Sensing the Night: Nocturnal Filmmaking in Guantánamo, Cuba

Abstract

Guardians of the Night (2018) is a short‐length film set in Guantánamo, Cuba, that aims to engage with a temporal scape too long disregarded by visual anthropologists: the night. This article, written by the filmmakers, reflects on some of the challenges and opportunities offered by the night for ethnographic fieldwork, filmmaking, and more specifically, sound recording. We locate our work as part of a movement to recognize the night as a spatiotemporal dimension that should be explored further from a sensorial perspective and outside the diecentric focus that social sciences have established in their approaches to social and cultural phenomena.