Epistemology of the Ethnographic Image: Hybridizing Genre in South Sudan’s Autobiographical Cinema

Abstract

Many of us consider ethnographic and biographical films as fixed categories, serving differentiated knowledge schemas. Yet, in the context of autobiographical filmmaking, the categories overlap, and new aesthetic and genre possibilities emerge. This article arises from this context; where post-Independence South Sudan’s film narratives merge visual ethnography’s attentiveness with realist narration, and biographical film’s reflexivity toward melodramatic self-narration. Using Akuol de Mabior’s No Simple Way Home (2023) as a case of this genre overlap, this article proposes ethnobiopic as an appropriate coinage. It ends with a discussion of the perlocutionary possibilities for its characterization.