Ethnographic film has offered unique tools for cultural documentation since the
emergence of motion pictures. However, visual representations of culture have
had a problematic relationship with the larger discipline of anthropology for
decades in part due to the threat of the camera to replace the scientific yet
imperfect eye of the anthropologist with a technological tool. This article argues
that the rocky relationship between anthropology and the moving image has
deeper roots in the epistemological constructions of Self and Other, Home and
Field, as well as Modern and Primitive. In conjunction with the dissolution of
anthropological authority, a number of ethnographic films dealt with theoretical
and ethical questions in relation to the issues of representational authority. The
article illustrates three different ethnographic and filmic approaches to the issue:
Reassemblage by Trinh T. Min-ha, The Wedding Camels by Judith and David
MacDougal and Jaguar by Jean Rouch.