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WHAT: A documentary film course on the notion of home and belonging.

WHERE: Online distance learning, take part in this class from your home with a computer/tablet.

WHO: Run by Barbara Knorpp, anthropologist with a special interest in film history.

WHEN: 7-9 PM (UK Time) 4th May – 22nd June 2026.

COMMITMENT: 2 hours per week, plus optional extra reading and watching outside of class.

WHAT YOU GET: Join an international group and use ethnographic examples from all over the world to discuss issues surrounding space and place.

HOW MUCH: General: £295 | Concessions: £275 | UCL Students: £255

DEADLINE TO SIGN UP: 27th April 2026

BURSARIES: Please read our bursaries policy before you apply.

AGES: Open to all.

Anthropology of home is a documentary film course on the notion of home and belonging. A home can be many different things; an apartment block, a tent, a hotel room, or a memory. In this course we will use ethnographic examples from all over the world to discuss issues surrounding space and place. How does anthropology contribute to the understanding of identity and belonging? Ranging from discussing a film on a communist housing block in Romania, pastoral nomads in Niger, mobile homes in the US and non-places such as a hotel room in Ethiopia as a momentary home, the course will pose and encourage questions on home and exile.

Session 1: Non-Western houses

Kamakura, Japan, October 11th 1990 between 4pm and 5pm: a filmmaker ‘writes’, in a 55 minutes sequence shot, the love letter that he never received from his father. La lettre jamais écrite (The letter that was never written) is a film by Dominique Dubosc. We will discuss non-western architecture and touch on Pierre Bourdieu’s seminal article on the Berber house.

Session 2: Pastoral nomads

The Woodabe are a pastoral nomadic group in West Africa who follow their herds in the search for fresh pastures. Homes are transient and easy to build. They tend to be beds made from sticks and a few blankets in the shade of a tree with no roof. How do the Woodabe understand home when they have no concept of borders?

Session 3: Communist housing

The Block is a piece of Communist urban planning in Romania and tells the story of the housekeeper and its residents. Designed as a visual ethnography the filmmaker and anthropologist Maria Salaru carefully portrays life under a socialist regime and a forgotten architecture.

Session 4: Mobile homes

The US has a whole community of people who refuse to settle in ordinary housing and want to enjoy their freedom. Chasing Houses (2007) follows the lives of residents who bought mobile houses and travel across the USA. What makes people want to keep moving and still own a comfortable house?

Session 5: Home and gender

Home as a prison.  In Kim Longinotto’s documentary Salma she traces the life and memories of an Indian poet who was kept indoors for 25 years. The film is a collaboration of Salma and the filmmaker and portraits the house Salma was kept imprisoned and her memories as a young teenager and newly married woman.   We will speak about the role of Muslim women in the Indian countryside and raise questions of representation, gender and identity.

Session 6: Labour camps and home as terror

The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia (1975-1979) arrested thousands of citizens for their anti-communist stance and kept them in inhuman labour camps. Cambodian director Rithy Panh made an animation paired with archival footage to find The Missing Picture (2013) of his and his family’s life in the camps. Home is here associated with cruelty and violence. The poetic commentary laments the memory of a terror era.

Session 7: Subculture and Nightlife as Home

The London based photographer and journalist Dave Swindells has photographed  London club scene since the late 1980s and has built a vast archive of images of subcultures, street fashion and nightlife which is often invisible. Home to marginalised groups of young people including gay and transgender he sheds light on how clubs can become home to youth culture outside their homes and turn into a place of self identity and comfort.

Session 8: Homelessness Homelessness can have many faces. The film Room 11, Ethiopia Hotel (2007) recounts the life of children living on the street in Gondar, Ethiopia, by witnessing the interaction between two children and the filmmaker Itsushi Kawase. The entire film was shot in the room of the Ethiopia Hotel. Indeed, this film is more a sensitive testimony than a scientific documentary. This hybrid approach aims to explore new trends in visual anthropology, including the issue of dealing with intimacy and subjectivity. Australian artist Richard Goodwin’s performance in Barangaroo: Doppelgänger (1981-2015) on the other side is a re-enactment of a homeless man’s journey in Sydney.

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If you still have other questions relating to a specific course or request, please get in touch with us via emailing shortcourses@opencitylondon.com

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Short Courses Office Summer Closure

The UCL Short Courses office will be closing for a summer break from Friday the 15th August to Monday the 15th of September 2025.

During this time, you can still make bookings for short courses, but the short courses inbox will not be monitored, and the phoneline will be closed.

If you have questions about the course content, please get in touch with course leader Barbara at barbara.knorpp@googlemail.com

(Image: Aung Nwai Htway‘s Film Behind the screen (2012)