Researching Moving Images of Culture

Since the nineties, there has been an emerging discourse on the dialogue of visual anthropology and documentary film theory. This trend is only vaguely present in the Hungarian scholarship. However, questions that tackle the importance of visuality in social sciences and the role of social sciences in making documentary films are particularly significant in contemporary cultural studies. This is not a mere scientific interest or study, but instead a result of various cultural criticism theories such as post-colonialism, feminism, nationalism and ethnic studies. On the other hand, it is also a consequence of certain media changes that make it possible to push beyond and transgress the boundaries of these disciplines. Having in mind these starting points, the selection of essays is based on the following criteria. First, it publishes visual anthropology studies that are beyond unclosed yet outdated debates of the eighties. That is, they do not focus on the difference of verbal and visual mediations of anthropology knowledge but rather on the relation of epistemology and the power structures emerging from the representations. Second, it presents an aspect of documentary film theory and history that integrates various questions emerging from different social practices. Thus, providing a new contextualization, it inspires us to rethink the power politics of representation and the peculiarities of the medium. The issue is aimed at researches of the given disciplines, film makers and university students who study cultural theory.