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ETHNOGRAPHIC CINEMA: TO THE PROBLEM OF GENRE BOUNDARIES // Tomsk Journal of Linguistics and Anthropology. 2020. Issue 3 (29). P. 151-160

We analyze «artistic and ethnographic» (as the authors position it) of the film «Yakut Wedding. XIX century» (2016), in which creation the leading ethnographers of the republic took an active part. The film is an example of anthropological staged movie. Visualization of the folklore text (wedding ceremony), as a parade, displays the cultural codes of the ethnos, a semiotic analysis of which is proposed in order to determine the genre specificity of ethnographic cinema. The film as a visual anthropological study of folklore text offers an interpretation of the chromatic code of the Yakut culture (analysis of the semantics of white in the culture of herders). The analysis of the musical and acoustic code is carried out: the bride’s long song — reconstruction of the archaic meloform; analysis of intonation of the participants of the ritual as a speech characteristic. In addition, an analysis of the kinetic, culinary, and numerical codes of culture visualized in the film is presented. Based on the materials of festival cinema and the works of modern researchers in the field of visual anthropology, the characteristics of ethnographic cinema are generalized. Criteria are proposed, that distinguish ethnographic from other genres of documentary films. In our opinion, any representation, including a visual one made by a person about a person, is anthropological in nature. It is revealed that the genre of ethnographic cinema involves a detailed accented consideration of everyday life; search for similarities and differences of cultural texts; scientific commentary (interpretation); direction of collective perception (manipulation); creating the illusion of being here and now; the desire to convey the aura of culture as much as possible; implantation or indigenous films; "embed" the camera; «included» cinema, the achievement of naturalness; iconophobia «avoiding direct gaze»; the inclusion of the viewer in reflective activity (empathy); obligatory consonance of film aesthetics with aesthetics of culture; preference for the look of a «stranger»; «the illusion of a neutral observer». The features of the stylistics of cinematic ethnography of the Yakuts, the problems of mutual framing in multilevel and multivalent indigenous cinema are considered. It is proved that ethnographic cinema is not only a commentary on culture, and self-portrait is not an end in itself. The film is not limited to the experience of reconstruction of the rite, but it represents a mentality, is an act of self-awareness of culture.

Keywords: ethnographic cinema, folklore text, semiotic analysis, rite reconstruction, cultural codes, visual anthropology, identity