Slowly by Slowly: Ethnocinema, Media and Young Women of the Sudanese Diaspora

Abstract

This article examines the research project Cross-Marked: Sudanese-Australian Young Women Talk Education, which draws on the varying knowledge of Sudanese students from refugee backgrounds and the principles and practices of ethnocinema which prioritize relationship and mutuality in intercultural collaborations. The seven documentary films which comprise Cross-Marked comment on the complexities of the performance of liminal identities for both researcher and co-participants; and this article explores the visibility and invisibility of Sudanese diasporic women in popular media. Gender, age, race, class and ethnicity intersect as a range of intercultural meetings, where these films both influence and are influenced by an emerging ethnocinema. This article draws from the literature on contemporary ethnographic documentary, including Ruby [(1975)2000], Rouch [2003] and Heider [2006], and seeks to offer new methods for those engaged in 21st-century intercultural collaboration in video, both inside and outside the classroom.

Notes

This list of films about Sudan in general or Darfur specifically is not exhaustive, but is a good place to start with. Some films are feature-length and some are shorts, but almost all are documentaries: Benjamin and His Brother, dir. Arthur Howes, 2002 (reviewed in Visual Anthropology [19(3–4): 353–363]); The Weight of a Nation, prod. Kevin Kindle, 2006; God Grew Tired of Us, dir. Christopher Quinn, 2006; Come Back to Sudan, dir. Patti Bonnet and Daniel Junge, 2008; 3551, a Story of Change, UNICEF, 1998; All About Darfur, dir. Taghreed Elsanhouri, 2005; Lost Boys of Sudan, dir. Megan Mylan and John Shenk, 2003; On Our Watch, Refugees International, 2006; Children of Terror, prod. Hannah and Damien Lewis, 2004; War Child, dir. Christian Karim Chrobog, 2008; Facing Sudan, dir. Burce David Janu, 2007; Long Journey Home of James Nguen, dir. Rick Castiglione, 2007; The Promise, dir. Tim Salem, 2006; Child of Hope, dir. Tim Salem, 2008; Darfur Now, dir. Ted Braun, 2007; Sand and Sorrow, dir. Paul Freedman, 2008; African Soul, American Heart, dir. Debra Dawson, 2008; The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins, dir. Pietra Brettkelly, 2008. The following listed films include the story of one female each, in a cast of several boys' stories: A Great Wonder: Lost Children of Sudan, dir. Kim Shelton, 2004; A Long Walk Home, dir. Tiffany Frances, 2005. The 2005 documentary Finding the Lost Girls of Sudan, prod. Ashley Umbro, is the only film to feature a young Sudanese woman, Aduei Riak.

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Notes on contributors

Anne Harris

ANNE HARRIS is an American-Australian scholar in Creativity and the Arts in Education at Victoria University, Melbourne, who publishes in the areas of ethnocinema, transnationalism, and gender and identity. She is a graduate of New York University, where she studied playwriting with Tony Kushner, Arthur Miller and Eve Ensler, among others. Her new book is Ethnocinema in Arts Education: Intercultural Collaboration in Film (Springer, 2011).