3,100 Mile Self-Transcendence Race (Film)

Every summer in Jamaica, Queens, over the course of 52 days, followers of the late Bengali guru, Sri Chinmoy, run the longest certified foot race in the world. Eighteen hours per day, every day, and the runners circle the course: a single city block measuring just over one-half mile. To complete 3,100 miles, the runners must average 60 miles per day. For the runners, the “race” is a spiritual exercise that induces deep meditative states of consciousness. For the community that gathers around the race, it is a testament to the limitlessness of the spiritually driven human body. Our film provides an ethnographic account of this race and its theoretical implications while also addressing the affordances and drawbacks of the filmic medium for ethnographic research. Our film has a dual theoretical purpose. First, we use the content to explore the nuances of spiritual communication. Second, we use the process of interpretation as the product itself by staging taped discussions among ourselves against footage gathered at our site. In doing so, we attempt to show our seams, and to use the medium to explore questions of ethnographic authority (Clifford, & Marcus, 1986), and the possibilities for thick description (Geertz, 1973). Our film sits at the intersection of a number of intersecting vectors: collaborative fieldwork, the anthropology of religion, and visual ethnography.