Slowly by Slowly (Co-created with Grace Mabor): Ethnocinema, Media and Women of the Sudanese Diaspora

Abstract

This chapter focuses on education aid Grace, and the disappointment she expresses in her film Slowly by Slowly. Grace confronts the broader question of a lack of representation of Sudanese diasporic women in the popular media and the ways in which negative media constructions inform race-based encounters in schools. She identifies the ways in which the trope of Lost Boys of Sudan has become the singular narrative about Sudanese subjectivity, eliding the experiences of girls and more positives stories in resettlement. Gender, age, race, class and ethnicity intersect as a range of intercultural meetings in this film and chapter. It draws from the literature on contemporary ethnographic documentary including Tobing Rony ((1996). The third eye: Race, cinema and ethnographic spectacle. Durham: Duke University Press); Barbash and Taylor ((1997). Cross-cultural filmmaking: A handbook for making documentary and ethnographic films and videos. Berkeley: University of California Press); MacDougall and Taylor ((1998). L. Taylor (Ed.), Transcultural cinema. Princeton: Princeton University Press); Ruby ((2000). Picturing culture: Explorations of film and anthropology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Original edition, 1975 article.); Rouch ((2003). Cine-ethnography/Jean Rouch (trans: Steven Feld (Ed.)). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press); Heider ((2006). Ethnographic film. Austin: University of Texas Press), and seeks to offer new methods for those engaged in inclusive educational and media practices, both inside and outside of the classroom.