Paper short abstract:

Expectations associated with mainstream anthropology are not always met by the artistic tendencies of ethnographic film. Fears and anxieties about the undefined status of ethnographic film tend to neglect the creative potential of cinema in offering new ways of doing anthropological research.

Paper long abstract:

It is generally agreed that it is difficult to convey ideas using films. One of the problems with film, as compared with the writing of books and articles, is that it is generally more difficult to put abstract ideas across with film. In writing, like in spoken language, it is possible to convey abstract thoughts, whereas film is more easily understandable and, being somewhat more basic in its unruly complexity, it seems to require virtually no training.

This article focuses on the importance of the field of visual anthropology in bringing the value of visual narrative for ethnographic research to the fore. Contrary to the belief that film cannot convey ideas, ethnographic films attempt to advance anthropological understanding by using visual devices that are largely different from written text. They add to anthropology in visual terms, challenging anthropological theories developed through the discursive approaches of academic language. Ethnographic film is not a form of audiovisual aid to academic forms of anthropological writing; instead, it is a medium that challenges traditional and book-based modes of knowing and learning.

The article concludes that the acknowledgment of the overriding importance of images as different from the articulacy of writing in the examination of what might be possible in postmodern anthropology is fundamental to the recognition of film as a generative medium. The divergences between writing and images expose the limitations of textual transcription, while at the same time suggesting the relevant and constitutive ways in which visual research marks a contribution to scholarship.