From Ethnographical Film to Mockumentary (An Analysis of City of Women)

“City of women” has been Produce in 1988, by Ataollah Hayati, that indicate “Barf-e-chal” ritual in a fiction form. Ritual was represented in a dramatic form in this film. Due entering the rituals scope, folklore culture of real people and using some documentary films, I suggest that we can classify this film in the category of “Middle films”, the films that are not prepare to be Specially an “ethnographic film” but they mentioned to an ethnographic subject. So I will critic this film by the critical method of ethnographic films. It seems that Director did not pay attention to folk beliefs and represented the ritual in a trifle mode. It seems that he did not pay attention to importance of ethnographic researches before producing the film, as a result of this inattention, he could not to represent the real social context and ritual details, and because of his inattention to considering the context the film submits a large number of wrong data and false details about this ritual and this people. as well as this we can categorize this film in mockumentary genre. This genre borrows the documentary form elements to pretend that is representing a real event or any real subjects that is not true. So this essay is about how to critic a” middle film” by ethnographic critical methods and importance ofconsidering th ظe right genre of a film before critic.