ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a range of films, made between 1929 and 1955, where geopolitical and ethnographic specificity is framed. The idea of film as an ethnographic document parallels the rise of visual anthropology and ethnography as academic research fields in the West during early twentieth century. Magic realism poised between fantasy and social realism on the one hand, and between wonder and colonial and postcolonial realities on the other, is an alchemical process that never solidifies. Les maitres fous is an early version of ‘ethnofiction’, a neologism that Jean Rouch created to describe the participatory act of filming. The film depicts members of the Hauka spirit-possession cult. Tabu was initially penned as the story of exploitation at the hands of ‘vampiric’ Chinese pearl fishers, but it became a love story woven from the footage shot at multiple locations, including Tahiti, Bora Bora, and the island Moorea.
