Through the presentation of a range of ethnographic, documentary, fiction and ‘current affairs/news’ films (including historic material) we will explore the ways in which film can frame and convey ethnographic investigation. We will look at the basic possibilities and limitations of film for going beyond traditional written ethnography to communicate the significance, style and substance of other modes of life as well as considering film as a distinct means to explore social interaction through what you might describe as its ‘call to performance.’Students will be familiarized with modes of film construction not merely as information presentation, but as a means of engaging with the social world. It is a peculiar feature of ethnographic film that despite its low status in academe, in its discovery of narrative devices and ethnographic standpoints film has largely preceded written ethnography. Against the grain of current trends, rather than primarily reading films ‘intertextually,’ or as part of a closed world of ‘discourse’ we will endeavour, together, to discover the historical and social contexts in which filmic ethics and aesthetics have developed. It has become fashionable to mock and criticise a past when ethnographers were 'orientalists.’ One of the dangers of such interpretive strategies is that they tend to glorify ourselves in a flatteringly distorted mirror. You will be encouraged here to reject such naïve (and patronising) approaches.