Paper short abstract

In the history of ethnographic film, there has been an enduring tendency to deny authorship, though for a broad variety of reasons. This presentation will trace this history before discussing the modes of authorship appropriate to contemporary ethnographic film-making practice.

Paper long abstract

The role of authorship in any form of documentary film-making is generally problematic, but it has been particularly so in the history of ethnographic film-making. For, on the one hand, documentary film-making is associated with a rhetoric of truth and objectivity, of presenting the world as it really is. But on the other hand, as every practitioner is aware, a documentary film is never simply a mirror held up to nature - at every step of the process of producing a film, acts of authorship are involved.

Confronted with this conflict between rhetoric and practice, there has been a tendency in ethnographic film-making to attempt to deny, side-step or minimize authorship, though both the reasons and the suggested means for doing so have varied considerably over the century or so since ethnographers first started to use moving-image technology in the 1890s.

This presentation will first trace this history of denial before turning to consider the modes of authorship that are most appropriate to ethnographic film-making at the beginning of the 21st century. It will be proposed that although contemporary ethnographic film-makers cannot deny their authorship, they should nevertheless be self-denying.