Lorenzo Ferrarini

Biography

I studied at first in Italy, where I completed a postgraduate degree at the University of Milan-Bicocca in 2008. I then moved to Manchester, where in 2014 I received my PhD in Social Anthropology with Visual Media with a research on donso hunters in Burkina Faso. My dissertation looked at the relationship between knowledge, perception and environment among these initiated hunters, with a specific focus on apprenticeship and experience. I currently teach a module on ways of knowing in Mande Africa, a visual anthropology course called Beyond Observational Cinema and a short course in ethnographic documentary for beginners.

I started working in documentary film, photography and sound recording at the LEAV - Ethnomusicology and Visual Anthropology Lab at the University of Milan since 2005. Among my documentaries KALANDA - The Knowledge of the Bush, a documentary film on donsoya, the knowledge of initiated hunters in Burkina Faso, and the recent Living the Weather, on people’s everyday experiences of the weather and seasons in the Calder Valley, West Yorkshire. I am also currently working on The Sambla Baan, a film on the music of the Sambla people of Burkina Faso.