Wind and Words

Abstract

This visual essay is an example of what I call an ‘ethnographic making-of’: a film that deconstructs the production of anthropological films (see The Image That Never Ends: A Journey Through Visual Anthropology, Berghahn Books, 2025). Wind and Words discusses the production process of the film Chasing Shadows (2019), a portrait of a prophetic movement in Guinea-Bissau. In Wind and Words, I use poetic and reflective language to highlight what is usually implicit in ethnographic films: the ethical, methodological and aesthetic dilemmas and choices that ethnographers face during filming and editing, as well as issues relating to translation, distribution and subtitling. The film therefore attempts to de-naturalize ethnographic films by showing how they are crafted and how they are rooted in a complex network of social relationships. By establishing a homology between cinema and prophetism, the film suggests that, as an art of shadows, cinema is consubstantially related to imagination, myth and the world of doubles.