Mr David MacDougall
Areas of expertise
- Cinema Studies 190201
- Social And Cultural Anthropology 160104
- Postcolonial Studies 200211
- Sociology Of Education 160809
- Film, Television And Digital Media 1902
Research interests
Visual Anthropology
Social Anthropology
Ethnographic Film
Cinema Studies & Documentary Cinema
Anthropology of Childhood
Pastoralist Societies
Biography
David MacDougall is a maker of documentary and ethnographic films and writer on cinema. He was educated at Harvard University and the University of California at Los Angeles. His first feature-length film, To Live With Herds, filmed in Uganda, won the Grand Prix Venezia Genti at the Venice Film Festival in 1972. He and his wife Judith MacDougall then produced the “Turkana Conversations” trilogy of films on semi-nomadic camel herders of northwestern Kenya. Of these, Lorang’s Way won the Prize of Cinéma du Réel in Paris in 1979, The Wedding Camels the Film Prize of the Royal Anthropological Institute in 1980, and A Wife among Wives the Prix du Festival Jean Rouch (Bilan du Film Ethnographique) in 1982. With Judith MacDougall, he co-directed a dozen films on indigenous communities in Australia and, in 1991, a film on local photographers in an Indian hill town, Photo Wallahs. In 1993 he made Tempus de Baristas, on goat herders in the mountains of Sardinia. In 1997 he began a film study of the Doon School in northern India, resulting in Doon School Chronicles (2000) and four other films: With Morning Hearts (2001), Karam in Jaipur (2001), The New Boys (2003), and The Age of Reason (2004). He went on to film at Rishi Valley School, a progressive, co-educational boarding school in South India where he produced SchoolScapes (2007) and, together with Judith, Awareness (2010). Gandhi’s Children (2008), his study of a shelter for homeless children in New Delhi, won the Astra Film Festival Grand Prize and a "Best Documentary Feature Film" nomination at the Asia Pacific Film Awards in 2009. His latest films include Arnav at Six (2012) and Under the Palace Wall (2014). Since 2011 he has directed the "Childhood and Modernity" Project, conducting video workshops with children in different parts of India. Twelve of the films produced by children in the project are presented in the DVD, The Child's Eye (2018) . MacDougall writes regularly on documentary and ethnographic cinema and is the author of three books: Transcultural Cinema (Princeton University Press, 1998), The Corporeal Image: Film, Ethnography, and the Senses (Princeton, 2006), and The Looking Machine: Essays on Cinema, Anthropology and Documentary Filmmaking (Manchester University Press, 2019). He is presently Honorary Professor at the Research School of Humanities & the Arts, The Australian National University, Canberra.
Researcher's projects
Current Projects:
Childhood and Modernity: Indian Children's Perspectives
Digital Restoration of the "Turkana Conversations" trilogy
Previous Projects:
Visual Research in Social Aesthetics (a study of institutions for children in India)
Reconsidering visual anthropology: Towards a theoretical framework for anthropological visual research (a study of a traditional boarding school in northern India)
Pastoralists of Sardinia
Local Photography in India
Indigenous Communities in Australia
The Turkana of Northwest Kenya
The Jie of Northeast Uganda
Publications
- MacDougall, D 2019, The Looking Machine: Essays on Cinema, Anthropology and Documentary Filmmaking, Manchester University Press, Manchester.
- Hockings, P, Tomaselli, K, Ruby, J et al 2014, 'Where Is the Theory in Visual Anthropology?', Visual Anthropology, vol. 27, no. 5, pp. 436-456.
- Fijn, N & MacDougall, D (eds.) 2014, 'Forum: Delhi at Eleven: Four Films by School Children in Delhi - Critical Appreciations', The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, vol. 15, no. 5, pp. pp.453-479.
- MacDougall, D 2012, 'The Experience of Color', Ethnographiques.org, no. 24.
- MacDougall, D & Kildea, G 2012, 'Discussion between Gary Kildea and David MacDougall about Celso and Cora', Humanities Research, vol. XVIII, no. 1, pp. 37-53.
- MacDougall, D & Kildea, G 2012, 'Discussion between David MacDougall and Gary Kildea about Doon School Chronicles', Humanities Research, vol. XVIII, no. 1, pp. 55-70.
- MacDougall, D & MacDougall, J. 2010. 'Awareness' [film]. Rishi Valley Education Centre, Research School of Humanities & the Arts, ANU, 67 mins.
- MacDougall, D 2008, Arnav at Six. (In collaboration with Arnav Koshy), Rishi Valley Education Centre, Fieldwork Films & Research School of Humanities & the Arts, Australian National University, 28 minutes.
- MacDougall, D 2009, 'Anthropology and the Cinematic Imagination', in Christopher Morton & Elizabeth Edwards (ed.), Photography, Anthropology and History: Expanding the Frame, Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Farnham, pp. 55-63.
- MacDougall, D 2008, 'The Camera and the Mind', in Paolo Piquereddu (ed.), Sardinia International Ethnographic Film Festival 2008, Istituto Superiore Etnografico della Sardegna, Sardinia, pp. 14-19.
- MacDougall, D 2008, Gandhi's Children, Berkeley Media (USA) plus others see notes.
- MacDougall, D 2008, Mohnish Sings, Australia.
- MacDougall, D 2007, 'Gardner's Bliss', in Ilisa Barbash and Lucian Taylor (ed.), The Cinema of Robert Gardner, Berg Publishers, Oxford, UK, pp. 153-173.
- MacDougall, D 2007, 'The Experience of Color', The Senses and Society, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 5-26.
- MacDougall, D 2007, 'Colin Young, Ethnographic Film and the Film Culture of the 1960's', in Beate Engelbrecht (ed.), Memories of the Origins of Ethnographic Film, Peter Lang Publishing Group, Frankfurt, Germany, pp. 123-131.
- MacDougall, D 2007, SchoolScapes [film], Ronin Films, Berkeley, United States.
- MacDougall, D 2006, 'Transcultural Cinema [Chinese Translation]'.
- MacDougall, D 2006, 'Ethnographic Documentary Film', in Ian Aitken (ed.), Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, New York USA, pp. 353-360.
- MacDougall, D 2006, The Corporeal Image: Film, Ethnography, and the Senses, Princeton University Press, Princeton USA.
- MacDougall, D 2005, 'Doon School Aesthetics', in Radhika Chopra, Patricia Jeffery (ed.), Educational Regimes in Contemporary India, Sage Publications Inc, India, pp. 121-140.
- MacDougall, D 2003, The Age of Reason - The Doon School Quintet (Part 5), Canberra.
- MacDougall, D & Grimshaw, A 2003, 'Exchange of Emails between David Macdougall & Anna Grimshaw', Visual Anthropology Review, vol. 18, no. 1 and 2, pp. 94-101.
- MacDougall, D 2003, The New Boys - The Doon School Quintet (Part 4), Canberra.
- MacDougall, D 2002, 'Colin Young, Ethnographic Film and the Film Culture of the 1960s', Visual Anthropology Review, vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 81-88.
- MacDougall, D 2002, 'Gifts of Circumstance', Visual Anthropology Review, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 68-85.
- MacDougall, D 2001, 'Visual Anthropology: Digital Video (the author replies)', Anthropology Today, vol. 17, no. 5, pp. 24-25.
- MacDougall, J & MacDougall, D 2001, 'Blind Ducks in Borneo', in Susanne Schroeter (ed.), New Heimat, Lukas & Sternberg, New York, USA, pp. 56-65.
- MacDougall, D 2001, 'Renewing ethnographic film: Is digital video changing the genre?', Anthropology Today, vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 15-21.
- MacDougall, D 2001, With Morning Hearts, Berkeley Media LLC.
- MacDougall, D 2000, 'Social Aesthetics and the Doon School', Visual Anthropology Review, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 3-20.
- MacDougall, D 2000, Doon School Chronicles [film], Berkely, Cal.
Projects and Grants
Grants information is drawn from ARIES. To add or update Projects or Grants information please contact your College Research Office.
- Childhood and Modernity: Indian Children's Perspectives (Primary Investigator)
