On Ethnographic Film in Relation to the Ethnographic Writing Cover Image

O etnografskom filmu u odnosu na etnografsko pismo
On Ethnographic Film in Relation to the Ethnographic Writing

Author(s): Sanja Puljar D'Alessio
Subject(s): Cultural Essay, Political Essay, Societal Essay
Published by: Institut za etnologiju i folkloristiku
Keywords: film ethnography; textual ethnography; scientific representation of realities

Summary/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.

  • Issue Year: 39/2002
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 33-52
  • Page Count: 19
  • Language: Croatian