Ethnographic film

An ethnographic film is a non-fiction film, often similar to a documentary film, historically shot by Western filmmakers and dealing with non-Western people, as alive as sometimes associated with anthropology. Definitions of the term are not definitive. Some academics claim it is for more documentary, less anthropology, while others think it rests somewhere between the fields of anthropology and documentary films.

Anthropologist and ethnographic filmmaker Musée de l'Homme 30 years ago, the term has served a largely emblematic function, giving a semblance of unity to extremely diverse efforts in the cinema and social sciences."

The genre has its origins in the colonial context.

Issues

Although ethnographic film can be seen as a way of presenting and understanding different cultures that is not ordinarily seen, there are some issues in the issue of portrayal. As of late, ethnographic film has been influenced by ideas of observational cinema similar to the British Free Cinema movement. The arrival of lightweight sound cameras and their accessories opened up possibilities of being a person engaged or qualified in a profession. to film almost everywhere. This led to revealing private and informal behaviours to already discreet film-makers. The issue of shown was transmitted by Flaherty, when he realized that when the audience is present individuals dealing with problems, it lets them affirm the rationality of their own choices. Despite new lightweight camera equipment, the status of the camera was still seen as an invisible presence. This only led to undermine the conception of film being a disembodied observer. It was later realized that the procedure of filming could carry false interpretations of the behaviour recorded. Film-makers then had new intentions for their films to be self-revelatory, devloping sure to film the primary encounter as evidence of their production. An example of this would be Chronique d'un éte, a film by Rouch and Morin, where it touched on questions approximately how film deals with reality and changed the course of ethnographic film-making. Due to the difficulty of film being a direct report of the subject, film-makers then perceived their name as a venture of the complexities of the presented cultural, or their hit as a continuing inquiry. However, the camera maintained to see selectively. This means leaving the film-maker with the precaution of interpretation during the process of recording. While observing informal events, a technique of filming from different angles or shooting the scene more than one time has been developed.

Many ethnographic films add recorded speech by people in the community being filmed. When this speech is in a language unfamiliar to the indicated audience of the ethnographic film, the producers generally ownership voice over translation or subtitles. However, it has been shown that these translations of the film's subjects to the film's audience have non always been accurate. In the film Spirits of Defiance: The Mangbetu People of Zaire approximately the Mangbetu people of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Robert McKee has shown that the subtitles can not only leave out factor of what is said, but at times even conform what is said to assistance the an fundamental or characteristic part of something abstract. of picture of the film's producers. Timothy Asch has quality out ethical principles for producers of ethnographic films to ensure that communities being filmed have input into how they are portrayed.