Empirical Art Filmmaking for fieldwork in practice

This compilation adds to a reflexive body of works on the sensory, inter-subjective, and narrative aspects of ethnographic filmmaking. It aims to bridge the divide between researchers’ personal journeys and their epistemological explorations of other lifeworlds. Following the publication of Filmmaking for Fieldwork: A Practical Handbook(Lawrence, 2020), Empirical Art: Filmmaking for Fieldwork in Practice addresses challenges and realisations that arise from introducing image and sound recording devices, audio-visual archives and editing tools to the research process as practices of relating and narrating. The multiplicity of approaches presented here calls for a re-imagination of the empirical, not as a reflection of reality, but as testaments to the art of crafting connections. In doing so, we hope to offer future practitioners meaningful avenues to approach ethnographic filmmaking and, in contemplating the questions and concerns raised here, deepen the findings of their camera-based research.