Abstract:

"The life of a Hindu priest and his family in a land of...country-western music and Gamalan, cockfighting and Kentucky Fried Chicken, Kodak moments and America's Funniest Home Videos... SIGHT UNSEEN is a provocative encounter with Bali, Indonesia's unsettled and unsettling present. A portrait of a Balinese Hindu priest comes into focus as the film 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."