Le récit dans le film ethnographique

In this article, it is argued that anthropologist film-makers have generally been reluctant to discuss the narrative strategies that they have used to structure their films. It is suggested that this may be due to the fact that to acknowledge that their filmic texts have been manipulated for narrative purposes would serve to undermine the «empirical rhetoric» which continues to underpin much ethnographic film-making even though it may be a relic of the positivistic origins of the use of film for ethnographic purposes. In the main body of the article, various narrative devices used by leading ethnographic film-makers as well as by the author in his own films are identified and the epistemological implications of these are then considered. The article concludes with a call for a more open and reflexive use of narrative devices in ethnographic film.