Slowly by Slowly: Ethnocinema, Media and Young Women of the Sudanese Diaspora

Abstract

This article examines the research project Cross-Marked: Sudanese-Australian Young Women Talk Education, which draws on the varying knowledge of Sudanese students from refugee backgrounds and the principles and practices of ethnocinema which prioritize relationship and mutuality in intercultural collaborations. The seven documentary films which comprise Cross-Marked comment on the complexities of the performance of liminal identities for both researcher and co-participants; and this article explores the visibility and invisibility of Sudanese diasporic women in popular media. Gender, age, race, class and ethnicity intersect as a range of intercultural meetings, where these films both influence and are influenced by an emerging ethnocinema. This article draws from the literature on contemporary ethnographic documentary, including Ruby [(1975)2000], Rouch [2003] and Heider [2006], and seeks to offer new methods for those engaged in 21st-century intercultural collaboration in video, both inside and outside the classroom.