Rethinking the Traditional in Ethnographic film. Representation, Ethics and Indigeneity

Borjan, Etami and Pink, Sarah and Schlaube, Michaela and Bukovčan, Tanja and Puljar D'Alessio, Sanja and Gotthardi-Pavlovsky, Aleksej. (2013). Rethinking the Traditional in Ethnographic film. Representation, Ethics and Indigeneity. Etnološka tribina, 43(36). pp. 3-48. ISSN 0351-1944

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Abstract

Cinema has been an important instrument in the colonialist production of the ethnographic Other. Images create concepts as well as embody cultural concepts. They enact symbolic forms of power. Ethnographic film is not only a representation of reality but also a construction and an interpretation of another reality based on cultural conventions from the filmmaker’s culture. THerefore we are challenged to discuss whether it is possible to present cultural knowledge “differently”; that is, to question historically, culturally, politically and ideologically bound hierarchies implicit in colonial culture? Do images embody cultural knowledge as Sol Worth and John Adair (1972, 1981) claimed? Whose knowledge do they present? What values images have in Western cultures as opposed to non- Western worlds? Do images necessarily “victimize” the Other (Ruby 1991; Kuehnast 1992; Hall 1993)? Ethnographic film theory has been an ongoing discussion of issues of objectivity, subjectivity, realism, and ethical questions of representation. In recent years ethnographic filmmakers have looked for solutions, and new approaches to documentary filmmaking have provided some answers to these questions.

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