The following is a chronology of documentary and ethnographic styles. This chronology includes films I especially love, and some I heartily dislike, and accordingly recommend for varying reasons. World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago. Family groups from many cultures are imported. The great anthropologist Franz Boas helps to organize.
Early anthropology emphasizes the visual display of objects and people.
Third person narration with subjective tone, and focussing on an indigenous person as the film's hero. This film is an early example of cultural relativism and the collaboration between informant and filmmaker. Film built on collaboration. Makes explicit the various kinds of filmic manipulation then possible, the subjective inclusion of the filmmaker, and the re-working of previously shown footage. Fictionalized documentary on islands off Brittany.