Watching: Sight Unseen

Overview

This encounter with Bali initially focuses on a Balinese Hindu priest and then interrogates and interrelates tourism, anthropology, home-video making and ice-cream selling. One of the priest's sons is an avid cockfighter, the other is a freelance video-shooter. The latter's efforts to document his community serve as a constant reference point for the visiting American cameraman, who is glimpsed in occasional TV monitors, as through local eyes. In the process, suspicions are raised about ethnographic authority and the foundations of cross-cultural knowledge.