The making of an ethnographic documentary on working class struggle

Abstract

The paper explores the collaborative methods employed in the making of an ethnographic film focused on the labour unrest at the AST steel plant in Terni, central Italy. It provides an overview of the fieldwork leading to the film production and focuses on the collaboration between anthropologist, filmmakers, and participants as well as on positioning the film within the tradition of visual ethnography. In doing so, the paper discusses the importance of acknowledging the parallel existence and the inclusion of different visual methods when working in a mutable fieldwork and making a film that can be considered ethnographic, close to the participants’ visual representation, and able to speak to both an academic and a wider general audience with particular attention for the research participants.