a Producer/Director of Educational Media at MIT's (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Center for Advanced Educational Services (CAES). He is also a founding member of two emerging Boston based multimedia collectives: MIR (Manipulated Image Research) and Pixonik Labs. Jeff also curates film, video and multimedia events locally. He has curated programs for the Coolidge Corner Theatre (BALAGAN), the BUFF, and Carberry's summer film series among others. Jeff is currently editing his next project Hard Reigns, a feature length documentary related to the Balkans, that uses footage and interviews he has accumulated over the past year and a half on his trips to Kosovo and Belgrade.