ABSTRACT
Perceptions of how film may be used in the service of science have changed over time. Visual anthropology is now often regarded as a sub-discipline within the social sciences in which the use of film as a tool in ethnographic studies and communication is discussed theoretically. The use of fictional solutions in a documentary narrative seems to be most obvious in cases in which anthropological film is dealing with historical matter. The technology employed was a commercial secret. Audiences paid to see reality being recreated and not only depicted. Loizos describes how ethnographic film has moved from innocent realism to self-consciousness. He defines realism as being based on four main principles. Firstly, a desire to show the world as it is. Secondly, it implies openness to the totality of human experiences. Thirdly, realism implies a world which has an epistemological status that is clear and can be described with some accuracy. Finally, documentary realism has tried to avoid fictional genres.
