Yellow Woman: Suspicion and Cooperation on Liberia's Gold Mines

Abstract

ABSTRACTYellow Woman is a multimodal ethnographic research project combining text and film to explore the dynamics of cooperation and suspicion on a Liberian gold mine. The sixteen‐minute single‐take video places the viewer in a uniquely “filmic” position; in other words, it allows the viewer to experience the end of a gold mining operation as only a camera can render it. But it is a point of view that simultaneously captures the tensions and surveillance practices of mine bosses and the laborers themselves. These men, despite the collective nature of their work and their long associations with one another, nevertheless remain constantly vigilant against the possibilities of deception and theft. The text that accompanies the film provides the ethnographic context that the film itself cannot and explores the aesthetic and stylistic choices through which the film communicates. [ethnographic film, mining, Liberia]