Academic Potential
In September of 2021 I headed down to southern California to work in collaboration with a new film series partner, Dr. Arianna Huhn. Arianna works with the University of California San Bernadino and has done extensive field research in Mozambique. She is the author of “Nourishing Life: Foodways and Humanity in an African Town” (2020) and helps to run the Anthropology Museum at the university she works with. As of 2024 she was promoted to full professor.
Our original goal was to produce a 10-episode series while developing teaching guides “meant to encourage classroom adoption of the series and enhance its impact on student learning by providing teachers with guidance in connecting the films to topics of anthropological concern (with a particular focus on medical anthropology), as well as providing both teachers and students with valuable background information to understand the cultural dynamics, economic realities, and geopolitical landscape in which the films unfold.” -Huhn, 2021
Arianna points out that “there are only three ethnographies that have been written about the peoples in Niassa, one of which I authored (Nourishing Life, 2020). My own volume is also one of only a handful of ethnographies looking at medicine and health in Mozambique, and it is the only one that does so in the northern provinces (where the cultural landscape is quite different from the south). The geographic focus of my research, paired with my topical focus on health, uniquely position me to contribute to the development of this series by ensuring the academic compatibility of the films.”
My desire is to see this series used in academic contexts around the world in multiple use cases. Yet, not having an academic background, it is hard for me to explain exactly how that could come about. Arianna says:
“I strongly believe that this film series will have strong pedagogical value. Having taught both Medical Anthropology and African Studies for many years, and scoured a variety of streaming service for documentaries to show in class, it is clear that there is a paucity in ethnographic films depicting African populations generally, and specifically African healing.
In a list of medical anthropology films complied by Somatosphere (a popular medical anthropology website) in 2010, only 2 films on Africa are included. If reconsidered today, there would be little to add. Most of the films that are available are outdated, or otherwise present Africa as disconnected from the world. Other films sensationalize African traditional healing and do not adequately explain the footage (I am thinking, for example, of Witches Fly Here, which opens with a traditional healer sucking the air out of a goat’s lungs, a scene that is never explained and always leaves students scratching their heads).
While a handful of films do address globalization and health disparities (for example Nai, which touches on hunter-gatherers adopting sedentary living, Donka, focused on health infrastructure in Guinea, and Shout, on maternal healthcare), overall, there is very little sense of African agency in these films, and little to qualify them as ethnographic (rather than simply documentary).”
As we began to pursue cooperation, I allowed Arianna to look through some of the footage and storylines I gathered over my ten months of filming in Mozambique. She says,
“A preliminary review of the footage...suggests the possibility for intricate storylines that address medical decision-making (the balancing of finances, public health messaging, and cultural beliefs), cross-border medicine (with many Mozambicans traveling into Malawi for healthcare), and medical syncretism (the incorporation of prescription medications into traditional healing, the emergence of Chinese Traditional Medicine in Mozambique, and Qur’anic healing), along with topics like taboos, ethnobotany, and public health campaigns.
The intention is for the Sick in Africa series to include approximately 10 short films (less than 15 minutes each) that focus on a single topic or story. The teaching guides will provide relevant information for understanding and teaching with each film, but also for stringing 2-4 films together to support other, broader points that emerge through juxtaposition.
For example, combining an episode on traditional healing, one on Qur’anic healing, and another on Chinese Traditional Medicine would allow a rich classroom discussion about medical pluralism. The same video on Chinese Traditional Medicine could alternatively be paired with one on NGO-sponsored public health campaigns to look at the role of foreign interventions in the healthcare landscape. This is a unique and innovative approach to ethnographic film-making and I believe has strong potential for widespread adoption...”
