Explain the relationship between film makers and filmed.

Ethnographic filmmaking much like the written ethnographies has evolved from a colonial positivist perspective. The period between 1913-1920 was a significant period in anthropology as it was moving from a positivist natural science framework to a more fieldwork based humanist science in the 20th century. The time at which Malinowski was writing his monograph was also the time that Flaherty made the film on the Eskimos, Flaherty was very much in the tradition of ethnographers like Malinowski.

Just like Malinowski stayed with the Trobriand Islanders for his fieldwork, Flaherty stayed with the Inuit and made his film. Malinowski thus established the fieldwork tradition in anthropology and Flaherty did the same for ethnographic films. The tradition of staying with the subject to establish a rapport and to be scientific became prevalent in traditional anthropologists and ethnographic filmmakers.

The filmmaker in order to be taken seriously by the anthropologists started following the norms of anthropology. They developed an observational style of film making very much along the lines of the tradition of observational fieldwork. Just like the text is constructed according to certain principles of structural anthropology films too were constructed in a similar manner. The dilemmas faced by anthropologists of that time were also faced by the filmmakers. It was like a Catch 22 situation.

If one is observing the social world out there then either one can portray it as seen by the native that is as if the anthropologist and the filmmaker are within that world. As if they are participating in it. Clifford Geertz refers to it as ’emic’. If he is not in it then he is outside it i.e. ‘etic’. The dialectic between the emic and the etic was equally by filmmakers and anthropologist.

The struggle to be in yet be outside in the larger Western theoretical social framework. This style of filmmaking and writing was replaced by a more participatory and reflexive style. The reader and the audience are made to understand that the reality as it is portrayed is just one version of the truth.  The ethnographer-the filmmaker and the researcher are no longer articulating from a position of power. They also try to articulate the truth as is experienced by the subjects

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