The films shot by Zora Neale Hurston during her anthropological research trip through the US South (1927–1930) were perhaps the first professional recordings ever made by an African American woman. Durkin examines this footage to explore Hurston’s contributions to ethnographic cinema and to black southern cinema more broadly, and to elucidate some of the connections between her anthropological and creative work. The films show how Hurston understood and sought to depict black folk cultures on the page and stage. They draw attention to the international focus of her research and suggest that the textual and cinematic strands of her research project should not be read in isolation because they were conceived as a joint corrective to mainstream US distortions of black artistry. Moreover, the films are rare cinematic documents of the everyday lives of black working-class subjects whose artistry underpinned so much of Hurston’s creative work and interwar US culture more generally.

In cultural anthropology, ethnographic film is useful for documenting diverse cultural practices and presenting research. Film’s ability to capture behavior in its holistic context is a key contribution to interests of cultural neuroscience, which has been challenged to better illustrate the impact of its findings outside the laboratory. Still, ethnographic film might go further by accounting for the interaction of culture, mind, and brain in the embodied aspects of the film experience. Neuroscientific inquiry into various storytelling genres reveals the embodied effects of storytelling, which activates neural mechanisms putatively evolved to strengthen social and cultural bonds. In this, storytelling strategy and structure are important; effective stories both engage sustained attention and elicit empathetic response. Character-driven emotional stories following a dramatic arc have greater impact than dispassionate ones. This translates directly to film, which also affords opportunities for emotional attunement and sensory-motor resonance with characters onscreen. Ethnographic film conventions have not adequately developed a methodology responsive to this nuanced understanding, despite anthropology’s long-standing investment in the power of storytelling. A “visual psychological anthropology” approach produces emotionally resonant, character-driven film stories in a dramatic narrative structure. Such films can convey cultural information and impart key concepts in a more immersive way.