The expression “ ethnographic film ” is ambiguous as it combines the peculiarities of cinema with the characteristics of a scientific discipline.

Environmental films and research films

As French anthropologist André Leroi-Gourhan observed , even the films made by wealthy travelers curious to use the new cinematic medium and learn about the planet's most exotic places and populations were videos that demonstrated diversity . But travel films, even though they documented the existence of an "other" world, had no scientific motivation or purpose. Following the scholar's approach, we can therefore distinguish between environmental films and research films. Environmental films (or spontaneous ethnography) are that type of narrative that, while not made with a scientific intention, take on an indirect ethnographic value because they are made by the native population. Research films , on the other hand, are the product of study and research conducted by a group of scholars. Within this category, Leroi-Gourhan underlines the need to distinguish between documentary , which follows aesthetic and technical norms specific to cinema, and cinematographic notes , which are not conditioned by a screenplay or by aesthetic-formal needs.

Towards the public

The ethnologist Marcel Griaule , in his work Méthode de l'l'ethnographie (1957), elaborates a theory regarding the destination of film products, distinguishing between documentaries produced for a broad, non-specialist audience, which must necessarily include and respect aesthetic qualities and an acceptable level of scientificity, and films produced for educational use within university courses, which will have a precise structure by virtue of the different audiences for which they are intended. David MacDougall, in Beyond Observational Cinema (1975), instead, places the ethnographic film in a tripolar dimension comprised of the ethno-filmmaker, the subjects filmed and the spectators. Both play an important role in determining the success of a film product.

Observe and participate

Cecilia Pennacini places films of anthropological interest into two cinematic families:

1. observational cinema: which lets reality speak, attempting to remove the director's presence through the use of long takes, live sound and the refusal to include off-screen commentary (examples of this cinematographic style are the works of John Marshall, Robert Gardner, Judith and David MacDougall);
2. participatory cinema: in which ethnographers and informants dialogue and decide together what and how to film, even going so far as to reconstruct certain situations for the benefit of the camera. In some cases, we can speak of "ethnofiction" (examples are represented by authors such as Flaherty, who already with Nanook gave life to a documentary made in collaboration with the protagonists, and Roach, which brought about the advent of cinema verité).

In his book Field research in anthropology (2011), Pennacini points to some new directions that ethnographic cinema has begun to explore. Among these are attempts to directly inform study communities about audiovisual technologies and to implement productive collaboration between ethnographers and local populations through equal dialogue.

Francesco D'Ambrosio

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