Africa Bringing museum filmmaking into the classroom

Filmmaker Sosena Solomon, who has been filming in Africa for a major Metropolitan Museum of Art redesign, taught Documentary Ethnography for Museums and Exhibitions to graduate students this fall.

In the Charles Addams Fine Arts Gallery one December night, a six-minute video projected onto one wall showed people on the Tibetan pilgrimage journey from small villages to religious sites in the city of Lhasa. The quiet and reflective piece, showing people walking and prostrating themselves across icy, unforgiving terrain, was created for the fall course Documentary Ethnography for Museums and Exhibitions.

Tairan Hao, a second-year Master of Fine Arts student working in video installations and new media art, says he was inspired to create this piece by a visit to Tibet five years ago, when he saw a crowd of people performing these full-body prostrations around Jokhang Temple.

Making the film gave him “a closer connection to people from different backgrounds and cultures,” says Hao, who compiled the video from archival footage and an online interview with a Buddhism practitioner. “What I learned from the interview is that enduring the hardships of this journey is special and important.”

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