ABSTRACT
The injunction to see things from the native's point of view speaks for a definite ideology of truth and authenticity; it lies at the center of every polemical discussion on 'reality' in its relation to 'beauty' and 'truth'. To raise the question of representing the Other is, therefore, to reopen endlessly the fundamental issue of science and art; documentary and fiction; universal and personal; objectivity and subjectivity; masculine and feminine; outsider and insider. Fomenting much discord, in terms of methodology and approach, among specialists in the directly concerned fields of anthropology and ethnographic filmmaking in the last decade. Such a goal is also diversely taken to heart by many of us who consider it our mission to represent others, and to be their loyal interpretors. Many who agree to the necessity of self-reflectivity and reflexivity in filmmaking think that it suffices to show oneself at work on the screen, and pay one's due to liberal thinking.
