DER Filmmaker

Stephanie Spray

Stephanie Spray is a filmmaker and doctoral candidate in social anthropology at Harvard University. She received her B.A. in the study of world religions at Smith College and a master's degree at Harvard Divinity School. She has been engaged in various fieldwork-based projects in Nepal since 1999.

In 2001 she was the recipient of a Fulbright-IIE grant, which she used to begin research with the Gāine, a caste of itinerant musicians. Two such musicians were the subjects of an observational digital video, Kāle and Kāle, produced in 2007 with the support of the Sensory Ethnography Laboratory (SEL). In affiliation with the SEL and the Film Study Center at Harvard University, she continued her video work with the Gāine in Monsoon-Reflections (2008) and As Long As There's Breath (2009), experimental documentaries depicting aspects of the lifeworld of one such Gāine family. Several of her works, Māto (2008), Untitled (bed) (2009) and Untitled (2010), have been installed as video installations.

In 2009 Stephanie began work on Blue Sky, White River, a sound piece made from Nepali radio and field recordings. She is currently in Nepal conducting dissertation research with the Gāine as an SSRC-IDRF fellow and Fulbright-Hays DDRA grant recipient and is working on a related six-part video and phonographic project entitled Reflections on the Seasons.

Films Available at DER
Monsoon-Reflections
Kāle and Kāle

Related Links
Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab