Film-making as creative praxis: capturing the intimate side of interculturality

ABSTRACT

This article employs creative film-making to explore the doing of the intimate and personal aspects of the intercultural encounter. It offers an alternative paradigm for the use of visual methods for ethnographic and auto-ethnographic research. Drawing on phenomenological and auto-ethnographic perspectives, it investigates the lived, subjective experience through film-making praxis via excerpts of the experimental audio-visual essay A caressing dialogical encounter (Rifeser, UK, 2019). By using “pensive-creative praxis” (Rifeser, 2020a), a parallel can be established with an understanding of the intercultural encounter in its all its multi-dimensional and multi-layered complexity (Ros i Solé, forthcoming, 2022).

Im Zentrum dieses Artikels steht die kreative Filmproduktion und den Möglichkeiten, die sich für die interkulturelle Begegnung ergeben. Ein alternatives Paradigma für die Verwendung visueller Medien für ethnografische und auto-ethnografische Forschungen wird präsentiert. Über die Auseinandersetzung mit phänomenologischen und autoethnografischen Zugangsweisen, wird der Filmproduktionsprozess als gelebte, subjektive Erfahrung am Beispiel des audio-visuellen Essays A caressing dialogical encounter (Rifeser, UK, 2019) erörtert. Basierend auf dem Ansatz der Filmherstellung als „(be)sinnlich-kreative Praxis“ (“pensive-creative praxis”) (Rifeser, 2020a) kann eine Parallele zwischen dem Filmproduktionsprozess und der interkulturellen Begegnung erstellt werden, deren Beschaffenheit facettenreich und multi-dimensional ist (Ros i Solé, in Kürze erscheinend, 2022).

KEYWORDS:

• Intercultural
• film-making
• creative
• praxis ethnography
• embodied

SCHLÜSSELWÖRTER:

• Interkulturell
• Filmproduktion
• kreativ
• Praxis
• Ethnographie
• Körper

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 ‘Touch’ and ‘Totsch’ are not homophones, as the UK IPA for touch is /tʌt͡ʃ/, while the word ‘Totsch’ spoken in the dialect of the Puster Valley would sound more like /totʃ/. Please note that there is no official written form of this dialect. Written accounts follow the personal style of each individual and can differ drastically even from village to village.

Additional information

Funding

Funding was received via the University of Roehampton Vice-Chancellor Award and additional funding from the Deans of Southlands and Digby Stuart College contributed to the making of A caressing dialogical encounter (Rifeser, UK, 2019). With thanks to Professor Caroline Bainbridge and Dr William Brown for their support.

Notes on contributors

Judith Rifeser

Judith Rifeser is a language teacher-researcher-filmmaker and a lecturer in Education at Goldsmiths, University of London. She has collaborated with institutions, such as the BFI, Into Film and the Goethe Institut London, to improve curriculum design and language pedagogy using film and other authentic resources.

Cristina Ros i Solé

Cristina Ros i Solé is a lecturer in Language, Culture and Learning at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK. Her current research explores the use of non-positivist epistemologies to study the intercultural encounter and is situated at the interface between language, identity and material culture.