THE BELLWETHER EWE: Recent Developments in Ethnographic Filmmaking and the Aesthetics of Anthropological Inquiry

This article explores what might be called the "aesthetic" turn in ethnographic filmmaking. It seeh to move beyond the old debates about the legitimacy of nonliteraryforms to offer a detailed examination of how selected camera, sound, and editing techniques are used to constitute a distinctive kind of anthropological inquiry. No longer approached as illustrative or preliminary to anthropology proper, recent trends in ethnographic filmmaking are suggestive as to the articulation of a new agenda. At its center are questions about art, the senses, knowledge, and the possibilities of a multispecies ethnography.