ABSTRACT
The socially oriented filmmaker is thus the almighty voicegiver, whose position of authority in the production of meaning continues to go unchallenged, skillfully masked as it is by its righteous mission. Producing film theory, which is not making films, is also a practice a related but different practice for theory does have to be constructed as it construes its object of study. The setting up of practice against theory, and vice-versa, is at best a tool for reciprocal challenge, but like all binary oppositions, it is caught in the net of positivist thinking whose impetus is to supply answers at all costs, thereby limiting both theory and practice to a process of totalization. The reflexive techniques of film making would include the insertion of a verbal or visual narrative about the anthropologist, the methodology adopted, and the condition of production. In the quest for totalized meaning and for knowledge - forknowledge's sake, the worst meaning is meaninglessness.
