Framing dialogue through the mirror

Along with the visual turn experienced by society and daily life, cinema and films remain somehow apart and above the other image forms surrounding us everywhere. The fascination and imaginary, here assumed as active power of (self)representation, brought by filmic experience have not been replaced by the multimedia digital representations, rather they have been transformed and amplified. In this transforming process, within the relation between (dis)places and subjects, filming still constitutes a mediation stage where makers, matters, viewers and social scientists play. In this article I show the dialogue in act between video production and ethnography, both in terms of methodology and practices, on the basis of ongoing fieldwork on Chinese independent images and their private shift.