The Silver Cord

Alyssa Grossman is a visual anthropologist and ethnographic filmmaker who holds a PhD in Social Anthropology with Visual Media from the University of Manchester, UK (2010). She has conducted fieldwork in Romania, Sweden, and the US, with a research focus on the politics and poetics of cultural memory in everyday life. Her ethnographic films include Into the Field (2005), In the Light of Memory (2010) and Memory Objects, Memory Dialogues (2011). In her writing, films and transdisciplinary/multimedia collaborations, she embraces experimental approaches that unsettle the boundaries between anthropology and contemporary art. She is currently Senior Lecturer in the department of Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool.

Leonard Kamerling is an Alaska ethnographic filmmaker and educator. He pioneered a community collaborative approach to making ethnographic films that is the foundation of all his work with Indigenous communities.  He received his training at the London Film School and earned his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. His film, Uksuum Cauyai: the Drums of Winter, about Yup’ik traditional music and dance, was named to the National Film Registry of the US Library of Congress in 2006. Throughout his career he has been concerned with cultural representation and the role that ethnographic film can play in eliminating stereotypes and communicating across cultural boundaries. Len is Emeritus Professor and Curator of Film at the University Alaska Museum of the North in Fairbanks, Alaska.