When I first discovered the works of Jean Rouch, Robert Gardner, and Timothy Asch—academic anthropologists who opted to make films rather than books about their research subjects—my appreciation of their work was hampered by some lingering questions: “How in the world did they distribute this? Who paid for this? Who was watching this?” Sure, the government pays for them, universities buy them and academics screen them for students, but these filmmakers are also studied and appreciated within cinephile circles in a way that, say, 1940s newsreel directors are not. How did these filmmakers find an audience outside the ivory tower? […]
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