The Relationship between the Scientific and the Artistic in Anthropological Film Products — a Question Overcome or Avoided?
The Relationship between the Scientific and the Artistic in Anthropological Film Products — a Question Overcome or Avoided?

Summary/Abstract: This paper examines a number of answers offered to questions concerning the fundamental starting points and methodology of film anthropology as well as the relationship between art and science in the products of film anthropology. Anthropologists have presented the criteria which a certain film should satisfy in order to be considered ethnographic. However, the question is raised whether some of these criteria disregard the psychological effects of film language and dramaturgy or, in other words, the essence of film. Can a work whose basic means of expression is illusion ever completely satisfy the demands of ethnologic research and expression? This paper concludes that film can never both satisfy the demands of the science of anthropology and preserve all its essential qualities. Due to this, anthropologists should analyse various potentials of film separately in order to discover the usability of each of them for anthropological purposes. In this process they ought to make use of the latest achievements of contemporary technology.

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