Carlo A. Cubero CHAPTER 4 THE ARTFUL NARRATIVE OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL FESTIVALS: VIEW FROM THE BALTICS CARLO A. CUBERO This chapter examines a creative tension that ethnographic film festival programmers contend with in the process of curating their programmes. I will argue that ethnographic film festival curatorship is characterised by a paradoxical relationship, which reproduces a stable discourse of “anthropological cinema”, at the same time as it contests it. I will argue that these two approaches to the film festival do not represent a schizophrenic or negative paradox. Rather, the practice of curating a successful programme–one that ensures its continuity and contribution to the discourse–is the art of engaging with the simultaneous articulation of these contrasting perspectives. This chapter is informed by recent anthropological film programmes I curated in collaboration with filmmakers and anthropologists in Helsinki, Tampere, Tallinn, Tartu and Riga. These programmes have referenced practices associated with film festivals in the process of authoring a stance on the potentials and limitations of the format as a means of contributing to anthropological discourse. These programmes do not contextualise anthropological cinema as the sole privilege of academia. Rather, they understand scientific research as a creative practice with the potential to make an impact beyond academic institutions and beyond the discipline of anthropology. An intended outcome of this approach is to assess the contours of anthropological practice and contribute to cinematic forms. In this regard, anthropological cinema is rendered as both an object to be displayed and an approach towards the world, a way of storytelling. These two approaches represent a subtle balance that frames anthropological cinema as an open and specific project and the film festival as a site where this project is framed and re-framed.