Authorship: Maykon Almeida • Intern at Jornal da USP supervised by Silvana Salles
Published on the LISA website by Vanessa Munhoz • LISA Communication
Published: 09/02/2025
In a new book, an anthropologist reflects on shared research through filmmaking
The book is the result of Rose Satiko's postdoctoral thesis and is available for free download on the USP Open Books Portal.
The relationship between anthropologists and research partners is a key theme in anthropology and has been widely discussed over the decades. In her book "Filmar o musicar – Ensaios de antropologia compartilhada", anthropologist Rose Satiko Gitirana Hikiji reflects on her relationships with her research partners over the course of more than two decades of work analyzing and producing ethnographic films. Hikiji is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at the School of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences (FFLCH) at USP and coordinator of the Image and Sound Laboratory in Anthropology (LISA). The book "Filmar o musicar – Ensaios de antropologia compartilhada" was published online and made available for free in Portal de Livros Abertos da USP.
Throughout the four chapters that comprise the book's main scope, Hikiji recounts his audiovisual production in the field of anthropology and articulates the idea of shared anthropology. This is an approach to anthropology in which the interlocutor ceases to be a mere informant and participates directly and actively in the research process and structuring of results. Shared anthropology was proposed by Jean Rouch, a French ethnologist and filmmaker who produced over 100 films in partnership with the communities he visited, primarily in West Africa. For Rouch, anthropology and cinema were inseparable.
"Since Jean Rouch, it has been possible to glimpse, through cinema, an anthropology in which the production of knowledge occurs in dialogue with the researched subject, and through which it is possible to return to the researched groups the knowledge produced with them. It is the possibility of a 'dialogue with' rather than a 'discourse about,'" writes the professor in "Filmar o musicar".
Hikiji has been working with music since her doctorate. By sharing anthropology from the perspective of Jean Rouch, the researcher not only shares her ethnographic work with her interlocutors, but also learns, through film, about their "musical practices" or their "musicizing"—here understood as "thinking about music beyond the work," explains the anthropologist.
"Music is not just the work, or the performance, or the musical piece; music is everything that involves music-making. Listening to a song is music-making, downloading a song is music-making, watching a musical performance is music-making," says the professor. From this perspective, she studied the "music-making" of the outskirts of Cidade Tiradentes, in the east zone of São Paulo, and also the "music-making" of African artists, the latter in partnership with researcher Jasper Chalcraft, in the Afro-Sampas Project. "These images are the result of encounters—of bodies, of souls," writes Hikiji in the book's opening.
In the book's first chapter, the author revisits and shares her collaborative creative processes with Alessandra, her interlocutor in a social arts education project sponsored by the São Paulo State government. She addresses the issues of constructing subjects for and in films, as well as reflecting on Alessandra's musical creation. In the second chapter, the anthropologist explores the film's Rouchian dream as a shared ethnography. She weaves her reflections based on her research experience in Cidade Tiradentes, where she collaborated with Daniel Hylario, a resident of the district. The collaboration involved everything from the film's research and scriptwriting to the possibility of the interlocutor portraying their daily lives through a stick camera—a language proposed by filmmaker Eliane Caffé, which allows the protagonists themselves to use the recorders to record situations from their own perspective.
In the chapter titled "Fabrik Funk: Improvisation, Musication, and Fabrication in Ethnofiction," the anthropologist resumes her adventure in ethnofiction, still in Cidade Tiradentes. This time, the interlocutors play roles close to their real lives and actively participate in the entire creative process.
In the final chapter, Hikiji explores the films produced during the FAPESP thematic project "Translocal Musicar – New Paths for Ethnomusicology," coordinated by Professor Suzel Reily of the Institute of Arts at the University of Campinas (Unicamp), of which the USP professor was one of the principal researchers. It was during this project, in 2016, that Hikiji began investigating the musicar of African artists in the city of São Paulo, their co-creation processes, and artistic creation on the other side of the Atlantic. This line of research led to the production of the film São Palco – Afropolitan City, which won the award for best feature film at the 14th Ecofalante Film Festival.
"Cinema isn't just visual and audible; it's tactile. When something moves you, you're touched, you get goosebumps. Film is powerful for showing, reflecting, and thinking about phenomena of the expressive order and music," says the anthropologist.
The book "Filmar o musicar" is the result of the professor's habilitation thesis defended in 2022. It was published through the USP Digital Book Publication Support Call and is part of the ABCD Agenda 2030 collection, which promotes free access to publications aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals defined by the United Nations. Upon completion, readers have access to links to watch the films mentioned throughout the book.
This text was originally published by Jornal da USP on September 1, 2025, at 3:52 PM. Read the original here.
Access the book for free at the link: https://www.livrosabertos.abcd.usp.br/portaldelivrosUSP/catalog/book/1658