13th RAI INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF ETHNOGRAPHIC FILM 2013

We would like to invite you for the 13th RAI INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF ETHNOGRAPHIC FILM 2013, held from Thursday 13th June to Sunday 16^th June 2013 in Edinburgh, Scotland.  

The festival is jointly hosted by the National Museums of Scotland and STAR (Scottish Training in Anthropological Research, a collaboration between the Universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow and St. Andrews) and cosponsored by the Center for Visual Anthropology, University of Southern California.

We are pleased to present an inspiring, very international programme of documentaries from around the world; several filmmakers have already confirmed their attendance!

Highlights include:

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 FILMS - shortlisted for various prizes

and special screenings

RAI & BASIL WRIGHT, INTANGIBLE CULTURE (Music - Dance -

Performance), MATERIAL CULTURE & ARCHAEOLOGY, WILEY BLACKWELL STUDENT

Film Prizes screening strands, including Q&A with the filmmakers

NEW OBSERVATIONS, exploring the relationship between art,

anthropology and film

VARIOUS WORKSHOPS, PANELS AND SPECIAL SCREENINGS

More information can be found on the festival programme

The programme is now available online - including film descriptions! Have a look around and start planning your days at the RAI FilmFestival!  More information can be found on the festival website.

Please register online:  

Early Bird rates until 15 May! Festival Pass £80; RAI Fellows & Members

£60; Students/Concessions £40; Day Passes £30

Information on how to join the RAI can be found here.

The RAI Film Festival team is looking forward to meeting you in

Edinburgh in June!

Susanne Hammacher

Film Officer | Festival Manager

Museum of English Rural Life Fellowship Scheme

Applications are now being invited for the Gwyn E. Jones MERL Fellowship scheme for 2013-14, tenable for up to twelve months, to support research in subject areas associated with the Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) at the University of Reading. The closing date is 10 May 2013.

Successful proposals attract a stipend of up to £10,000 for a maximum period of twelve months. Applications for shorter periods of research are welcome but would attract a commensurately smaller stipend. The funding can be used to offset teaching and administration costs, and other research-related expenses. Fellows are encouraged to participate in the academic programmes of the Museum.

For further details of the scheme and information about how to apply see the MERL website or contact Ollie Douglas.

Book Notice: World Art: An Introduction to Art in Artefacts by Ben Burt

What do we mean by 'art'? As a category of objects, the concept belongs to a Western cultural tradition, originally European and now increasingly global, but how useful is it for understanding other traditions? To understand art as a universal human value, we need to look at how the concept was constructed in order to reconstruct it through an understanding of the wider world.

Western art values have a pervasive influence upon non-Western cultures and upon Western attitudes to them. This innovative yet accessible new text explores the ways theories of art developed as Western knowledge of the world expanded through exploration and trade, conquest, colonisation and research into other cultures, present and past. It considers the issues arising from the historical relationships which brought diverse artistic traditions together under the influence of Western art values, looking at how art has been used by colonisers and colonised in the causes of collecting and commerce, cultural hegemony and autonomous identities.

World Art questions conventional Western assumptions of art from an anthropological perspective which allows comparison between cultures. It treats art as a property of artefacts rather than a category of objects, reclaiming the idea of 'world art' from the 'art world'.

Bloomsbury Academic

ISBN-10: 1847889433 | ISBN-13: 978-1847889430

paperback £17.99