MRB: This is part of my senior thesis. I study social anthropology, and I’m writing about game hunting and how in South Africa in particular, it’s at the intersection between conservation, ecotourism, environmental governance, and issues like land ownership. Last year I met [the director of Harvard’s sensory ethnography lab] Lucien Castaing-Taylor. He was interested in my subject and helped me get a camera. It was my first time ever shooting film.

THC: Can you tell us more about what’s at stake about game hunting in South Africa?

MRB: Long story short, eighty percent of wildlife conservation in South Africa relies on privately held land. For most farmers, there needs to be economic values to the animals in order to encourage people to keep them on their land. Part of the animals’ value is classic photographic safari, but the other aspect is that there’s a large game hunting industry. It has been proven in several different studies that there does need to be this section of recreational hunting… and if these game hunts aren’t economically viable, we’ll end up not having as much land for conservation.

THC: Did you encounter any difficulty in getting consent from your subjects?

MRB: No. I am from the South… from an area where there are a lot of deer hunters. I came to this topic in part because of the lion event, where a lion was killed a couple summers ago, and people freaked out on Facebook. There was an overwhelming vilification of these hunters that didn’t understand. I knew that hunters believe in conservation and are not amoral characters. So I really sought to find out why people are so quick to condemn it and why it still continues. I didn’t really have difficulties [getting consent] because I positioned myself as someone who wants to problematize the overwhelming public opinion that what they are doing is bad, because it’s just not backed by conservation science at all.

THC: What’s your understanding of the concept of sensory ethnography?

MRB: Sensory ethnography has many interpretations depending on who is approaching the subject. A filmmaker will definitely approach the subject differently from an anthropologist, and what’s interesting about the class is that they do strive to make it half film students, half anthropology students. It is a way to present an idea with an experience that I don’t think I can do discursively. For me it means not only a way to represent my own experiences, but also a way to make it accessible to an audience beyond those that will read my thesis. I really focus on the ethnography aspect of the film, meaning emphasis is placed on spending a lot of time with subjects in order to better empathize with their practices, or at least understand them better than if you were just there filming for one day.

—Staff writer Tianxing V. Lan can be reached at tianxing.lan@thecrimson.com.