Original scientific paper
ON ETHNOGRAPHIC FILM IN RELATION TO THE ETHNOGRAPHIC WRITING
Sanja Puljar D´Alessio
; Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Reseach, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
This text contemplates the complementarity and identical problematics of film and textual
ethnographic representations in the statements of cultural and anthropological knowledge.
Ethnographic writing and ethnographic film are analyzed in two crucial periods in the
history of ethnography: in the first period ethnographic practice is starting to base itself
on field research and the "observing and participation" method or it is left to the narrators
to write down information about their own culture, and in the second period a doubt appears whether anthropological representation of the studied cultures is appropriate. The author
singles out and describes the films which in the first period illustrate the intent to show the
cultures from the narrator's point of view, and the ones which in the second period illustrate
various kinds of authorities. Comparing the textual and film ethnography, the author
points to the intertwinement of their methodologies, stylistic modes of expression and a
mutual doubt in the objective representation of cultural meanings. The text, therefore,
advocates the scientific equality of the written and film accounts, which however does not
imply the identity of their modes of expression.
Keywords
film ethnography; textual ethnography; scientific representation of realities
Hrčak ID:
33123
URI
Publication date:
2.12.2002.
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