Documenting Ourselves: Film, Video, and Culture

by Sharon R. Sherman

Since Robert Flaherty's landmark film Nanook of the North (1922) arguments have raged over whether or not film records of people and traditions can ever be "authentic." And yet never before has a single volume combined documentary, ethnographic, and folkloristic filmmaking to explore this controversy.

What happens when we turn the camera on ourselves? This question has long plagued documentary filmmakers concerned with issues of reflexivity, subject participation, and self-consciousness. Documenting Ourselves includes interviews with filmmakers Les Blank, Pat Ferrero, Jorge Preloran, Bill Ferris, and others, who discuss the ways their own productions and subjects have influenced them. Sharon Sherman examines the history of documentary films and discusses current theiroeis and techniques of folklore and fieldwork.

But Sharon Sherman does not limit herself to the problems faced by filmmakers today. She examines the history of documentary films, tracing them from their origins as a means of capturing human motion through the emergence of various film styles. She also discusses current theories and techniques of folklore and fieldwork, concluding that advances in video technology have made the camcorder an essential tool that has the potential to redefine the nature of the documentary itself.

336 pages, Paperback

First published December 24, 1997

About the author

SHARON R. SHERMAN is Professor Emerita of Folklore and English at the University of Oregon where she directed the Folklore Program for over twenty years. She holds a Ph.D. in Folklore from Indiana University and a Master's degree in Folklore and Mythology from UCLA. Most of her published work has concentrated on the relationship between film and folklore, and perceptions about folklore as revealed by filmmakers and folklorists. Her students have produced a number of films that have had success on Oregon Public Broadcasting and elsewhere. Sherman’s films have won awards internationally. Professor Sherman designs and leads video workshops and is a consultant on various arts and humanities projects. She lectures on a variety of subjects, from Oregon folklore, to analyses of ethnicity in America, interpretations of documentary films and the interrelationships between folklore and popular culture. Sherman has served on the Executive Board of the American Folklore Society and as the Film and Videotape Review Editor for the Journal of American Folklore and Western Folklore. She is a Folklore Fellow of the American Folklore Society. Sherman has produced a number of films, including Kid Shoes; Tales of the Supernatural; Passover, A Celebration; Kathleen Ware, Quiltmaker; Spirits in the Wood; Inti Raymi en Quinchuqui; and Whatever Happened to Zulay. In addition to numerous articles, she is the author of Documenting Ourselves: Film, Video, and Culture (1998), the first in-depth study of folklore films as a genre of documentary. Other books include Chainsaw Sculptor: The Art of J. Chester Armstrong (1995), a book that grew out of her video fieldwork; and Folklore/Cinema: Popular Film as Vernacular Culture.

Reviews

[Eva · Rating 5 out of 5]

I took Sharon Sherman's Film and Folklore class at the University of Oregon using her book as a text. Ethnographic film and folklore documentary may seem dry at first glance but in this book as well as her teaching style Sherman manages to convey the great depth and beauty of the films she describes. Not all the films stand alone as entertainment films but a great many of them do. This book brings the reader into the history and development of this small field while also illustrating the film techniques, aesthetic value and symbolic meaning the directors employ. It reads almost like an insider guide because Sherman has many interviews with directors and I know from her class, previously knew most of the filmmakers from conference and festival circuit. I'd recommend this for anyone interested in documentary or film, anthropology, or Americana.