Ethnofiction is a neologism which refers to an ethnographic docufiction sub-genre, a blend of documentary and fiction film in the area of visual anthropology. It is a film style in which the portrayed characters (natives) play their own roles as members of an ethnic or social group.
Jean Rouch is considered to be the father of ethnofiction. Ethnologist, he soon discovers that, always interfering in the event it registers (the ritual), the camera becomes participant: it is never a candid camera. For him, contrary to the principles of Marcel Griaule[1][2][3][4], his mentor, the exigency in ethnographic research of a non-participating camera is a pre-concept denied by practice[5][6][7][8][9]. Going further than his predecessors, Jean Rouch introduces the actor as a tool. A new genre was born[10]. Robert Flaherty, a main reference for Rouch, may be seen as the grandfather of this genre, although he was a pure documentary maker and not an ethnographer.
Being mainly used to refer to ethnographic films as an object of visual anthropology, the term ethnofiction is as well adequate to refer to experimental documentaries preceding and following Rouch’s oeuvre and to any fictional creation in human communiction, arts or literature, having an ethnographical or social background.
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Parallel to those of Flaherty or Rouch, ethnic portraits of hard local realities are often drawn in Portuguese films since the thirties, with particular incidence from the sixties to the eighties[11], and again in the early 21st century. The remote Trás-os-Montes region (see: Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro Province) in Portugal or Guinée Bissau and the Cape Vert islands (ancient Portuguese colonies), which step in the limelights from the eighties on (Flora Gomes, Pedro Costa, or Daniel E. Thorbecke, the unknown author of Terra Longe[12][13][14]) are themes for pioneering films of this genre, important landmarks in film history.
Arising fiction in the heart of ethnicity is something current in the Portuguese popular narrative (oral literature). There is no reason to surprise if, due to a traditional attraction for legend and surrealistic imagery in popular arts and literature[15], Portuguese films strip off realistic predicates and become poetical fiction. This fact is common to many films, like those of Manoel de Oliveira and João César Monteiro in fiction and to the docufiction hybrids of António Campos, António Reis and Ricardo Costa (filmmaker)[16][17][18]. Since the 1960s, ethnofiction (local real life and fantasy in one) is a distinctive mark of Portuguese cinema.
ETHNOFICTIONS