Here, there, and everywhere: Leviathan and the digital future of observational ethnography

Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor's Leviathan (2012) is often analyzed in terms of its radical film language and the unique immersive spectatorial experience it creates. Contrary to this approach, which tends to rely on a critical discourse of rupture and newness, this article discusses the film in terms of the continuities it forms with the observational sensibility in ethnographic filmmaking. Leviathan, it argues, marks a noteworthy maturation of this tradition by deploying digital technologies to create new conditions of visibility and listening. Registering explicitly and self-reflexively how its makers are inextricably bound up with the world they document, Leviathan marks new horizons for participatory observation in ethnographic cinema.