Abstract:

This study aims to contribute to the discussions on the resolution of two documentary films containing ethnic and cultural elements and the classification of ethnographic films. For this purpose, a research is designed in two sections. In the first part, the aim was to conduct an original theoretical discussion on the theory of genre and the classification of documentary films. Here, in addition to the fact that ethnographic documentation is an art product, the view is also defended as a means of cultural transmission due to the ethnographic elements it contains. In the second part of the study, a qualitative analysis was carried out on how ethnographic documents were classified. The examples of this study are the documentary Living on One Dollar, which tells about the livelihoods of a documentary team in Honeyland and Guetamala, in a mountainous village in Macedonia, which produces honey by traditional methods, as well as a number of indigenous people trying to survive for a dollar a day. The two films were studied by Heider’s ethnographic film analysis method. The findings found that Living on One Dollar documentary applied ethnographic film more conveniently than Honeyland documentary, that it was more successful in transmitting ethnographic information to the audience, but the Honeyland film, despite its ethnographic data, did not meet the characteristics on the scheme enough. Based on the findings, it is possible to say that every film containing ethnographic data cannot be evaluated in the ethnographic documentary category. In the ethnographic documentary classification, cultural translation is seen as a main attribute.

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