Anna Grimshaw and Amanda Ravetz : Observational Cinema : Anthropology , Film , and the Exploration of Social Life , Bloomington : Indiana University Press , 2009

Observational cinema is one of the most controversial forms of visual anthropology. After its inception in the 1970s, it was initially praised as a breakthrough in ethnographic filmmaking. However, since then it has suffered years of neglect and heavy criticism, mostly directed at its naïvité, alleged scientism and illusion of objectivity. The time has finally come for a revision of those claims, and this book does just that: it defends observational cinema as a special form of ethnographic filmmaking, which has its history, distinct tradition, as well as potential for future development. Anna Grimshaw and Amanda Ravetz bring observational cinema back into the focus of consideration, on the one hand analyzing its key filmmakers and their films, while on the other discussing the term from a theoretical point of view.