Department of Anthropology Film List

Voices of Kula documents the 2016 and 2018 research expeditions of two anthropologists and a group of Islanders from Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea. The aim of the research was to explore the traditional gift exchange process known as kula, wherein participants exchange shell values with one another along an island route known as the Kula Ring. An additional aim was to examine areas of concern amongst kula participants and address the breakdown of established exchange rules and activity.

Project Coordinator and Research: Susanne Kuehling
Camera, Sound, and Editing: Gina Knapp

 

Let's Play Kula is a educational documentary intended to teach young students about the kula exchange.

Executive Producer: Susanne Kuehling
Book, Camera, Sound, and Editing: Gina Knapp

Browse by Region:	Browse by Subject:	Can Also Search:
Papua New Guinea	Introductory	Kinship
Polynesia	Ritual	Subsistance
Melanesia	Religion	Economic
Amazonia	Language	Medical
The Andes	Theory
Mexico	Popular Culture
Meso-America	Gender
The Himalayas	Art
Europe	Archaeology/Physical Anth
Indonesia	Miscellaneous
Africa

Papua New Guinea

Garden Days: Village in Papua New Guinea

Relates to: Papua New Guinea, Ritual,
#1, 25 minutes, Colour
RAI, 1988, VHS
Filmmakers: Arianne Lewis & Jon Jerstad
Anthropologist: Gilbert Lewis

"A detailed account of domestic life in the Sepik area of Papua New Guinea, mainly from the women's point of view. It describes their everyday activities in the ‘gardens' in order to produce the staple food (sago). The different stages of the preparation and cooking of sago are shown. The film closes with the puberty rite of a young girl."

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Guardians of the Flutes: The Secrets of Male Initiation

Relates to: Papua New Guinea, Ritual
#2, 55 minutes, Colour
Filmmakers Library, 1994, VHS
Producer: Paul Reddish
Anthropologist: Gilbert Herdt

"High in the mountains of New Guinea live the Sambia people, a war-like tribe whose secret rituals of initiation are aimed at making their warriors courageous and bold. Only because their culture is threatened have they allowed these initiation rites to be documented on film.
This is a society where the roles of men and women are sharply delineated. They live in separate spaces in their round huts. A woman must crouch if she is in the same space as her husband. Her menstrual blood is considered a pollutant, damaging to her husband's vigor. Male children live with their mothers until they are old enough to move to the boys' house. For many, the separation from their mother is very painful.
When it is time for the boys to become men, they undergo a severe initiation. Each is assigned an older guardian who accompanies him during this process. They are thrashed, deprived of food and sleep and have ginger root rubbed into wounds, which is very painful. The most secret part of the initiation are the sexual rites, which are described by several initiates. Guardians of the Flutes is a fascinating look at a society helped by the ritualized distinction between male and female roles. For mature audiences."

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Pig Tusks and Paper Money

Relates to: Papua New Guinea, Economic
#3, 50 minutes, Colour
Filmmakers Library, 2000, VHS
Producer/Anthropologist: Lilliana Gibbs

"There are two currencies in Papua New Guinea. The modern cash economy and a traditional economy based around shell money, banana leaf bundles and pig tusks. But there exists no legitimate system of exchange between the two. Henry Tokabak dreams of creating a bank where people can exchange their shell money for cash. He feels that the global economy takes a heavy toll on indigenous people. "Shell money gets exchanged within the community, but paper money just goes away."
In a traditional economy, indigenous people live quite well without money. They build their houses, farm their land and barter for any extra items. They need cash only for transportation, school fees and taxes. However, by standards set by the global economy they are cash poor.
Henry's dream is frustrated by the regulation of the banking business. Even the work "bank" cannot be used to describe his operation. Further hindering his crusade is his pending court case for misappropriating public funds to establish an informal bank. Yet Henry has the support of many in his community. Sarah, a successful storekeeper on the Trobriand Islands, deals with both currencies and agrees on the need for such an institution.
A provocative film for both anthropology and economics classes."

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Cannibal Tours

Relates to: Papua New Guinea
#4, 72 minutes, Colour
1988, VHS
Producer/Director: Dennis O'Rourke

"Cannibal Tours is two journeys. The first is that depicted - rich and bourgeois tourists on a luxury-cruise up the mysterious Sepik River, in the jungles of Papua New Guinea ... the packaged version of a 'heart of darkness'. The second journey (the real text of the film) is a metaphysical one. It is an attempt to discover the place of 'the Other' in the popular imagination. It affords a glimpse at the real (mostly unconsidered or misunderstood) reasons why 'civilized' people wish to encounter the 'primitive'. The situation is that shifting terminus of civilization, where modern mass-culture grates and pushes against those original, essential aspects of humanity; and where much of what passes for values in western culture is exposed in stark relief as banal and fake."

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Dani Sweet Potatoes

Relates to: Papua New Guinea
#5, 19 minutes, Colour
DER, 1974, VHS
Producer/Anthropologist: Karl Heider

"Dani Sweet Potatoes follows the sophisticated process of sweet potato horticulture developed by the Dani. It follows the Dani sweet potato cycle from clearing off the old brush and weeds from a fallow field to planting, harvesting, cooking and eating. At that time the Dani had the simplest of tools - long pointed wooden poles used as digging sticks that are hardened in the fire and soaked in water - and they still used their stone-bladed adzes. (By now, most Dani use steel shovels, axes, and bush knives and make stone adzes only for the tourist trade.)
Even though their tools are simple, their field system is intensive and sophisticated, with an intricate system of ditches. Perhaps the ditches were originally necessary to drain swampy land, but they now serves as both drainage and irrigation ditches, depending on whether rainfall is too little or too much. The ditches also hold compost. Weeds and topsoil collect there, later to be smeared back onto the garden beds. Pigs are part of the ecological system, plowing up the soil in search of food and fertilizing it with their droppings.
In this film, we see people from a single neighborhood working alone in their own garden plots or, at times joining together in a cooperative work party."

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The Kawelka: Ongka's Big Moka

Relates to: Intro, Papua New Guinea, Ritual
#6 & #F25, 52 minutes, Colour
RAI: Disappearing World, 1974, VHS
Director: Charlie Nairn
Anthropologists: Andrew and Marilyn Strathern

"Ongka is a charismatic big-man of the Kawelka tribe who live scattered in the Western highlands, north of Mount Hagen, in New Guinea. The film focuses on the motivations and efforts involved in organising a big ceremonial gift-exchange or moka planned to take place sometime in 1974. Ongka has spent nearly five years preparing for this ceremonial exchange, using all his big-man skills of oratory and persuasion in order to try to assemble what he hopes will be a huge gift of 600 pigs, some cows, some cassowaries, a motorcycle, a truck and £5,500 in cash. As an example of the big-man familiar from written texts, Ongka is memorable, and the film manages to convey through this main character the importance of pigs, of exchange and of prestige in the life of these Highlanders.
The film-crew never in fact managed to film the big moka, as the conspiratorial and complex manoeuvres involved in setting the date thwarted their plans. But we are shown Ongka replacing tee-shirt and shorts with his ceremonial feathers and setting off to a little moka where he collects pigs he `invested' with his wife's father. The interview with Ongka's wife raises the issue of the sexual division of labour and the importance of the wife's labour in pig-rearing and moka preparation, as well as the role of women in the establishment of a big-man. "

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Joe Leahy's Neighbours

Relates to: Papua New Guinea, Social Organization
#7, 90 minutes, Colour
Filmmakers Library, 1988, VHS
Producer: Bob Connelly
Anthropologist: Robin Anderson

"This film is the follow-up of First Contact. It traces the fortunes of Joe Leahy, the mixed-race son of Australian explorer Michael Leahy, in his uneasy relationship with his tribal neighbors. Joe built his coffee plantation on land bought from the Ganiga in the mid 1970s. European educated, raised in the highlands of Papua, freed by his mixed race from the entanglements of tribal obligation, Joe leads a Western lifestyle governed by individualism and the pursuit of affluence.
While Joe may live in Western grandeur, he is still surrounded by his subsistence level Ganiga 'neighbors,' who never let him forget the original source of his prosperity. Joe spends much of his waking hours just keeping the lid on things.
Filmmakers Connolly and Anderson lived for eighteen continuous months on the edge of Joe's plantation, in the 'no man's land' between Leahy and the Ganiga. Their lively, non-judgmental narrative eloquently captures the conflicting values of tribalism and capitalism."

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Black Harvest

Relates to: Papua New Guinea
#8, 90 minutes, Colour
Filmmakers Library, 1992, VHS
Producer: Bob Connelly
Anthropologist: Robin Anderson

"Black Harvest, the final film in the Highlands Trilogy, charts the progress of Joe Leahy in convincing the Ganiga tribes people to join him in a coffee growing venture. He provides the money and the expertise; they supply the land and labor. But on the eve of success, the world coffee price collapses and tribal warfare erupts in the valley. Always suspect because of his mixed-race status, Joe is in deep trouble with the tribes people when his promises of riches fail to materialize. As he organizes to emigrate with his family to Australia, he is a saddened man with an uncertain future."

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Dead Birds

Relates to: Papua New Guinea
#9, 84 minutes, Colour
DER, 1964, VHS
Director: Robert Gardner

"Dead Birds is a film about the Dani, a people dwelling in the Grand Valley of the Baliem high in the mountains of West Iran. When I shot the film in 1961, the Dani had an almost classic Neolithic culture. They were exceptional in the way they focussed their energies and based their values on an elaborate system of intertribal warfare and revenge. Neighboring groups of Dani clans, separated by uncultivated strips of no man's land, engaged in frequent formal battles. When a warrior was killed in battle or died from a wound and even when a woman or a child lost their life in an enemy raid, the victors celebrated and the victims mourned. Because each death had to be avenged, the balance was continually being adjusted with the spirits of the aggrieved lifted and the ghosts of slain comrades satisfied as soon as a compensating enemy life was taken. There was no thought in the Dani world of wars ever ending, unless it rained or became dark. Without war there would be no way to satisfy the ghosts. Wars were also the best way they knew to keep a terrible harmony in a life which would be, without the strife they invented, mostly hard and dull.
Dead Birds has a meaning which is both immediate and allegorical. In the Dani language it refers to the weapons and ornaments recovered in battle. Its other more poetic meaning comes from the Dani belief that people, because they are like birds, must die.
In making Dead Birds certain kinds of behavior were followed, never directed. It was an attempt to see people from within and to wonder, when the selected fragments of that life were assembled, if they might speak not only of the Dani but also of ourselves."

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Margaret Mead's New Guinea Journal (Parts 1-3)

Relates to: Papua New Guinea
#10, 90 minutes, Colour
1969, VHS
Anthropologist: Margaret Mead

Describes Margaret Mead's return to the Peri Village, Manus, in 1967, with flashbacks using footage and photographs from her early expeditions and wartime newsreels.

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The House-Opening: A Contemporary Aboriginal Ritual

Relates to: Papua New Guinea, Ritual
#11, 45 minutes, Colour
Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1980, VHS
Director: Judith MacDougall

"When Geraldine Kawangka's husband died she and her six children moved out of their suburban-style house at Aurukun on Cape York Peninsula. In earlier times their bark house would have been abandoned and burnt to avoid contact with the dead man's spirit and to allow it to return to its own traditional country. Now, with Western-style housing, this is no longer possible. Instead a ‘house-opening' ceremony has evolved at Aurukun as a way of dealing with death in the midst of new living patterns. The ceremony is a colourful and creative mingling of traditional Aboriginal, Torres Strait Island and European elements. Although the atmosphere sometimes suggests a party, its underlying purpose is serious. This film follows the opening of Geraldine Kawangka's house and records her feelings about the ceremony, revealed in her informative and sometimes personal commentary."

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Tighten the Drums: Self-Decoration Among the Enga

Relates to: Papua New Guinea, Visual
#12, 58 minutes, Colour
DER, 1983, DVD
Anthropologist: Chris Owen

"A look into art of body decoration as a visual language in the western highlands of Papua New Guinea.
In the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea, the Enga people have developed the art of body decoration as a visual language. Using earth paints, tree oils, bird plumes, human hair, and a variety of plants, the Enga turn the body into a medium for an expressive and dramatic symbolism. This film shows the diverse forms of body art in both daily life and ritual in Enga village society."

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Bridewealth for a Goddess

Relates to: Papua New Guinea, Ritual
#13, 72 minutes, Colour
DER, 2000, DVD
Anthropologist: Chris Owen

Shot over a period of approximately 15 years, the anthropologists and filmmakers have been participant-observers during a time of pivotal change for the clans of the Kawelka tribal group. The film is narrated by the headman "Ru" who speaks directly to us about the clans' recent problems, infant mortality, and decision to return to previously abandoned tribal territories. The arrival of the ancient female spirit Amb Kor, comes to him in a dream and he is convinced that in order to regain their former strength and health the clans must perform this ritual for the Goddess. A tremendous effort ensues and different styles of anthropological analysis, both Marxist and Capitalist are brought to bear on the meaning and purpose of the cult activity. One clansmen tells us that the Lutheran church condemns the cult ritual as the work of the devil but that the Catholic missionaries are more supportive. In the end, participation in the ritual by anyone who has been baptized in the Christian church is forbidden. Meat distribution, clan alliances, and the symbolic bridewealth for the Goddess are observed. Near the end of the film we see a distinctly older Ru watching the ritual on a monitor. We learn that the filming happened 14 years earlier and young men are no longer interested. Ru watches himself lead the last ritual of Amb Kor at Kuk.

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Land-Divers of Melanesia

Relates to: Papua New Guinea
#14, 34 minutes, Colour
DER, 1972, DVD
Anthropologist: Kal Muller
Director: Robert Gardner

On the island of Pentecost in the New Hebrides archipelago, a few hundred Melanesians maintain a traditional life thanks to their geographic isolation and to the leaders who have resisted Christianity, schools and cooperatives. Bunlap, where this film was shot, is the largest and most important community of these people.
To ensure a good yam crop, men of Pentecost Island in Melanesia attach vines to their ankles and dive headlong from a wooden tower over 100 feet tall, a ritual referred to as Naghol, or land-diving. Those who dive say the fall clears their mind. The vines are relatively elastic and the ground is softened so injury is rare. For Pentecost Islanders the annual dive takes an appropriate place among other rituals and ceremonies such as blessing the taro crop, circumcising young boys and feasting with relatives, all of which keep them in touch with the forces that control the world in which they live.
Today this ritual has become a tourist attraction for many Westerners, much to the chagrin of anthropologists, and package land-diving tours can be arranged throughout the yam harvest season.

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Ngat is Dead

Relates to: Papua New Guinea, Ritual
#15, 59 minutes, Colour
DER, 2009, DVD
Anthropologist: Ton Otto
Filmmaker: Christian Suhr

This film follows the Dutch anthropologist Ton Otto, who has been adopted by a family on Baluan Island in Papua New Guinea. Due to the death of his adoptive father, he has to take part in mortuary ceremonies, whose form and content are passionately contested by different groups of relatives.
Through prolonged negotiations, Ton learns how Baluan people perform and transform their traditions and not least what role he plays himself. The film is part of long-term field research, in which filmmaking has become integrated in the ongoing dialogue and exchange between the islanders and the anthropologist.

Polynesia

Matai Samoa

Relates to: Polynesia
#29, 65 minutes, Colour
RAI, 1989, VHS
Anthropologist/Filmmaker: George Milner

"The film is a valuable treatment of archival footage that George Milner shot while conducting fieldwork in 1955 and 1959. The footage (18 minutes of the total film) focuses on the traditional Samoan way of life. Then the footage is discussed and analyzed by Christina Toren, a South Pacific specialist, and Reverend Lalomilo Kamu, a Samoan scholar. The interview gives a rare opportunity to hear a scholar from the filmed group comment on and explain the symbolism behind the pictures."

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Firth on Firth

Relates to: Polynesia
#30, 49 minutes, Colour
RAI, 1993, VHS
Anthropologists/Filmmakers: Rolf Husmann, Peter Loizos and Werner Sperschneider

"In a series of interviews in his London home and the London School of Economics, Sir Raymond Firth talks about his life and some of his personal views. The film focuses on his Maori studies, Social Anthropology under Malinowski at the LSE, Firth's fieldwork in Tikopia and, in an interview together with his wife, Lady Rosemary, their common fieldwork in Malaya. A number of unique black-and-white photographs taken by Firth himself also are used as illustrations."

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The Last Navigator

Relates to: Polynesia
#31, 50 minutes, Colour
RAI, 1989, VHS
Anthropologist/Filmmaker: André Singer

"Satawal is one of the remotest islands on earth and the inhabitants rely on the food brought by sea-going canoes. The programme looks at this difficult journey by focussing on Mau Piailug and his relationship with Stephen Thomas an American Navigator."

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The Lau of Malaita

Relates to: Polynesia
#32, 51 minutes, Colour
RAI: Disappearing World, 1987, VHS
Filmmaker: Leslie Woodhead
Anthropologist: Pierre Maranda

"The Lau have established an extraordinary way of life on their man-made coral islands in a South Pacific lagoon. At first sight, their life seems idyllic, with abundant food and no need for money. But their "life of custom" is threatened by the spread of Christianity and ideas from the outside world."

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The Land Has Eyes

Relates to: Polynesia
#33, 87 minutes, Colour
Feature Film, 2004, DVD
Writer/Director: Vilsoni Hereniko
Producer: Jeanette Paulson Hereniko

"The Land Has Eyes is the story of Viki, a young South Pacific Islander inspired and haunted by the island's mythical ‘Warrior Woman'. The lush tropical beauty of Rotuma, an island of Fiji, contrasts with the stifling conformity of her culture as Viki confronts notions of justice and her own personal freedom."

Melanesia

Trobriand Cricket: An Ingenious Response to Colonialism
Relates to: Intro, Melanesia, Papua New Guinea
#26 & #F26, 54 minutes, Colour
1976, VHS
Filmmaker: Gary Kildea
Anthropologist: Jerry Leach

"An extraordinary ethnographic document of the modifications made by the residents of the Trobriand Islands, in Papua New Guinea, to the traditional British game of cricket. In response to colonialism the islanders have changed the game into an outlet for mock warfare, community interchange, tribal rivalry, sexual innuendo and a lot of riotous fun. Intercut sequences explaining traditional cricket indicate how much the game has been altered; historical footage and commentary review the history of British colonialism in the area. This is not a glimpse of a disappearing culture, but a piece of propaganda by indigenous Trobrianders in favor of their national game which, with good reason, they consider to be far superior to the English 'rubbish' from which it was derived."

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The Trobriand Islanders of Papua New Guinea

Relates to: Melanesia, Papua New Guinea
#27, 53 minutes, Colour
RAI: Disappearing World, 1990, VHS
Producer: David Wason
Anthropologist: Annette Weiner

"The Trobriand Islands, regarded as anthropology's most sacred place, lie off the eastern tip of Papua New Guinea. The island society has a complex balance of male authority and female wealth. Magic spells and sorcery pervade everyday life. This program focuses on two important events: the distribution of women's wealth after a death, and the 'month of play', a time of celebration following the yam harvest."

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The Trobriand Islanders

Relates to: Melanesia, Papua New Guinea
#28, 67 minutes, Colour
RAI, 1952, VHS
Anthropologist/Filmmaker: Harry Powell

Note: There does not appear to be any sound in this film…

"During his field work in the region of Omarakana, H.A.Powell filmed various sequences from which the film is assembled. In spite of the technical handicaps under which he was operating – shooting with a single, fixed-focus lens, 16mm camera without tripod – the film is nevertheless useful as a teaching aid. The commentary concentrates on the ethnography of Trobriand life."

Amazonia

The Kayapo

Relates to: Amazonia
#51, 58 minutes, Colour
RAI: Disappearing World, 1987, VHS
Filmmaker: Michael Beckham
Anthropologist: Terence Turner

"The Kayapo are the first tribe to have their own air force! Life changed dramatically for the fiercely independent Kayapo when gold was discovered on their land. In 1982, thousands of Brazilians invaded the Amazonian rain forest to excavate one of the largest gold mines in the world. The Kayapo were forced to become "businessmen", or see their traditional way of life destroyed. This is the first of two programs on the Kayapo. The Kayapo: Out of the Forest is the second program."

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Embera: The End of the Road

Relates to: Amazonia
#52, 50 minutes, Colour
RAI: Disappearing World, 1971, VHS
Director: Brian Moser
Anthropologist: Ariane Deluz

"The way of life of the 10,000 Embera Indians who live in the Choco region of Colombia, South American, is threatened by the encroachments of Negro Libres (descendants of freed slaves) and by the expansion of the Pan-American highway which cuts through their land."

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A Clearing in the Jungle

Relates to: Amazonia
#53, 38 minutes, Colour
RAI: Disappearing World, 1970, VHS
Director: Charlie Nairn
Anthropologist: Jean-Paul Dumont

"In common with many other Indian groups in South America, the culture of the Panare Indians of Venezuela is threatened by their almost daily contact with neighbouring creoles, Spanish-speaking peasants. However, in spite of nearly fifty years of interaction, their culture has remained distinctively Indian.
The film focuses on activities of their daily life, such as making cassava, preparing blow-darts, hunting and gathering. The Indians strongly resented the presence of the camera-crew; indeed, as Dumont points out early in the film, they were loath to reveal details of their belief-system even to him, although he had been living with them for eighteen months."

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Reclaiming the Forest

Relates to: Amazonia
#54, 39 minutes, Colour
RAI, 1986, VHS
Filmmakers: Paul Henley and Georges Drion

"In 1982, a gold rush broke out near a small village on the Venezuelan border with Guyana. Although it was situated in a National Park, thousands of prospectors poured in from all over Venezuela and neighbouring countries, including many hundreds of Amerindians from Guyana. Many of these Amerindians were in fact returning to the area that their fathers or grandfathers had abandoned some sixty years ago when they were persuaded to move over to Guyana by Seventh Day Adventist missionaries. But the present severe economic conditions in Guyana make the new gold mines of Venezuela very attractive.
The film investigates the conditions of these Amerindian migrants, most of whom belong to two closely related Carib-speaking groups, the Akawaio and the Arekuna, and many of whom work as wage labourers for large mining companies. Their circumstances are then contrasted with those of Wally Torres, a small mining entrepreneur of Arawak descent, who also came from Guyana, but some ten years earlier. Although Wally is in many ways better off than his Carib-speaking neighbours, he suffers like them from the insecurity that stems from having no formal land rights. These rights are denied to the Amerindians because they live in a National Park. Yet, at the same time, large mining companies are granted concessions that permit them to reduce the Park to an infertile wasteland."

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The Last of the Cuiva

Relates to: Amazonia
#55, 68 minutes, Colour
RAI: Disappearing World, 1987, VHS
Director: Brian Moser
Anthropologist: Bernard Arcand

"The film focuses on recent changes in the culture and society of the Cuiva, hunters and gatherers in a remote forest region of south-eastern Colombia, brought about through contact with Colombian settlers. Two groups of Cuiva are shown: one is relatively isolated, while the other has had extensive contacts with the settlers. The first group live a nomadic life moving frequently: the men hunt and fish, the women gather. The second group has been drawn into the Colombian economy, working occasionally for the ranchers to earn money to buy trade goods.
The film also usefully includes interviews with white ranchers, showing their racist attitudes to the Indians, whom in the past they feared and on whose land they are now continually encroaching."

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The Ax Fight

Relates to: Amazonia
#56, 30 minutes, Colour
RAI, 1975, CD
Filmmakers: Timothy and Patsy Asch
Anthropologist: Napoleon Chagnon

The film focuses on a brief single event, a fight among the Yanomamo of Venezuela, giving three views of the event, each view increasing insight into both the event itself and the process of film making. The first view is an unedited version of a surprise occurrence complete with unfocused camera shots, and the voices of the filmmakers as they try to understand what they are seeing. The second version combines some of the initial footage with a detailed structural analysis of the kinship and residence complexities linking the participants in the fight. This view also places the fight in its ritual context. The final view is an edited version that expresses cinematic art rather than ethnographic depth. The combination provides a multi-tiered image that is provocative for discussion and analysis. The innovative style of The Ax Fight has made it a classic for courses both in anthropology and filmmaking. It is even more valuable because of the availability of written material and other films in the same series (see film entries The Feast and Magical Death in Part One of this catalogue). A study guide for this film is available that gives a scene by scene description and an in-depth discussion of the film

The Andes

Peru: Inca Indians Return Home

Relates to: The Andes
#76, 15 minutes, Colour
Filmmakers Library, 1998, VHS
Anthropologist: Carlos Ivan Degregori
Produced by: Journeyman Films

"The Shining Path, although imbued with Marxist philosophy, wreaked havoc on the lives of the poor Indian descendents of the Incas living in northern Peru. In trying to enlist them in their revolution, they used violence and terror and tried to destroy their culture and way of life.
Professor Carlos Ivan Degregori explains that the Shining Path were Mestisos who did not understand or respect the Indian's religion, or their ways of working the fields. Peasants who were forcibly recruited remember the trail of killings during the ten years of civil war. Today, they are rebuilding their devastated highland villages and looking towards the future."

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Shaping Society Through Dance: Mestizo Ritual Performance in the Peruvian Andes

Relates to: The Andes, Ethnomusicology
#77, 105 minutes, Colour
2000, VHS
Anthropologist: Zoila S. Mendoza

"During the patron saint fiesta in the Andean town of San Jerónimo, Peru, crowds gather at sunset in the town square, eagerly awaiting the entrance of the colorful dance troupes, or comparsas. With their masks, music, and surprising interpretations of contemporary events, the comparsas of the Cusco region are the focus of this multifaceted work. At the crossroads of folklore and ritual, mass media and local preferences, and regional and national identity, the comparsas—recorded here on video and compact disc—have become a powerful way for the local people to make sense of their place in Peru and in the world. As Zoila Mendoza shows, they do more than reflect societal changes, they actively transform society.
In this fluid world, she argues, racial and ethnic identities are shaped more by notions of what is decent, elegant, and modern rather than by skin color or status. As the different troupes vie for the townspeople's recognition as the most 'authentic' group, these notions are challenged and reworked. A fascinating look at a rich tradition, this innovative work is also a compelling example of the critical anthropology of performance."

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Birth and Belief in the Andes of Ecuador

Relates to: The Andes, Medical
#78, 28 minutes, Colour
1995, VHS
Producer: Lauris McKee

"This intimate portrait of women in four Andean communities documents their beliefs and practices surrounding childbirth and infant care. Deprived until recently of modern medical care, rural Andean women have managed their reproductive practices by relying on an ethnomedical system that retains pre-Columbian magical elements. Cultural construction of the female body, ideas about conception (whether human or supernatural), motives for post-partum seclusion, and gender differences in the 'natures' and needs of infants are all shown to be part of this ethnomedical system. The film demonstrates that although this system of 'folk medicine' is based on magical premises, its prescribed practices usually confer real physical and emotional benefits on mothers and children alike."

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The Quechua

Relates to: The Andes, Religion
#79, 51 minutes, Colour
RAI: Disappearing World, 1974, VHS
Director: Carlos Pasini
Anthropologist: Michael Sallnow

"This film is set in a community of peasant agriculturalists 2 ¼ miles above sea level in the southern Peruvian Andes. Concentrating on a single family, the film explores aspects of religious and secular life. The first part of the film shows a pilgrimage to a Christian sanctuary situated close to the residence of the most powerful of the Central Andean mountain spirits (Apus) illustrating the syncretism of Catholic and pre-Hispanic local religious traditions.
In the second part of the film we see a fertility rite for sheep, and the attempts of certain members of the community to procure government assistance for a motor road to the village which would link them more closely with the rest of Peruvian society."

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Q'eros: The Shape of Survival

Relates to: The Andes, Ethnomusicology, Religion
#80, 53 minutes, Colour
1979, VHS
Producer: John Cohen

"This classic documentary provides a multifaceted exploration of the way of life of the Q'eros Indians of Peru, who have lived in the Andes for more than 3,000 years.
Their economy is nearly self-sufficient and their location, at 14,000 feet, is well adapted for their alpacas (raised for wool) and their llamas (beasts of burden). The Q'eros employ the same agricultural methods, play the same panpipes and flutes, and weave cloth using the same patterns as those described by Spanish chroniclers in the 16th century. The film examines Q'eros music in its shepherd and religious functions and shows weaving as an integral part of family life."

Mexico

The Unholy Tarahumara
Relates to: Mexico
#101, 56 minutes, Colour
Filmmakers Library, 1998, VHS
Producer: Kathryn Ferguson

"In Mexico's vast and astonishing Copper Canyon area of Chihuahua, isolated from much of the world, live the Tarahumara Indians. Descendants of the Aztecs who fled the Spaniards, they live without electricity in spectacularly beautiful but rocky land where farming is difficult and game is scarce. Poor, and without resources, they are torn between the lure of modern life and maintaining their age-old traditions.
In an unprecedented way, the filmmaker was able, over a period of five years, to document the ways of these gentle and reticent people. She overlays Tarahumara folk tales with footage of day-to-day life. The candid observation of one old Indian who would rather have modern comforts than preserve his traditions in poverty, provides an ironic note. One of the revelations is that the people who are thought to be very reserved are actually playful and delight in gossip. The Unholy Tarahumara is a poetic representation of a lifestyle and culture that normally is cloaked in secrecy."

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To Find Our Life: The Peyote Hunt of the Huichol Indians of Mexico

Relates to: Mexico, Ritual
#102, 60 minutes, Colour
RAI, 1969, VHS
Anthropologist/Director: Peter Hurst

"This film is about a pivotal event in the religious and ritual life of the Huichol Indians of Mexico. It shows a pilgrimage led by a shaman to obtain peyote, a hallucinogenic drug used for religious purposes which is present in a particular type of cactus. Huichol peyote ritual is believed to have much in common with pre-Colombian Mexican ritual.
During the pilgrimage, the participants symbolically return to their origins and play the parts of their own ancestors. The quest for peyote is equated with a deer hunt and the cactus is hunted with bow and arrow. The ritual sequence includes the blindfolding of the novice peyote pilgrims and their subsequent passage through a symbolic gateway, ceremonies at desert springs known as 'Where our Mother lives I, curing rituals, the actual hunt of the cactus with bow and arrow, the communal eating of the peyote, all-night ceremonies and the final ritual dissolving the bond of the peyote hunters. The narration of the film is adapted from a text dictated by the shaman who leads the pilgrimage and so the participants, point of view enters into the film far more directly than is the case in most anthropological films."

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Appeals to Santiago

Relates to: Mexico, Ritual
#103, 27 minutes, Colour
1969, VHS
Producer: Carter Wilson
Anthropologist: Duane Metzger

"This classic ethnographic documentary depicts an eight-day Maya 'cargo' ceremony in Chiapas, Mexico. The film is narrated by the participants themselves and focuses on the experiences of two men as they perform their expensive and exhausting duties for one of the town's patron saints"

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Day of the Dead

Relates to: Mexico, Ritual
#104, 50 minutes, Colour
Films for the Humanities & Sciences, 1999, VHS

The Day of the Dead, an ancient cultural tradition, still flourishes in modern-day Mexico. This beautiful documentary presents the annual commemoration of the Day of the Dead as it is celebrated on the island of La Picanda. On this day when the dead are believed to revisit the temporal realm, the program allows viewers a glimpse into Mexican life as they follow the preparations – including bountiful food offerings and wax statues – and observance of this unique holiday.

Meso-America

Sacred Games: Ritual Warfare in a Maya Village

Relates to: Meso-America, Ritual
#126, 60 minutes, Colour
1988, VHS
Filmmaker: Thor Anderson

"Every year, in a small village in the highlands of Chiapas, in southern Mexico, thousands of Maya Indians gather to celebrate Carnival. The Chamula people call their Carnival the 'festival of games,' and it is the most spectacular, popular, and costly festival of their ritual calendar. The pageant is rich in both pre-Columbian imagery and references to numerous military invasions over the past 500 years. It merges Catholicism with ancient Maya rites. This extraordinary film documents the complex, week-long activities, focusing on one man's experiences as a ritual leader during the nonstop parading, dancing, and feasting. The film beautifully captures the passion and mystery of the event and shows how the Maya's symbolic world is renewed each year in the celebrations"

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Corn and the Origins of Settled Life in Meso-America

Relates to: Meso-America
#127, 40 minutes, Colour
1964, VHS
Anthropologists: Michael Coe, Paul Mangelsdorf and Richard MacNeish

"Presents the beginnings of civilization in the Western Hemisphere more than 10,000 years ago. One of the clues to the origin of settled communities is the development of agriculture, enabling people to give up a purely nomadic existence. Shows the process of discovery of the evidence of the first domestication of corn in the Tehuacan Valley of Mexico. It reveals how the archaeologist and the botanist working together can help reveal the pattern of prehistory."

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Carnival in Q'eros

Relates to: Meso-America
#128, Colour
CD

Note: CD must be viewed using a computer or smart classroom, not compatible with most DVD players…

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Todos Santos Cuchumatan: Report from a Guatemalan Village

Relates to: Meso-America
#129, 41 minutes, Colour
1982, CD
Filmmaker: Olivia Carrescia

Note: CD must be viewed using a computer or smart classroom, not compatible with most DVD players…

"This film provides an intimate look at everyday life in Todos Santos, a village in Guatemala's highlands, before the violence of the 1980s. The community, consisting of small family farms worked by Mayan Indians, had remained isolated until the construction of a road in the mid-1960's connecting the highlands and the coast.
As Todosanteros go about their daily routines, they discuss the increasing importance of cash to this once self-sustained farming community. The annual harvest is reaped, the elaborate Fiesta of Todos Santos is celebrated with dancing, drinking and the central event that is the horse race, and the workers migrate out of the mountain village in search of work on the lowland cotton plantations."

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The Lacandon Maya Balche Ritual

Relates to: Meso-America, Ritual
#130, 40 minutes, Colour
1988, CD
Filmmaker: R. Jon McGee

Note: CD must be viewed using a computer or smart classroom, not compatible with most DVD players…

"This program describes the preparation of balche – a ritual sacred beverage of the Mayan Indians of Mexico. Although consumption of balche was thought to have been common before the Spanish conquest of Mexico, as a ritual, it is rare today. It remains though a principle feature of the Lacandon. Balche is a brew of water, honey, and bark of a tree. It is considered to be physically and spiritually purifying and allows the tribesmen to communicate with their gods."

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Ch'ullacuy

Relates to: Meso-America, Ritual
#131, 40 minutes, Colour
1993, CD
Filmmaker: Gabriela Martinez Escobar

Note: CD must be viewed using a computer or smart classroom, not compatible with most DVD players…

"Documents an ancient and important alpaca shearing ceremony that is still widely performed in the Andes. The ceremony clearly shows the identity and survival of an ethnic group who have preserved crucial aspects of their Inca language, culture, and religion despite long contact with the outside world."

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Dancing With the Incas

Relates to: Meso-America, Ethnomusicology
#132, 58 minutes, Colour
1992, CD
Producer: John Cohen

Note: CD must be viewed using a computer or smart classroom, not compatible with most DVD players…

"This film documents the most popular music of the Andes -- Huayno music -- and explores the lives of three Huayno musicians in a contemporary Peru torn between the military and the Shining Path guerrillas.
The film shows how ancient Incan music passed down through the centuries has a contemporary life of its own in the cities of Peru. Lima on Sundays is alive with Huayno music, in which one hears authentic Inca melodies performed on every conceivable type of instrument. In the moody lyrics, the musings of oppressed people assume an existential and timeless quality even when a carnival atmosphere prevails."

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Todos Santos: The Survivors

Relates to: Meso-America, Political
#133, 58 minutes, Colour
1989, CD
Filmmaker: Olivia Carrescia

Note: CD must be viewed using a computer or smart classroom, not compatible with most DVD players…

"After five years of traumatic bloodshed and political violence in Guatemala, filmmaker Olivia Carrescia returns to look at the dramatic situation of the village she had documented in Todos Santos Cuchumatan and its struggle to survive and maintain its cultural identity against a background of economic hardships, social and religious change, and violence between the army and guerilla forces for control of the area.
Todos Santos: The Survivors goes on to demonstrate how the political turmoil affected this once quiet community. Farming and seasonal migration patterns have been altered. Many have fled to Guatemala City, while others are refugees in Mexico. The remaining males aged 15 to 60 are forced into civilian patrols as part of the army's counter-insurgency plan. Villagers who once spoke freely with outsiders are now afraid to talk at all."

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Living Maya: Program One

Relates to: Meso-America
#134, 58 minutes, Colour
DER, 1985, CD

Note: CD must be viewed using a computer or smart classroom, not compatible with most DVD players…

"This series documents life in a Yucatan village, focusing on one family over the course of a year. The films explore the ancient agricultural and religious customs that ground contemporary Maya life in traditional values – even as modern Mexico comes to the village. In Maya, Spanish, and English, with English subtitles.
Program One introduces the village of Chican and the Colli-Colli family, and examines the structure of Maya agricultural and village life."

The Himalayas

Himalayan Herders

Relates to: The Himalayas,
#151, 76 minutes, Colour
DER, 1997, VHS
Filmmaker: John Bishop
Anthropologist: Naomi Bishop

"Himalayan Herders is an intimate portrait of a temple-village in the Yolmo valley of Central Nepal where Tibetan Buddhists consult shamans, married life begins by kidnapping the bride, and the nearest road is two days walk away. The community drama of marriage, death, and rituals is juxtaposed with the rich texture of daily life, both in the village and the surrounding mountains and forest where these pastoralists herd zomo, a cross between a cow and a yak which thrives in middle altitude pastures between 8000 and 14,000 feet. Culture change, in the form of a government primary school, incorporation into a national park, and circular migration for wage labor outside Nepal, is discussed by residents in interviews. A twenty-five year collaboration between an ethnographer and a documentary filmmaker, the film provides rich material for examining gender, culture change, religion, pastoralism, South Asia, and cultural ecology and economics of mountain populations."

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Dor, Low is Better

Relates to: The Himalayas, Ethnomusicology
#152, 47 minutes, Colour
RAI, 1987, VHS
Filmmaker/Anthropologist: Robert Boonzajer-Flaes

"The film offers an experimental approach to comparative study of cultures: the monks of a Tibetan monastery compare their own flutes with the Swiss alpenhorn and the Dutch wildhorn introduced to them by the anthropologist. While the monks agree to play those foreign instruments, they still prefer their own flutes for the performance of ritual music."

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The Kalasha: Rites of Spring

Relates to: The Himalayas
#153, 53 minutes, Colour
RAI: Disappearing World, 1990, VHS
Producer: John Sheppard
Anthropologist: Peter Parkes

"About the Kalasha people, the last remaining non-Islamic pagans in Pakistan. They farm on mountain pastures and tiny fields of their valley homes in the Hindu Kush on the north-west frontier. Their land and its natural wealth is mortgaged to the neighbouring Chitralis who exploit it at the expense of the traditional Kalasha way of life."

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The Sherpas of Nepal

Relates to: The Himalayas
#154, 52 minutes, Colour
RAI: Disappearing World, 1977, VHS
Director: Leslie Woodhead
Anthropologist: Sherry Ortner

"Thami is a village 12,000 feet up in the Himalayas in the Kingdom of Nepal. As the film's opening shots illustrate, in a type of filmic short-hand, Thami is composed of a patchwork of individual farms ­ indicative of the Sherpa emphasis on independence and family self-sufficiency. The main concern of the film is to examine what it means to be Sherpa today in both cultural and economic terms: to this end the film concentrates on the varied career choices of three brothers from Thami ­ peasant farmer, Buddhist monk and head guide. Interviews with the brothers, enabling them to express their own attitudes and expectations, deepen the analysis.
The second half of the film deals with the preparations for the festivities of a Sherpa wedding, emphasizing that negotiations about bridewealth are lengthy ­ often taking years ­ since marriage is viewed primarily as an economic transaction. Sequences showing peasant farming activities, in combination with scenes of Sherpa life in Katmandu, contrast the old way of life with the new and illustrate the changing socio-economic conditions encountered by Sherpas today."

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A Tibetan New Year

Relates to: The Himalayas
#155, 45 minutes, Colour
1987, VHS
Director: Jon Jerstad

"Documents the New Year celebrations carried out by the monks of the only Bonpo community outside of Tibet."

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Nepal: Land of the Gods

Relates to: The Himalayas, Religion
#156, 62 minutes, Colour
1985, VHS
Director: Sheldon Rochlin
Producers: Mark Spera, Loren Standlee

"Nepal: Land of the Gods examines the ancient civilizations still thriving in the Himalayan kingdom, focusing on Nepal's unique mixture of Buddhism and Hinduism. It shows the ritual invocation of deities, meditation training for young Tibetan monks, and depicts belief in local spirits, mountain gods and folk figures (such as the Yeti) into daily Sherpa life in the Everest region. It culminates in a dramatic evocation of a shaman's journey through the landscape of the psyche. The narrative explains how lamas have taken over the shaman's role as psychic healer and guide of souls, and how Tantra is an integral part of daily life, harmonizing the relationship between man, woman, nature and a higher spiritual reality."

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Horses of Life and Death

Relates to: The Himalayas
#157, 26 minutes, Colour
VHS
Anthropologist: Janet E. Hoskins

Laura Scheerer Whitney 's documentary explores the concepts of life and death and the role of the horse as a messenger between the human and spirit worlds on the island of Sumba, the last Indonesian island with a pagan majority. Follows two major ceremonial events: a large-scale equestrian jousting battle, and an elaborate funeral ritual

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A Stranger in My Native Land

Relates to: The Himalayas
#158, 33 minutes, Colour
1998, VHS
Producers: Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam

"The film begins in Kumbum, one of Tibet's great monasteries, in the far northeastern corner of the country in what is now Qinghai Province. Tenzing's father came from a village near Kumbum and numerous close relatives still live in the ancestral home. Tenzing meets them all in a warm and emotional homecoming during which he discovers how little he has in common with them and how much the Tibetans of Kumbum have become assimilated into the dominant Chinese culture, which has reduced them to a tiny minority. Not far away is the village of Taktser, the present Dalai Lama's birthplace. The Chinese have built a temple there to commemorate the spot, although the neglected and empty shrine is languishing in a rural backwater at the furthest edge of Tibet.
The filmmakers next visit the monastery of Labrang Tashi Kyil, a day's journey away. In contrast to the sinification that has taken place around Kumbum, a vibrant Tibetan culture still thrives here and imparts a sense of what this corner of Tibet might once have been like. The filmmakers travel by bus for two days and nights across the bleak and desolate northern plateau to Lhasa. Their excitement mounts as they approach the legendary city but what they find is a provincial Chinese town visibly populated by a Chinese majority."

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Trekking on Tradition

Relates to: The Himalayas
#159, 42 minutes, Colour
1992, DVD
Filmmaker/Anthropologist: Jennifer Rodes

"This program explores the effects of mountain tourism on a small village in rural Nepal and the often ironic nature of the resulting cross-cultural encounters."

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Amchis: The Forgotten Healers of The Himalayas

Relates to: The Himalayas, Medical
#160, 52 minutes, Colour
Filmakers Library, 2001, DVD
Filmmaker: Samuel Ducoin
Producer: Pois Chiche Films

Zanskar is a valley tucked between the steep mountains on the border of the Himalayas, at an altitude of 3,700 meters. In each village in this remote area of the world, there is a traditional Tibetan medicine man named the 'Amchi.' Since the beginning of time, the Amchi has passed his knowledge down from father to son, or from teacher to student.
With the construction of a new road, however, the valley was left vulnerable to the outside world. Since then, the younger generation has rejected the age-old wisdom and practices of the Amchi, embracing more modern, lucrative activities instead. As a result, these forgotten healers of the Himalayas are perhaps the last to practice Tibetan medicine.

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Fate of the Lhapa

Relates to The Himalayas, Religion, Shamanism, Medical
#161, 63 mins. colour
DER, 2007, DVD
Filmmaker: Sarah Sifers

Fate of the Lhapa is a feature-length documentary about the last three Tibetan shamans (lhapas) living in a Tibetan refugee camp in Nepal. With no other descendants to carry on their healing practices and a younger generation attending schools, acculturating, and modernizing, these 'sucking doctors' are practicing an endangered tradition. Each lhapa requested that their story be filmed so that an historical record would be created. Their fear was that the next heir might not appear until after the old men's deaths. Subsequently, with no lhapa alive to mentor the children, the documentary would be used to transmit the knowledge to the next generation.These tales of nomadic childhoods, shamanic callings and apprenticeships, cosmologies of disease and treatments, and of their flight from Tibet during the Chinese occupation in the late 1950s will be juxtaposed with images of present-day life in the camp, current healing practices and shared concerns of the future and the fate of their tradition. This is a touching portrayal of life in exile in a refugee camp in Nepal.

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Europe

The Basques of Santazi

Relates to: Intro, Europe
#176 & #F2, 52 minutes, Colour
RAI: Disappearing World, 1987, VHS
Director: Leslie Woodhead
Anthropologist: Sandra Ott

"This film follows the lives over one year, shot during three intervals, of two Basque shepherding families who live in Santazi, a village in the foothills of the French Pyrenees. The film is the only Disappearing World film make in western Europe and it focuses on the continuity and change in the community.
Change has come to the village of Santazi in recent years along the avenues of introduced roads and improved communication systems with the outside world. The effects stretch from people's relationships with the Catholic religion to inheritance customs. Television has of course also entered these villagers' homes. The traditional life of shepherding is also changing amidst the conflict of interest between those who have formed a syndicate in an effort to maintain the viability of shepherding and the sons who have taken jobs as linemen for the electricity company. This film shows the rationality behind the choice the villagers are making."

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Suspino: A Cry for Roma

Relates to: Europe
#177, 50 minutes, Colour
2003, VHS
Director: Gillian Darling Kovanic

"Suspino: A Cry for Roma takes an unflinching look at the persecution that continues to plague Europe's largest and most vilified minority. With the fall of communism and rise of right-wing nationalism, the Roma (or Gypsies as they are pejoratively called) have become scapegoats for Eastern Europe's nascent democracies. Because of violent conflicts and discrimination, tens of thousands of Eastern European Roma are fleeing their countries. The film focuses on Romania where Europe's largest concentration of Roma are considered ‘public enemies,' and Italy, where the Roma are classified as nomads and relegated to living in camps. Here they are denied basic human rights available to refugees and foreign students.
Aiming to create a "Gypsy-free" Romanian town, a mayor tries to move local Roma into an abandoned chicken farm, encircled with barbed wire and patrolled by guards with dogs. A Roma family gathers in a Transylvanian graveyard to mourn the deaths of three brothers murdered in an earlier pogrom that also saw the destruction of 21 of their houses. In a squalid trailer camp 10 kilometers from Vatican City, a young Roma couple that fled persecution in Romania is trying to build a new life. Instead they end up begging to feed their children. Their nightmare worsens when the mayor of Rome decides to bulldoze the camp to the ground. A Romanian Roma activist seeking asylum in Canada tells a heart-breaking story of a pogrom against his community back home, and explains that this international human rights crisis has its roots in 500 years of Roma slavery in Eastern Europe.
Romania hopes to enter the European Union by 2008 but first must improve its treatment of minorities, especially the Roma. But what hope is there for the Roma when gatekeeper countries like Italy are also in flagrant violation of human rights conventions."

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Dhiavo: The Autumn Journey

p>Relates to: Europe
#178, 50 minutes, Colour
DER, 1999, DVD
Producer: David Hope
Filmmaker: Tim Salmon

"The film takes place in the Pindos Mountains in North Western Greece. We meet two brothers, Tsiogas and Steryios Anthoulis with heir flocks of sheep on the mountains, then the third brother Vassilis in the village of Samarina. It is the time of the festival of 15th of August and the village is packed with returning families and relations celebrating their culture and roots. They are all Vlachs, who speak a language closely related to Romanian. We return in October for the Dhiava, the autumn journey.
Tsiogas and Vassilis tell through interview the history of the Dhiava and its significance for them today, in a Greece that is changing rapidly. The journey is the last remaining part of the tradition of transhumance that used to be commonplace all over Europe. A large group of illegal Albanian immigrants turn up and Tsiogas holds them up at gunpoint to search them. There have been many thefts recently and the immigrants are always suspected. The traditional route takes the flocks cross country, over mountain ranges and through remnants of the great oak forests that used to cover this region. Wolves are still common here and a constant problem for the shepherds. The route continues along a dangerous stretch of main highway and with two thousand sheep, thirty cows, goats and packhorses to protect, the shepherds have a busy time. It is in this scene that we feel the crush of time and the pressure to change established traditions for more modern ones. Most shepherds now ship their flocks by truck rather than taking them on the arduous journey down from the mountains."

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Whose is this Song?

Relates to: Europe, Ethnomusicology
#179, 50 minutes, Colour
DER, 2003, DVD
Filmmaker/Anthropologist: Adela Peeva

"In her search for the true origins of a haunting melody, the filmmaker travels to Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia, Serbia and Bulgaria. The trip is filled with humor, suspense, tragedy and surprise as each country's citizens passionately claim the song to be their own and can even furnish elaborate histories for its origins. The tune emerges again and again in different forms: as a love song, a religious hymn, a revolutionary anthem, and even a military march. The powerful emotions and stubborn nationalism raised by one song seem at times comical and othertimes, eerily telling. In a region besieged by ethnic hatred and war, what begins as a light-hearted investigation ends as a sociological and historical exploration of the deep misunderstandings between the people of the Balkans."

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Semana Santa in Seville

Relates to: Europe
#180, 52 minutes, Colour
DER, 1995, DVD
Filmmaker/Anthropologist: Mary Flannery

"Semana Santa in Seville documents the Spanish city's annual celebration of Holy Week - a tradition that dates back more than five centuries. Lifelike images of Christ and the Virgin, and scenes of the Passion, are carried in procession through the city, escorted by long files of hooded penitents. Throngs of onlookers from all over the world gather to view the spectacle.
The program covers the history and art of the Semana Santa processions. Interviews with the participants and the people surrounding this fascinating ritual ­ a priest, a penitent, a gypsy, a young girl donning her mantilla, a man who helps carry the heavy platforms, a sculptor, a saeta singer, and more, are juxtaposed with stunning images of baroque processions."

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Romeria: Day of the Virgin

Relates to: Europe, Religion
#181, 58 minutes, Colour
DER, 1987, DVD
Filmmaker/Anthropologist: Jerome Mintz

"The centerpiece of the film is a religious pilgrimage to a local shrine of the Virgin near the town of Alcala de los Gazules, Cadiz, Spain. Families make elaborate preparations for the day long event. Pilgrimage organizers and worshippers discuss the ambiguities of their beliefs and affiliations."

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The Children of Leningradsky

Relates to: Europe, Postsocialism
#182, 35 minutes, Colour
National Film Board of Canada, 2004, DVD
Producer: Hanna Polak
Director: Andrzej Celinski

Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary, Short Subject, this film takes an unblinking look at the reality of homeless children living in Russia today - in particular the ones who call the underground Leningradsky train station in Moscow home.
In post-Soviet Russia between 1 and 4 million children are homeless. At the time of filming, authorities estimated that some 30,000 of them were living on the streets of Moscow. Filmmakers Hanna Polak and Andrzej Celinski bring us the gritty and heartbreaking story.
Escaping homes fraught with violence and neglect, the children sleep in stairways, garbage containers and underground tunnels. They make homes on hot water pipes to protect themselves from the harsh winter. They panhandle and prostitute themselves for money. They sniff glue to curb hunger and to escape from the world around them. Yet the spirit of a child is ever present, as they play with balloons, sing, dance and dream of their mothers.
When Tanya, a beautiful 14-year-old homeless girl dies from a glue overdose, the magnitude and urgency of this issue become overwhelmingly apparent. Tanya's friend condemns the crying mother and blames her alcohol addiction for causing Tanya's death. This film explores the socials ills and shortcomings of a country still struggling to live up to its democratic expectations.

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Join Me In Shambhala

Relates to: Europe, Religion, Postsocialism
#183, 29 minutes, Colour
DER, 2002, DVD
Filmmaker: Anya Bernstein

Once brutally persecuted under the Soviet regime, Buddhism is re-emerging in Buryatia, Southern Siberia. But with a past where lamas were killed in prisons and temples burned to ashes, there are few masters left to pass on the tradition. Whether or not this faith survives depends on an incarnate Tibetan lama, scholar and meditational master who travels around remote villages to re-awaken Buddhism. The film discovers an oasis of spirituality in a unique enclave of Siberia, where East meets West and draws unexpected parallels between the two.

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Disbelief

Relates to: Europe, Political, Postsocialism
#184, 54 minutes, Colour
National Film Board of Canada, 2004, DVD
Director: Andrei Nekrasov
Producer: Olga Konskaia

When Tatyana Morozova, a pre-school teacher in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, learned that her mother had been killed and her old apartment block destroyed by an explosion back in Moscow, she believed the official version: that the attack was the work of Chechen terrorists. Then an American scholar published a book arguing that the bombing was engineered by the FSB, the Russian secret service, to help Vladimir Putin win the elections. Torn by grief and disbelief, Tatyana and her sister Alyona embark on a journey in space and time to seek the truth – followed by the camera of Russian filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov. Filmed in Milwaukee, Moscow, Denver, Washington, London and the Ural Mountains, Disbelief chronicles the agony of a devastated family swept up in the high-stakes politics of global terrorism.

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We Are All Neighbours: Bosnia

Relates to: Intro, Europe, Postsocialism
#185 & #F33, 52 minutes, Colour
RAI: Disappearing World, 1993, VHS
Producer: Debbie Christie

In a Muslim/Catholic village near Sarajevo, rumors fly and suspicions spread. Neighbors who had been
close friends for 50 years no longer speak to each other, and the peaceful coexistence between Croats
and Muslims disintegrates into mutual distrust and fear.

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Siberian Dream

Relates to: Religion, Shamanism, Buddhism, Siberia, Postsocialism
#186, 30 mins., colour
Filmakers Library, 2004, DVD
By Janet Gardner with Irina Pantaeva

Originally from a s mall village in the Buryat region of Siberia, Irina Pantaeva emigrated to the U.S. in the 1980's. Every summer, Irina, a world-famous model, and her son travel back to help her troubled family, trapped in the new free market society struggling with alcoholism, lawlessness and despair. Through interviews with academics, local shamans, monks, musicians, and farmers, Siberian Dream shows the effects of perestroika and glasnost on this Buryat community. The Buryats are trying to develop an open society while struggling to revive their culture. Irina and her family embody these efforts. Buryat-Mongols -- including the Pantaeva family -- practice Buddhism and Shamanism simultaneously. Irina celebrates her endangered Buryat-Mongol culture, teaching her son the importance of honoring their ancestors.

Dr. David Foglesong, Professor of Russian History at Rutgers, illuminates the effects of Russification and the events and personalities driving glasnost and perestroika. Dr. Robert Thurman, Professor of Religion at Columbia University and President of Tibet House, New York, discusses Tibetan Buddhism and history as it affected the Mongolian tribes to which the Buryats belong.

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Seeking the Spirit: Plains Indians in Russia

Relates to: Ethnicity, Native American culture, Religion, Russia, Postsocialism
#187, 27 mins., colour
DER, 1999, DVD
By Bea Medicine and Liucija Baskauskas

What qualities are necessary for a ritual to be ethnically 'authentic'? Dr. Bea Medicine, a Native American anthropologist and her Lithuanian colleague, Dr. Liucija Baskauskas explore this issue as they visit a group of Russians who have met for their annual two week Pow Wow in an isolated wooded area outside of St. Petersburg. The Russians, predominantly couples with young children, tell us they initially became interested in Native American culture via Hollywood films. Back on a reservation in South Dakota, upon viewing a video of the dances and elaborate costumes of the Russians, a Lacota woman good-naturedly jokes, 'they must've seen A Man Called Horse'. We see at close range the careful attention to detail the Russians have invested in the recreation of the look and the feel of Native America ritual and life. When asked why they are doing this they tell us it is for their children. They are seeking the 'right way to live', in order to impart authentic Native American values to their offspring and to escape the cycle of consumerism and the negative aspects that they see in their own culture.

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Red Terror on the Amber Coast: Soviet Occupation--Lithuanian Resistance of 1939-1993.

Relates to Eastern Europe, Socialism, the State
#188, colour
Domemedia Productions, DVD
By David O'Rourke

"Red Terror on the Amber Coast" documents the fifty-year-long struggle between the people of Lithuania and the Soviet KGB and their predecessors to impose Soviet control on a free and democratic, Western republic.  Using filmed interviews, archival photos and newsreel footage, it describes Stalin's use of state-sponsored terror to destroy opposition, collectivize agriculture and industry, and create a single social class all under party control.  Some interviews record the long-term, armed resistance by organized partisans to the KGB and its troops. Others describe their experiences, as adults and children, of arrest, imprisonment, deportation to Siberia and the Arctic coast, and years as slave laborers in the mines and forests of the far East.

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Indonesia

The Meo

Relates to: Indonesia, Ritual
#201, 53 minutes, Colour
RAI: Disappearing World, 1972, VHS
Director: Brian Moser
Anthropologist: Louis Werner

Note: The copy of this film in the TA room film cabinet is in very rough shape, will not track properly…

Over the last 3000 years the Meo (Miao or Hmong), hill tribesmen of China, have migrated south to avoid oppression and preserve their way of life. Today they live in scattered mountain villages in south China and southeast Asia. The 250,000 of them who live in the Kingdom of Laos have suffered greater losses, relative to their numbers, in the Indo-China wars than any other group.
In 1972, when this film was made, the Vietnam was still at its peak. The first part starts by examining a hill-village, which managed to remain neutral and avoid the worst effects of the war. The daily life and material culture of the Meo people are shown as they sow rice using slash-and-burn agricultural methods, distil opium for sale and entertainment, and discuss with the anthropologist their fear of conscription and its effect on other villages. Two rituals are shown (the shaman who performed them was the close friend of the anthropologist) one to banish a nightmare, the other to exorcise the spirit of a man which haunts the house of the brother who accidentally killed him while out hunting.
The second part of the film shows the Meo who live in American-run refugee camps (which is the majority of them), far removed from the village life of their fellows. The interviews with some of the Meo pilots who fly American B28 bombers over their homeland unknowingly emphasize the tragic absurdities of such a war.

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The Longest Struggle: The Karen of Burma

Relates to: Indonesia
#202, 53 minutes, Colour
RAI: Disappearing World, 1993, VHS
Director: John Sheppard
Anthropologist: Tom Shehan

The Karen of Burma have been fighting a war for nearly half a century against the Burmese, whilst attempting to retain their traditional way of life. Sons and daughters who have never known peace follow parents and grandparents against one of the most repressive regimes in the world.

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The Sakuddei

Relates to: Indonesia, Religion
#203, 53 minutes, Colour
RAI: Disappearing World, 1974, VHS
Director: John Sheppard
Anthropologist: Reimar Schefold

The Sakuddei are a small and ethnically separate community living on the island of Siberut off the west coast of Sumatra in Indonesia. Their distinctive way of life and elaborate religious ceremonies, centered on the umah (ceremonial house) are under threat from the Indonesian government which wishes to ‘civilize' the Sakuddei. These people are also threatened by a timber company from the Philippines which has been granted a logging concession in the Sakuddei's territory.
The first part of the film contains strikingly photographed scenes of ritual life in the umah, while in the second part there is an interview with a representative of the government who wants to send the Sakuddei children to school in a government village on the coast. The adults fear that the children will lose touch with their own customs and identity if placed in such an institution. Their concern forms part of a moving and dramatic film which explores the contrast between the Sakuddei's way of life and the various pressures of modern Indonesian society on them: Islam, money, police, administrators and the lumber companies.

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The Dancer and The Dance

Relates to: Indonesia
#204, 44 minutes, Colour
RAI, 1988, VHS
Filmmaker/Anthropologist: Felicia Hughes-Freeland

Javanese palace dancing has long attracted outsiders by its exotic costumes and effortless grace of movement. These first impressions belie the physical and philosophical rigors which are the reality of the tradition for those who create it. The film goes beyond appearances, and introduces the dance through the performer, Susindahati, and the connoisseur, Pak Seno; providing two perspectives on dance from the inside.

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Releasing the Spirits: A Village Cremation in Bali

Relates to: Indonesia, Ritual
#205, 43 minutes, Colour
DER, 1990, VHS
Filmmaker: Timothy and Patsy Asch
Anthropologists: Linda Connor

Cremation rites are the most elaborate rites of passage performed by Balinese householders. Poor families may wait years before accumulating enough resources to cremate their dead, who are buried in the meantime In 1978 many more cremations than usual were carried out, because of the great purification ceremony, Eka Dasa Rudra, held at Bali's main temple, Besakih, in 1979. Religious officials recommended that all Balinese cleanse the island by cremating their dead, as part of the preparations for the great Besakih ceremony.
Villagers of limited means pooled their resources to perform group cremations which greatly reduced the cost for each family. This film is about a group of villagers in Central Bali who cooperated to carry out a group cremation. The film shows the way they approached this task as well as the cycle of rituals: the cremation, post-cremation, and casting of ashes into the ocean. It had been 15 years since they last held this ceremony. Most of the narration is provided by four participants, recorded as they were watching videotapes of the ceremonies two years later. Each brings a different perspective to the events documented on the film. The three voices of the filmmakers also bring different perspectives.
The film is linked to the previous films on Bali because it, too, deals with ritual and possession and because the cremation is held in Jero Tapakan's hamlet and she is a central participant.

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A Balinese Trance Séance

Relates to: Indonesia, Ritual
#206(a), 30 minutes, Colour
DER, 1980, VHS
Filmmakers: Timothy and Patsy Asch
Anthropologist: Laura Conner

Note: This VHS contains two full documentaries, 206(a) and 206(b)

Jero Tapakan, a spirit medium in a small, central Balinese village, consults with a group of clients in her shrine house. An introduction precedes the main séance, providing a visual impression of a séance and background information on the medium and her profession. The clients wish to contact the spirit of their dead son to discover the cause of his death and his wishes for his cremation ceremony. Jero is possessed several times in the course of the séance: first by a protective houseyard deity who demands propitiatory offerings that had previously been overlooked; then by the spirit of the petitioner's deceased father, who requests further offerings to ease his path to the other world; and finally by the spirit of the son. In an emotional scene the son's spirit reveals the cause of his premature death (sorcery) and instructions for his forthcoming cremation. Between each possession the medium converses with her clients, clarifying vague points in the often ambiguous trance speech.

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Jero on Jero: A Balinese Trance Séance Observed

Relates to: Indonesia, Ritual
#206(b), 17 minutes, Colour
DER, 1981, VHS
Filmmakers: Timothy and Patsy Asch
Anthropologist: Laura Conner

Note: This VHS contains two full documentaries, 206(a) and 206(b)

In 1980, anthropologist Laura Connor and filmmakers Tim and Patsy Asch returned to Bali with videocassette recording of A Balinese Trance Séance. Jero Tapakan, the spirit medium, was invited to view the footage. The resulting film, Jero on Jero: A Balinese Trance Séance Observed, presents some of her reactions and comments to Connor as she watched and listened to herself for the first time. Jero had a unique opportunity to spontaneously and consciously react to and reflect upon the experience of possession. Her comments provide insights into how she feels while possessed, her understanding of sorcery, and her humility in the presence of the supernatural world. More mundane thoughts are revealed as well, for example the importance of the fine appearance of her house. Jero on Jero could be most fruitfully used as a companion to A Balinese Trance Séance, which would be shown first and followed by a discussion, before screening Jero Tapakan's own response.

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The Medium is the Masseuse: A Balinese Massage

Relates to: Indonesia, Ritual
#207(a), 30 minutes, Colour
DER, 1982, VHS
Filmmakers: Timothy and Patsy Asch
Anthropologist: Linda Connor

Note: This VHS contains two full documentaries, 207(a) and 207(b)

Unlike many spirit mediums, Jero Tapakan practices as a masseuse every three days, when possession is not auspicious. This film focuses on Jero's treatment of Ida Bagus, a member of the nobility from a neighboring town. Jero has been treating her client for sterility and seizures. She begins work this day with religious preparations and the assembling of traditional medicines. Treatment includes a thorough massage, administration of eyedrops, an infusion, and a special paste for the chest. The dialogue, which is subtitled, includes a detailed discussion between anthropologist Linda Connor, Ida Bagus, and Jero, about the nature and treatment of the illness, as well as informal banter between Jero, her other patients, and people in her houseyard. In an interview, Ida Bagus and his wife speak about the ten-year history of his illness and a variety of diagnoses.

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Jero Tapakan: Stories in the Life of a Balinese Healer

Relates to: Indonesia, Ritual
#207(b), 25 minutes, Colour
DER, 1983, VHS
Filmmakers: Timothy and Patsy Asch
Anthropologist: Linda Connor

Note: This VHS contains two full documentaries, 207(a) and 207(b)

In Bali, the traditional healer mediates between the human and divine worlds. He or she may become possessed by deities or ancestral spirits who provide clues about the ultimate causes of affliction, the wishes of the deceased, or auspicious dates for ceremonies. Many healers, who are also peasant farmers, have additional specialties: the interpretation of palm-leaf manuscripts, mid-wifery, or divination.
In this fourth film of the series, Jero talks with Linda Connor about her life. She recollects her poverty and despair as a farmer twenty-five years ago, and how she left her home to wander for months as a peddler in the north Bali countryside. After serious illnesses and mystical visions, she returned to her husband and children, consulted with spirit mediums, and decided to undergo a consecration ceremony as a spirit medium herself. After years of repaying debts, today she sustains a lively practice.

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Spice Island Saga

Relates to: Indonesia
#208, 58 minutes, Colour
Ring of Fire: An Indonesian Journey, 1988, VHS
Filmmaker: Lorne Blair
Anthropologist: Lawrence Blair

Following in the footsteps of the great 19th century naturalist, Alfred Russell Wallace, the Blair Brothers embark with the piratical Bugis tribe on a 2000 mile journey through the Spice Islands in search of the golden-tailed Bird of Paradise, the symbol of Eternal Life. Journeying on a black-sailed schooner, they encounter pearl-divers and python-hunters, before finally reaching the Aru Islands, close to New Guinea. Their odyssey with the Bugis tribe (who gave the word "boogeyman" to the English language) starts the Blairs on the inner journey which leads them ever deeper into the forgotten wisdom of the island peoples.

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Dance of the Warriors

Relates to: Indonesia
#209, 58 minutes, Colour
Ring of Fire: An Indonesian Journey, 1988, VHS
Filmmaker: Lorne Blair
Anthropologist: Lawrence Blair

The Blairs sail to Komodo and film the giant, carnivorous lizards of "Dragon Island," whose tiny human population is descended from the people banished by the neighboring form sultans of Bima. On the island of Sumba, they witness a veiled form of human sacrifice by equestrian warriors. Master weavers of magical textiles, the Sumbanese still live by ancient beliefs, ritually keeping the balance between the Merapu gods of the sky above, and Nyali, the Sea Goddess of the world below. The brothers journey 50,000 years into the past to live with Asmat headhunters in New Guinea. They eventually reach Bali where they build a home in a village of farmers, artists and mystics.

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East of Krakatoa

Relates to: Indonesia
#210, 58 minutes, Colour
Ring of Fire: An Indonesian Journey, 1988, VHS
Filmmaker: Lorne Blair
Anthropologist: Lawrence Blair

In the shadow of Java's constantly erupting volcanoes, the Blairs descend from the crater of the newly erupted "Child of Krakatoa" and encounter a world of medieval courts, mystical shadow puppet plays, forgers of magical swords, healers with supernatural powers and whole communities ruled by the powerful "Spirit of the South Seas." Back in Bali, they meet such sages as the master artist Nyoman Lemped, who was to die a conscious death on the day of his choosing at the age of 116. And among the Toraja people of the Celebes highlands, they share in the massive funeral rites of the last king of the tribe which believes its ancestors came from the stars in skyships.

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Dream Wanderers of Borneo

Relates to: Indonesia
#211, 58 minutes, Colour
Ring of Fire: An Indonesian Journey, 1988, VHS
Filmmaker: Lorne Blair
Anthropologist: Lawrence Blair

For 800 miles, through uncharted rainforest, the Blairs seek the last of the nomadic Punan Dyaks, the free-roving masters of the interior, the "dream wandering" tribe believed to no longer exist. The brothers struggle inwards, plagued by torrential rain, quicksand, leeches, and virulent insects. Eventually, they find and live with the Punan Dyaks where they are initiated into the spiritual mysteries of the "dream wanderers." Lorne and Lawrence join the dance of the hornbill and get tattooed with the symbol of Aping – Tree of All Life. This, their shaman explains to them, they will now bear, wherever they may get to amongst the tribes of man, as a reminder that all life forms are part of a single tree.

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Trials of Telo Rinpoche

Relates to: Indonesia, Religion
#212, 50 minutes, Colour
White Crane Films, 1994, VHS
Produced/Directed: Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam

Telo Rinpoche, a.k.a. Eddie Ombadykow, is a 21-year-old American whose favourite band is The Smashing Pumpkins. He is also a Buddhist monk who was brought up in a Tibetan monastery in India and recognized by His Holiness the Dalai Lama as a high reincarnate lama. Now, he finds himself in his ancestral homeland, Kalmykia, a remote Buddhist republic in southern Russia, where he is revered by the people as their spiritual leader and charged with the responsibility of reviving Buddhism. The Trials of Telo Rinpoche is the poignant story of his efforts to come to terms with his own unusual destiny while struggling to fulfill the expectations thrust upon him by his family and by the people of Kalmykia who see him as their Messiah.

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The Land Dayaks of Borneo

Relates to: Indonesia, Ritual
#213, 38 minutes, Colour
1966, VHS
Filmmaker/Anthropologist: William Robert Geddes

Shot in 1961 in the village of Mentu Tapuh, Southwestern Sarawak. General life of village, oriented to the river, with some gardening and gathering. Climaxed by a medium performing in a Harvest Festival.

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The Three Worlds of Bali

Relates to: Intro, Indonesia, Ritual, Visual
#214 & #F7, 59 minutes, Colour
DER, 1979, VHS
Anthropologists: Ira R. Abrams & Stephen Lansing
Producer: Michael Ambrosino

On the Indonesian island of Bali, the arts permeate almost every aspect of daily life. Gamelan music, wayang (shadow puppet) theater, dance, and elaborately constructed offerings of foods and flowers all represent attempts to please the gods and placate demons. In Balinese cosmology, demons are thought to dwell in the watery underworld, gods in the upper world, and human beings in the middle realm between the two. Much of human effort is directed toward maintaining the proper balance between these worlds, and between the forces of growth and decay.
The pinnacle of such efforts is the ritual Eka Dasa Rudra, held once every hundred years. The entire population of the island is mobilized for this event, preparing offerings and streaming from thousands of village temples in processions to the sea. Eleven demons, of which Rudra is the most powerful, must be transformed into beneficient spirits. No one who participated in the ritual filmed in 1979 had ever witnessed its performance, which last occurred a century ago, and so the ritual was based on writings in ancient lontar-palm manuscripts.
There is also a political dimension to Eka Dasa Rudra. In 1963, upon the urging of then President Sukarno, Balinese priests prepared to hold the ritual before the calendrically proper year. Preparations were met with the first eruption in recorded history of Bali's great volcano, Gunung Agung. This terrible disaster was seen as a confirmation of the gods' and demons' powers and the necessity of honoring the traditional calendar. In the spring of 1979, when Eka Dasa Rudra was finally held, President Suharto arrived, but not by his helicopter, which, it was feared, might have impeded the demons' descent.

Africa

In Search of Cool Ground: The Kwegu

Relates to: Africa
#226, 51 minutes, Colour
RAI: Disappearing World, 1985, VHS
Producer/Director: Leslie Woodhead
Anthropologist: David Turton

The Kwegu share a remote corner of Ethiopia with the Mursi. This small group of hunters and cultivators provide the Mursi with a vital service – they make the dugout canoes used to cross the Omo River. In exchange, the Mursi provide security and the cattle the Kwegu need for their complicated tribal rituals.

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Masai Manhood

Relates to: Africa, Ritual
#227, 53 minutes, Colour
RAI: Disappearing World, 1975, VHS
Director: Chris Curling
Anthropologist Melissa Llewelyn-Davies

The film was made after Masai Women and in the same area. Together the two films provide a vivid view of Masai men and women and their place in Masai society.
The Masai are pastoral nomads in the East African rift valley with a social system which differentiates sharply between men and women and between age-sets. A particularly crucial distinction is made between men who are moran (‘warriors') and more senior men classes as elders. After circumcision men live in the forest on the fringes of Masai society as moran debarred from marriage and excluded from crucial decision-making procedures.
The film is focused on the life of the moran and on the dramatic eunoto ceremony which marks the important transition from warriorhood to full social maturity and the responsibilities of elderhood. The moran are given an opportunity in the film to talk about warriorhood and they sensitively strive to explain their ideals to the anthropologist. Their words are effectively translated in sub-titles. There is much valuable information in the film on the events leading up to the eunoto ceremony – including a fascinating sequence on the joking abuse directed by the moran at their mothers – and on the ritual procedures involved in the rite de passage itself.
This may well be the last eunoto ceremony ever to be held as the pressures on the Masai to change their way of life are increasingly strong, and the film is important for the way in which it conveys the drama of the events and their significance both for the participants and for the Masai social system

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Masai Women

Relates to: Africa, Gender
#228, 53 minutes, Colour
RAI: Disappearing World, 1974, VHS
Director: Chris Curling
Anthropologist: Melissa Llewelyn-Davies

The Masai are cattle herders living in the Easy African rift valley: they grow no crops and are proud of being a non-agricultural people. Cattle are the all-important source of wealth and social status, and Masai love their cattle, composing poems to them. However, it is the men who have exclusive control over rights to cattle, and women are dependent, throughout their lives, on a man – father, husband or son – for rights of access to property. A woman's status as ‘daughter,' ‘wife' or ‘mother' is therefore crucial and this film examines with depth the sensibility the social construction of womanhood in Masai society, concentrating upon women's attitudes to their own lives.
The film details a series of events in women's lives, from their circumcision ceremonies which mark their transition from girlhood to womanhood, to the moment when they proudly watch their sons make the transition to elderhood in the eunoto ceremony. This is one of the most admired of the Disappearing World films, not least because of the skill and sensitivity with which these non-literate Masai women are interviewed; the lucidity of their replies provides insights into what it is to be a Masai woman, in a manner which enriches the visual material.
The commentary spoken by the anthropologist is detailed without overburdening the image, and the subtitled translations of women's songs – which express their desire for children and the love they feel for their moran – contribute to making this one of the high points of the series.

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The Mursi

Relates to: Intro, Africa, Political
#229 & #F23, 53 minutes, Colour
RAI: Disappearing World, 1974, VHS
Director: Leslie Woodhead
Anthropologist: David Turton

The Mursi, an unadministered tribe living in remote south-west Ethiopia, are a cattle-keeping and agricultural group without chiefs or leaders. This film, made under extremely difficult conditions, focuses on the way decisions are made in this society at a time of crisis. The crisis occurs when a shortage of grazing land, during a draught in 1974, led to warfare with their neighbours, the Bodi. The greater part of the film is concerned with a debate over the Bodi peace proposals. The Mursi reach their political decisions in formal debate at which point each warrior who rises to speak is heard patiently until all the important issues have been raised and a measure of agreement has emerged.
The Mursi is a serious and important film, both ethnographically and as a contribution to the understanding of political systems.

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Priesthood and Ritual in Ghana: Abidjan Mamiwater Shrine

Relates to: Africa, Ritual
#230 , 62 minutes, Colour
1997, VHS

Documents the Fetatotro, the annual Festival of the Divinities, celebrated at the Abidjan Mamiwater Village Shrine in 1994, and the Nutikloklo Kpe Konu, a purification ritual conducted on the occasion of the death of Togbi, Abidjan Mamiwater's wife, in 1993

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Moree Maame Water Project

Relates to: Africa, Ritual
#231, 61 minutes, Colour
1997, VHS

Documents the Afahye, the annual Festival of the Divinities, including Maame Water, which was celebrated at the Tsigaa No. 1 Shrine by its priest, Bosomfo Kow Tawiah, in 1995; the ritual Closing and Opening of the Emfa Lagoon in Moree in 1995 and 1996; Aba Yaba's work as a Maame Water priestess; an interview with Kwesi Kaya, a fisherman who invokes Maame Water for a successful catch

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The !Kung San: Traditional Life

Relates to: Africa
#232 & #F9, 26 minutes, Colour
DER, 1987, CD/VHS
Filmmaker: John Marshall

Note: CD must be viewed using a computer or smart classroom, not compatible with most DVD players…

This video depicts traditional Ju'hoan life by using vignettes from longer films in the !Kung San series. Footage selected shows tool-making technology, hunting and gathering, social life and children at play, and gives the viewer a feel for the vastness and beauty of the Nyae Nyae region of the Kalahari Desert.

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Return to Belaye: A Rite of Passage

Relates to: Africa, Ritual
#233, 53 minutes, Colour
DER, 2002, DVD
Filmmaker: Amy Flannery

An insider's look at a manhood initiation ritual in the village of Belaye, Senegal, West Africa.
The documentary focuses on filmmaker, Amy Flannery and her husband, Papis Goudiaby, as they leave their home in the United States and journey back to Papis' birthplace where he must undergo the tribe's traditional initiation rite.
Dressed in colourful ceremonial costumes and under the influence of hallucinogenic roots, the villagers fire cannons, wave knives in the air, and dance themselves into a frenzy. The initiates reveal their fears about entering the sacred forest. It's a tough ordeal for the initiates and agonizing for Flannery, who wavers between feelings of alienation and angst watching her husband go through the ritual. More than an anthropological study of an ancient initiation rite, Return to Belaye is an honest and intimate cross-cultural love story.

Religion/Ritual

Teyyam: The Annual Visit of the God Vishnumurti

Relates to: Intro, Religion/Ritual, India
#251 & #F32, 57 minutes, Colour
DER, 1998, VHS
Filmmaker: Erik de Maaker

In Northern Kerala, Hindus revere numerous Gods through Teyyam rituals. Each Teyyam is dedicated to a specific God. In Teyyam worship a ritual specialist, a teyyam performer, takes the shape of the God and becomes transformed. The rituals are performed at yearly festivals held at small temples devoted to Teyyam Gods which offer devotees the opportunity to communicate directly with them, asking for support to deal with problems such as illness and theft. The Gods worshipped are violent, demanding offerings like chicken sacrifices and palm wine. The ritual specialists work in small groups of male relatives, all of whom belong to the lower castes. Each group holds rights to the annual performance of rituals at dozens of Teyyam temples. During the Teyyam season, December through March, the work at the festivals is a major source of income for the performers. The rest of the year most of them do low paying labour as "beedi" (cigarette) rollers.
This program shows one teyyam ritual for the popular God Vishnumurti, it is a visually dazzling event which is one of the few occasions that brings both the higher and the lower castes of the different Hindu communities together. The performers are shown in the preparations and also after the festival. We have an opportunity to experience the entire socio-cultural context within which this event takes place.

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The King Does Not Lie: The Initiation of a Shango Priest

Relates to: Religion/Ritual, Afro-Caribbean
#252, 50 minutes, Colour
Filmmakers Library, 1993, VHS
Producers: Judith Gleason and Elisa Mereghetti

The King Does Not Lie shows an ancient religion, Santeria, whose New World practitioners have too often been maligned out of ignorance and prejudice and even harassed by authorities. In this intimate documentary we see a contemporary Puerto Rican community of "santeros" gather for the initiation of a priest of Shango, the "Thundergod" of the traditional Yoruba religion.
As we follow the initiate through a series of ritual events, a new perspective on ancient rites is revealed. From its African origins, including the language in which the chants are sung, we see the basis of these rites of initiation in ceremonies performed in churches and temples of established religions. Sacred stones washed in sacred, leafy waters become the energy for ritual purification and empowerment. The anointment of head, feet and stones with the blood of sacrifice ensures atonement.
On the third day the community gathers to witness the divination session in which the initiate receives his new name, "Oba Ko Puro," translated from Yoruba as "The King Does Not Lie." With the name, comes the story of the initiate's transfer of allegiance from an outer/worldly to inner/spiritual authority. Combining ritual narration with poetic translation from Lucumi/Yoruba chants provides the viewer with an understanding of the literal and figurative dimensions of the ceremony. The King Does Not Lie is a film of special interest to students of comparative religion, ritual and Afro-Caribbean culture.

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Spite: An African Prophet Healer

Relates to: Religion/Ritual, Africa, Medical
#253, 54 minutes, Colour
Filmmakers Library, 1985, VHS
Filmmakers: J.P. Colleyn and Catherine De Clippel

People from all over the Ivory Coast seek out prophet-healers for treatment of their medical and emotional problems. Some of these ailments may be caused by the stress of cultural change. Often Western medicine cannot cure them.
This stunningly photographed film focuses on Sebim Odjo, who draws upon Moslem, Christian and traditional African beliefs in his healing ceremonies. He moderates disputes, tracks down the sources of illness, and uses his powers to heal. We see a water cure used on a patient ill with spite.

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Witchcraft Among the Azande

Relates to: Intro, Religion/Ritual, Africa
#254 & #F27, 52 minutes, Colour
RAI, 1981, VHS
Filmmaker: André Singer
Anthropologist: John Ryle

Evans-Pritchard's book Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande has become a classic of both ethnography and theories of witchcraft. Now, anthropologist John Ryle and filmmaker André Singer, who was himself one of Evans-Pritchard's students and has published on the Azande, have teamed together to produce the film Witchcraft among the Azande for Granada Television's Disappearing World series. Singer wanted to learn for himself the accuracy of Evans-Pritchard's analysis and to note the changes since the original fieldwork carried out between 1926 and 1930.
Among the Azande, witchcraft is considered to be a major danger. They believe that witchcraft can be inherited and that a person can be a witch, causing others harm, without realizing her or his influence. Because of this danger, effective means of diagnosing witchcraft are, for them, vital. One method is through the use of an oracle. Several kinds of oracles are explored in the film, the most important being benge, a poison which is fed to baby chickens. The chick's death or survival provides the oracle's answer. Azande also use benge to judge other evidence in a court before a chief.
Anthropologists have long argued about the nature and significance of beliefs in witchcraft and sorcery and, more generally, about the similarities and differences between `traditional' thought and Western science. This film treads a delicate path, exploring an explanation of reality incomprehensible to a majority of Westerners and, at the same time, trying to portray the Azande as a clear-thinking, and almost familiar group of people. In this aim the film succeeds by creating a tension whereby the oracle's answers are important to the viewers because they have become involved and are forming their own opinions about the guilt or innocence of the defendants.
Zande is not a static society and much has changed since Evans-Pritchard's original fieldwork. The area filmed is influenced by Catholicism; people are Christian, but the church cannot give answers to many of the questions of the Azande people. The older people see their children abandoning traditional moral and other values. For this schism, the older people seem to blame the government more than the church as the church teaches a value system consonant with the traditional one. Yet, alongside the Christian influence and changes among the younger generation, the power of beliefs in witchcraft and oracles remains.

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The Shilluk of Southern Sudan

Relates to: Religion/Ritual, Sudan, Political
#255, 52 minutes, Colour
RAI: Disappearing World, 1975, VHS
Filmmaker: Chris Curling
Anthropologists: Paul Howell, Walter Kunijwok and André Singer

This film presents a compelling visual and aural analysis of Shilluk kingship in 1975, and provides a very useful complement to Evans-Pritchard's 1948 text, The Divine Kingship of the Shilluk.
Although the Reth (king) has been reduced to the status of second-class magistrate in dispute settlement by the Sudanese government, he is still the focus of political and national identity for a Shilluk people composed of competing territorial groupings. At the death of the Reth, his spirit passes into the Nile. This film follows the procession of priests as they carry the effigy of Nyikang, the 16th century founder of the Shilluk dynasty, and his son Dak on the pilgrimage from the Nile, retracing the movements of their conquest of the North, capturing the Reth and installing Nyikang. The journey is part of a spiritual renewal for the Shilluk, as well as a renewal of political unity which reaffirms the social order. The outcome of the journey is known, for the Reth-elect will be captured after a ritual battle, and only after being possessed by the spirit of Nyikang will he be installed as King. Thus, the office is seen to be more powerful than the man, and the continuity of divine kingship is affirmed.
However, this is not simply a filmed version of the type of analysis provided in Evans-Pritchard's book, for it deals with the kingship in a quite different political context. For example, throughout the period which leads to his installation, the king-elect is guarded by Government police who are not Shilluk. It is apparent that the future king accedes to office with the `support' of the Government, the `mock' aspect of the ritual battle being somewhat confused by the very real presence of the guards and their disruptive effects on the proceedings.
In any course on political anthropology this film is clearly crucial, and for those quick enough to appreciate it, the commentary carries a great deal of information and analysis. It is also rated highly for verbal and visual accuracy.

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Magical Curing

Relates to: Religion/Ritual, Papua New Guinea, Medical
#256, 27 minutes, Black & White
1972, VHS
Filmmaker/Anthropologist: William E. Mitchell

Magical Curing, a black and white, 27-minute VHS video cassette film, is from footage shot between 1970 and 1972 by anthropologist William E. Mitchell, filming alone, during fieldwork with the Wape (Wah'pay) people of the West Wepik Province of Papua New Guinea. All of the depicted events were filmed as they naturally occurred, without direction.
Approximately 10,000 Wape live in the rain-drenched Torricelli Mountains between Papua New Guinea's northwest coast and the Sepik River's great valley of sprawling swamps. Their primary foodstuff, sago starch, is notoriously low in nutrients, a factor contributing to one of the lowest birth weights in the world and slow physical maturation. Villagers also suffer from many upper respiratory infections and malaria is endemic. Death comes early, usually in the mid-forties. It probably is not coincidental that Wape ceremonial life is primarily centered around the curing festivals shown in the film.
Villagers, in their efforts to alleviate suffering, not only utilize the services of indigenous curers and demon exorcism societies, but also those of government sponsored aide posts, maternal and child health clinics, and a small regional hospital. In contrast to Western medical therapies whose theory of causation is based on the interaction of natural factors, the Wape believe that most sickness is ultimately caused by supernatural factors such as ghosts, demons, witches, and sorcery. Although an illness might be initially diagnosed as caused by quarreling, trespass, stealing, or stinginess, the final cause explanation is usually related to a punishing spirit or witch.
Each patrilineage owns tracts of forest land wherein dwell the ancestral ghosts who protect the lineage lands and the rights of its members. Related to the ancestors in a mystical way are the vengeful and unpredictable demons who live in places of strange appearance – a waterfall, a still pond, a land slide. The Wape believe that ghosts and demons, when angered, enter into the victim's body causing sickness. Men of the lineage related to the avenging spirit are then asked to exorcise the victim.

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Pomo Shaman

Relates to: Intro, Religion/Ritual, Medical
#257 & #F30, 20 minutes, Black & White
1964, VHS
Producer: William Heick

Rare record of the second and final night of a shamanistic curing ceremony among the Kashia group of Southwestern Pomo Indians. The Indian 'sucking doctor' is a prophet of the Bole Maru religion and the spiritual head of the community.

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Potlatch: A Strict Law Bids Us Dance

Relates to: Intro, Religion/Ritual, Economic
#258 & #F31, 54 minutes, Colour
1975, VHS
Director: Dennis Wheeler
Producer: Tom Shandel

Over the centuries, the Kwakwaka'wakw First Nations of the Northwest Coast developed a sophisticated culture based on the ceremonial giving away of surplus wealth. This was the basis of an indigenous social and economic ecology. With the arrival of European settlers intent on the accumulation of property, traditional Native society came under attack. For years, the Canadian government outlawed the potlatch, crushing a unique culture and seizing its artifacts to be studied and "protected."
Directed by Dennis Wheeler and produced by Tom Shandel, this film was created in collaboration with the Kwakwaka'wakw First Nations of Alert Bay, British Columbia who retained editorial control. It is based upon historical research compiled by the U'mista Cultural Society of Alert Bay and features important testimony from Kwakwaka'wakw elders. The film is narrated by Gloria Cranmer Webster. Her father Dan Cranmer came into conflict with the Canadian government when he held a potlatch in 1921 and people were arrested. The Kwakwaka'wakw First Nations continue to hold the potlatch today, in the tradition of their ancestors.

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The Holy Ghost People (Parts 1 and 2)

Relates to: Religion/Ritual
#259, 53 minutes, Black & White
1967, VHS & CD
Filmmaker: Peter Adair

Note: CD must be viewed using a computer or smart classroom, not compatible with most DVD players…

Holy Ghost People is a 53-minute documentary about snake-handling, strychnine-swilling members of the "Holiness" church. Rightly hailed by Margaret Mead as one of the best ethnographic films ever made, and a staple of classes on anthropology and documentary film, this study of a little-known sect who put their lives on the line for their religion still packs a wallop three decades after its release.
The film opens with a gliding camera elegantly surveying the squalor of the area around Scrabble Creek, West Virginia, setting the stage for and to some extent explaining the allure of, the Holiness movement. An offscreen narrator gives a brief and enticing précis: "thousands of holiness churches scattered through the hills of Appalachia," "literal bible interpretations," "drinking poison, handling snakes, speaking in tongues." The starkness of the setting, a rural area of obvious poverty, neither city nor town, provides a dramatic backdrop for the outré activities of these edgeplayers, who seem at times to be drunk or drugged on their religion. The Holiness way is the polar opposite of those dull, dutiful Sundays in middle-class churches; it provides both an irresistible high and a respite from the limited lives of its believers. Adair is sensitive in rendering this difficult material, neither judging nor ridiculing nor trying to become a part of the scene. His only intrusion is in the opening narration; after that, he lets those directly involved tell their story.

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Les Maitres Fous (Mad Masters)

Relates to: Religion/Ritual, Africa
#260, 35 minutes, Colour
DER, 1954, CD
Filmmaker: Jean Rouch

Note: CD must be viewed using a computer or smart classroom, not compatible with most DVD players…

Les Maitres Fous is about the ceremony of a religious sect, the Hauka, which was widespread in West Africa from the 1920s to the 1950s. Hauka participants were usually rural migrants from Niger who came to cities such as Accra in Ghana (then Gold Coast), where they found work as laborers in the city's lumber yards, as stevedores at the docks, or in the mines. There were at least 30,000 practicing Hauka in Accra in 1954 when Jean Rouch was asked by a small group to film their annual ceremony During this ritual, which took place on a farm a few hours from the city, the Hauka entered trance and were possessed by various spirits associated with the Western colonial powers: the governor general, the engineer, the doctor's wife, the wicked major, the corporal of the guard.
The roots of the Hauka lie in traditional possession cults common among the Songhay and Djerma peoples of the Niger River basin. Gifted men and women may enter trance and become possessed by any of a number of strong gods, such as Dongo, god of thunder and the sky. Supplicants consult the god through the trancing medium and receive advice about their problems, cures for diseases, comfort and support, or reprimands for their wrongdoings. Like these traditional possession cults, the Hauka sect co-existed with Islam and incorporated many Islamic saints and heroes into its rituals. Most of its adherents were Muslims.
The imagery in Les Maitres Fous is powerful and often disturbing: possessed men with rolling eyes and foaming at the mouth, eating a sacrificed dog (in violation of taboo), burning their bodies with naming torches. Beyond the imagery, the themes are also powerful, and have had an impact in our own culture: Jean Genet's The Blacks was modeled upon the Hauka inversion in which blacks assume the role of masters, and Peter Brook's Marat/Sade was influenced by the theatricality and invented language of Hauka possession. Yet, as Rouch reminds us in an interview in Cineaste, possession for the Hauka cultists was not theater but reality. The significance of this reality is left ambiguous in the film, although Rouch's commentary suggests that the ritual provides a psychological release which enables the Hauka to be good workers and to endure a degrading situation with dignity. The unexplored relation of the Hauka movement to their colonial experience is perhaps the most intriguing issue raised by this ceremony in which the oppressed become, for a day, the possessed and the powerful.

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El Moulid: Egyptian Religious Festival

Relates to: Religion/Ritual, Egypt, Medical
#261, 38 minutes, Colour
DER, 1990, VHS
Filmmaker: Fadwa El Guindi

Moulid (spoken Arabic meaning "birth") refers to a public religious festival celebrating the life and legacy of a holy person.
The film vividly captures the festive and religious mood of the very 700-year-old moulid of the 13th century Muslim Wali, Sayyid Ahmad Al-Badawy, held annually in Tanta, Egypt during cotton harvest.
Using "layering" as a method, this visual ethnography analyzes the moulid's structure and symbolism, revealing various levels of religious experience – scriptural, mystical, ritual, mythical, interacting with secular traditional life. It culminates in a dramatic procession following the Friday public prayer led by the khalifa (Badawy's current successor) on horseback, followed by drummers on camels, a Sufi parade, workers representing medieval vocational guilds, and finally circumcised boys in horse carriages. A transmission of vigorous masculinity and potent spirituality is symbolized as a journey from boyhood to manhood embedded in a regenerative cycle from life to death to rebirth.
Recommended for use in courses on general anthropology, religion and ritual, medical anthropology, circumcision, rites of passage, popular Islam and traditional Arab cultures.

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Celestial Dance: A Balinese Ceremony

Relates to: Religion, Gender
#262, 28 minutes, Colour
Filmakers Library, 2006, DVD
Film maker: Kari Soveri

Sanghyang Deling is a special religious ceremony performed in a remote village in the volcanic region of northern Bali. This beautifully poetic event is meant to protect the village and its inhabitants from demons and practitioners of black magic. To ward off the insidious creatures with magical powers, all of the inhabitants of the village participate in preparing the ceremony. They decorate the temple area, prepare sacrificial gifts and the food. This event has rarely been seen by outsiders.
The key part of the ceremony which is based on Hinduism, consists of two young girls who dance according to strict Balinese traditions. The girls chosen for the task have never received any dance training although they have seen the dance many times before. They only dance while in a trance. The ceremony is led by a Hindu priest who asks the deities to descend into their midst in the temple and to enter into the body of puppets which are representations of the two girls. While dancing the girls murmur chants that have healing properties and exorcise the evil spirits that threaten the village.

Language

Spanish-Speakers and Bilingualism

Relates to: Language
#276, 19 minutes, Colour
Films for the Humanities & Sciences, 1993, VHS

This program examines the different kinds of Spanish spoken in the United States and their relationship to the Spanish of San Juan or the Dominican Republic, as well as the evolution of Spanish in the United States and the ways it is being used by many second- and third-generation Americans. In Texas, where Spanish has been spoken much longer than English, bilingualism is common; a linguistics expert, a radio announcer, and a poet are interviewed on the phenomenon of "code-switching," the interchangeable use of English and Spanish by bilinguals in South Texas.

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Writing Panare: Portrait of a Linguist on Fieldwork

Relates to: Language, Amazonia
#277, 30 minutes, Colour
RAI, 1996, VHS
Filmmaker: Paul Henley
Anthropologist: Marie-Claude Muller

Marie-Claude Muller is a linguist who has worked for many years with the Panare, an Amerindian people of Venezuelan Amazonia. She has now been commissioned by the government literacy programme to prepare reading primers in Panare. Writing Panare shows her gathering a range of materials for the primers, from zoological taxonomies to myths. She is also shown working with Panare schoolteachers on an alphabet to accommodate local dialectical variations. These scenes are intercut with an interview in which she describes the principles underlying the literacy programme and considers its role in helping the Panare confront the consequences of contact with the national society. The film also features three myths told at length by a senior Panare man as well as scenes of everyday life in a number of different Panare communities.

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The TALK Show

Relates to: Language
#278, 4x60 minutes, Audio
CBC Radio, 1993, Cassettes
Host: Jay Ingram

We use it every day, and take it completely for granted. But The TALK Show, with host Jay Ingram, reveals the complexity and mystery of language.
For the first time ever, hear a conversation from 100,000 years ago, in the first language ever spoken… the so-called "Mother Tongue." Discover why it is that, while learning a second language can be torture for adults, a three-year-old child can put together sentences using complicated rules of grammar and a vocabulary of several hundred words. Do humans have an innate capacity for language? Learn how languages evolve… and how they die.
The TALK Show is a series of four one-hour audio programs, loosely based on Jay Ingram's book, Talk Talk Talk. It was originally broadcast in 1993 on CBC Radio and American Public Radio.

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The Gods Must Be Crazy I & II

Relates to: Language, Africa
#279, 109/98 minutes, Colour
Feature Film, 1980/88, DVD
Filmmaker: Jamie Uys

I: For five thousand years, things have stayed pretty much the same for Xi and his fellow Bushmen. Then one day, an empty Coke bottle drops magically from the sky, and life goes topsy-turvy in the face of this generous "gift of the Gods."
An international sensation, The Gods Must Be Crazy is one of the most original and thought-provoking comedies ever. Starring real-life Bushman N!xau, it's a movie that looks at us from the other side – and shows us just how crazy we are.

II: This delightful sequel to the hilarious hit comedy is a piece of divinely inspired lunacy! Xixo again collides with the so-called civilized world when he embarks on a search for his children, who are accidental stowaways on a poacher's truck.
He soon crosses paths with two very odd couples lost in the desert. Xixo, perplexed by their strange antics, nevertheless finds himself drawn into a crazy adventure with people who know how to make magic machines… but constantly need to be saved from the wilderness and each other

Art

The Long Tears: An Ndebele Story

Relates to: Art, Africa, Ritual
#301, 52 minutes, Colour
Filmmakers Library, 2000, VHS
Filmmaker: David Forbes

This remarkable film, seen through the eyes of one family, documents five years in the life of a South African tribe, the Ndebele, exploring their extraordinary art, culture and traditions. Tribe member Francina Ndimande is an internationally recognized mural artist, as is her daughter Angelina. Their work is commission by art collectors all over the world.
The film explores the rituals and traditions associated with the rites of passage of both men and women. Francina's son, Gerald, is featured as he embarks on his two-month initiation into adulthood, or "journey to the mountains of manhood," guided by his elder brother Erasmus. We also follow her granddaughter during her uguthombe, her two-year initiation into womanhood.
The Long Tears also traces the history of the Ndebele defeat in war against the Boers over a hundred years ago, and their subsequent enslavement and mistreatment at the hands of the Boer farmers. It shows us the famous Ndebele wall art and dress traditions and puts them in the context of the new South Africa. Here is a portrait of a unique people, told in their own words.

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Traditions For Sale

Relates to: Art, Europe
#302, 50 minutes, Colour
1999, VHS
Producer: Sally Gati

This fascinating documentary examines the lives and work of contemporary Hungarian folk artists. Responding to the realities of the new free-market economy, Hungarian folk artists (like those all over the world) are reviving their traditions and producing works to sell to tourists.
The film explores in depth the making of embroidery, floral designs, and hand-made and hand-painted furniture. There is even a staged wedding that features authentic folk songs and dances. The film includes rare and often poignant scenes of the daily lives of numerous folk artists and illustrates how political changes have affected their way of life and their work

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New Images: Art in a Changing African Society

Relates to: Art, Africa
#303

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In and Out of Africa

Relates to: Art, Africa
#304, 59 minutes, Colour
1993, VHS
Producers: Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Taylor

This extraordinary documentary is one of the most intelligent, perceptive, and engaging films ever made on African culture and art. It explores with irony and humor issues of authenticity, taste, and racial politics in the transnational trade in African art.
Interweaving stories of Western collectors, Muslim traders, African artists and intellectuals, and the filmmakers themselves, the film focuses on a remarkable art dealer from Niger named Gabai Barre. It follows him all the way from the rural Ivory Coast to East Hampton, Long Island, where he bargains for a sale. The film shows how (through occasionally hilarious and frequently fantastic tales about the art objects) he adds economic value and changes the 'meaning' of what he sells by interpreting and mediating between the cultural values of African producers and Western consumers.
For Baare and the other African art traders, the animist 'fetishes' they sell are simply commodities, bought and sold like any other. Or so they say. For Western collectors, the best, most 'authentic' pieces are considered Art (with a capital A), and their economic value is purely coincidental. Or so they say.
In and Out of Africa is a classic work that will richly repay viewing in a variety of courses in African studies, cultural anthropology, and art

Gender

Celestial Dance: A Balinese Ceremony

Relates to: Religion, Gender
#262, 28 minutes, Colour
Filmakers Library, 2006, DVD
Film maker: Kari Soveri

Sanghyang Deling is a special religious ceremony performed in a remote village in the volcanic region of northern Bali. This beautifully poetic event is meant to protect the village and its inhabitants from demons and practitioners of black magic. To ward off the insidious creatures with magical powers, all of the inhabitants of the village participate in preparing the ceremony. They decorate the temple area, prepare sacrificial gifts and the food. This event has rarely been seen by outsiders.
The key part of the ceremony which is based on Hinduism, consists of two young girls who dance according to strict Balinese traditions. The girls chosen for the task have never received any dance training although they have seen the dance many times before. They only dance while in a trance. The ceremony is led by a Hindu priest who asks the deities to descend into their midst in the temple and to enter into the body of puppets which are representations of the two girls. While dancing the girls murmur chants that have healing properties and exorcise the evil spirits that threaten the village.

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Shinjuku Boys

Relates to: Gender
#326, 54 minutes, Colour
RAI, 1997, VHS
Filmmakers: Kim Longinotto and Jano Williams

A film about love and gender. This film is set in the New Marilyn night club in Tokyo where all the hosts are women who have decided to live as men. They make their living by working in a club with other ‘onnabe' like them. The young women who come there often have relationships with them but the underlying fear is whether such a relationship can withstand the pressures on a girl to get married and have children.

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Some Women of Marrakech

Relates to: Gender, Africa
#327, 53 minutes, Colour
RAI: Disappearing World, 1977, VHS
Director: Melissa Llewelyn-Davies
Anthropologist: Elizabeth Fernea

In Marrakech, traditional attitudes to women prevail perhaps more strongly than in other Moroccan cities. This is especially true for those women who live by the standards of traditional ideals in the Medina, the old city of Marrakech still enclosed by its ancient walls.
This film attempts to say something about women such as Aisha and Hajiba ­ two main characters ­ who have experienced the hardships of life for women in such a society. Aisha's husband is an unskilled labourer and so she is forced to find work cooking and cleaning. Hajiba has been thrown out of her natal home by the brother who became household head on her father's death and she works as a dancer (shaykha) in a troupe entertaining men for money. For both of them the ideal of seclusion remains unrealisable, economic factors taking them out into the public world of men.
The all-women film-crew were privileged to be allowed to attend a series of events involving women ­ a visit to the steam baths, a religious celebration, a wedding, a visit to a shuwafa (fortune teller), a possession cult trance and a trip to the market to buy cloth. At many of these social events the guests entertain each other, and the film is remarkable not least for sequences showing women dancing and playing musical instruments, the brilliant colours of their dress and surroundings adding to the visual interest.
Some Women of Marrakech is important for the manner in which it situates these `ethnographic events' in relation to the division between women in the private world and men in the public world, providing an analysis which puts in the foreground questions of women's consciousness, sexuality and male/female division.

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Dream Girls

Relates to: Gender, Japan
#328, 50 minutes, Colour
RAI, 1993, VHS
Filmmakers: Kim Longinotto and Jano Williams

This award-winning film opens a door into the amazing world of the Takarazuka Revue, the all-female theatre troupe in Japan. Thousands of young women aspire to perform in the Revue's glitzy musical spectaculars and the millions of women who attend the shows idolise the romantic heroes like heart throb pop starts. Dream Girls offers a compelling insight into gender and sexual identity and the contradictions experienced by Japanese women today.

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Paris is Burning

Relates to: Gender
#329, 76 minutes, Colour
Feature Film, 1990, VHS
Filmmaker: Jennie Livingston

The award-winning "Paris is Burning" has been igniting audiences and critics across the country with record-breaking box office performances. An unblinking behind-the-scenes story of the young men of Harlem who originated "voguing" – and turned these stylized dance competitions into a glittering expression of fierce personal pride. A story of street-wise urban survival, gay self-affirmation, and the pursuit of a desperate dream – to live for a brief, dazzling moment in a fantasy world of high fashion status and acceptance.

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Killing Us Softly 3: Advertising's Image of Women

Relates to: Gender, Popular Culture
#330, 34 minutes, Colour
Media Education Foundation, 2002, DVD
Filmmaker: Jean Kilbourne

Jean Kilbourne's pioneering work helped develop and popularize the study of gender representation in advertising. Her award-winning films Killing Us Softly (1979) and Still Killing Us Softly (1987) have influenced millions of college and high school students across two generations and on an international scale. In this important new film, Kilbourne reviews if and how the image of women in advertising has changed over the last 20 years.
With wit and warmth, Kilbourne uses over 160 ads and commercials to critique advertising's image of women. By fostering creative and productive dialogue, she invites viewers to look at familiar images in a new way that moves and empowers them to take action.

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Sexy Inc.: Our Children Under Influence

Relates to: Gender, Popular Culture
#331, 36 minutes, Colour
National Film Board of Canada, 2007, DVD
Filmmaker: Sophie Bissonnette

Are children being pushed into adulthood too soon? Sophie Bissonnette's documentary Sexy Inc.: Our Children Under Influence analyzes the hypersexualization of our environment and its noxious effects on young people. Experts criticize an unhealthy culture created by advertising and the media, and the many examples shown illustrate how children are reduced to consumers bombarded with images of girls treated as purely sexual objects. While the specialists emphasize how these stereotypes, as well as early exposure to Internet pornography, damage young people's development, the film does suggest ways we can counteract this worrying phenomenon. It is a rallying cry.

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Nadia's Journey

Relates to: Gender, Religion
#332, 72 minutes, Colour
National Film Board of Canada, 2006, DVD
Filmmaker: Nadia Zouaoui

As a young woman, Nadia Zouaoui vowed that her suffering would not be in vain and that she would proclaim it to the entire world. Years later, the co-producer returns to Kabylie to see if things are any different today. When she was nineteen, her parents forced her into an arranged marriage with an Algerian man twice her age living in Montreal. He had chosen her based on a photograph.
Rarely have filmmakers in Quebec depicted with such clarity and intimacy the cruelty endured even to this day by so many girls and women who are held captive in their own homes.
Nadia's Journey is a hellish voyage into a patriarchal culture backed by strict Muslim tradition - a society obsessed with female virginity that keeps women in an antiquated state of servitude.
This deeply disturbing documentary provides a gripping experience for men and women, young and old alike.

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Threads of Life: Hemp and Gender in a Hmong Village

Relates to: Gender, Kinship, Subsistance
#339, 28 minutes, Colour
DER, 1994, DVD
Filmaker: Susan Morgan and Katherine Culhane-Pera

For centuries Hmong people have lived in the mountains of China and Southeast Asia. They have in more recent history fled Laos as refugees and resettled in the Americas, Australia and Europe. This documentary was filmed in Chang Khian, a village in the mountains of Northern Thailand. Through the traditional, year-long process of transforming the bark of hemp plants into cloth the complex relationships of men and women are revealed. Women produce the cloth and clothing as the men perform healing ceremonies, settle marriage agreements, and conduct funeral rights. The ready availability of mass produced, inexpensive cloth combined with the fact that the cultivation of hemp (marijuana) is now illegal has brought the continuation of this traditional practice into question. This film is of great interest to the study of gender and kinship, textiles, traditional crafts, shamanism and social change. In Hmong with English subtitles and narration.

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(un)veiled: Muslim Women Talk about Hijab

Relates to: Gender, Islam, Middle East
#336, 36 mins., colour
DER, 2007, DVD
By Ines Hofmann Kanna

(un)veiled introduces the audience to ten Muslim women from various backgrounds who now live in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Their discussion about hijab, the headscarf, revolves around a lecture on the same topic that was banned last minute but delivered anyway. In a time when Islam and especially Muslim women are represented as monolithic and beset by backwardness, the women in (un)veiled show the diverse, lively, argumentative debates in Muslim societies about the meanings of modernity, emancipation, and feminism. Dubai, where the filmmaker lived for eight months, becomes a character in itself, showing the complex face of a contemporary Arab city.

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Sworn Virgins

Relates to: Gender, Sexuality, Albania, Postsocialism
#337, 51 mins., colour
Filmakers Library, 2008, DVD
By Elvira Dones

Why would a girl swear to stay a virgin? What kind of tradition sanctions this form of self-denial? In a mountainous area of Albania, an ancestral code of laws -- observed to this day -- placed women in the bottom rank of society. It dictates that 'a woman is a sack, made to endure.' A woman cannot choose her husband, buy or sell property or express herself politically. For centuries, on a bride's wedding day, her father gave the groom two bullets, to be used to kill his daughter in case she misbehaved and dishonored the clan. But there is a loophole. The ancient laws allowed certain women known as 'Sworn Virgins' to take an oath in front of their clan, announcing their intention to remain virgins. This fascinating film reports on several unusual Albanian women who dress, act, talk, drink, shoot and are respected as real men. It's not a matter of sexual orientation, and there's no surgery involved. The villagers in this area simply accept the fact that some women want to live like men because they like their freedom. They prefer to manage their own lives; they do not want to marry and have children. One such virgin, the oldest of six daughters, took over the running of the fam-ily when their parents died. Another became an accountant, saying: 'I am neither wife nor mother. I loved working, I did everything for myself.'

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The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan

Relates to: Gender, Sexuality, the Taliban
#338, 60 mins., colour
PBS Frontline, 2010, DVD
By Jamie Doran

In Afghanistan today an ancient tradition has re-emerged, it's called Bacha Bazi, translated literally as, boy play. Boys, some as young as eleven, are dressed in woman's clothes, taught to sing and dance for the entertainment of male audiences, and then sold to the highest bidder or traded among the men for sex. The Afghan authorities responsible for stopping these crimes are sometimes themselves complicit in the practice.

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Theory

Tracking the Pale Fox: Studies on the Dogon

Relates to: Theory, Africa
#351, 48 minutes, Colour
RAI, 1983, VHS
Filmmaker/Anthropologist: Luc de Heusch

This film tells with verve and a touch of self-irony the history of research on the Dogon since the famous 1931 expedition of Marcel Griaule. The film establishes the original expedition in the context of French anthropology at the time. Jean Rouch, celebrated filmmaker and less known as an anthropologist on the Dogon, narrates part of the story, and interviews Dogon elders and veteran expedition-member, Germaine Dieterlen.

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Coming of Age: Margaret Mead (1901-1978)

Relates to: Theory, Papua New Guinea
#352, 52 minutes, Colour
Strangers Abroad, 1980, VHS
Filmmakers: Bruce Dakowski and André Singer

The most widely read, the best known, and arguably the most controversial anthropologist is probably Margaret Mead, an American who, at the age of 23, went to study adolescence in the South Sea Islands. In the United States, Bali, and New Guinea, she examined child development, sex, and temperament to see what role society plays in making people what they are. She emphasized that humans arrange their social worlds in many different ways, and that qualitative judgements cannot be made between them.

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Everything is Relatives: Williams Rivers (1864-1922)

Relates to: Theory, Polynesia
#353, 52 minutes, Colour
Strangers Abroad, 1980, VHS
Filmmakers: Bruce Dakowski and André Singer

William Rivers originally trained as a doctor. On a Cambridge University expedition to the Torres Straits north of Australia, his psychological tests on the islanders made him realize the unexpected importance of relatives in their society. His subsequent work as a pioneering psychologist in the first World War and his research into the workings of the nervous system, as well as the action of drugs on the human body, enabled Rivers to bring something new to anthropology: a scientific approach.

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Off The Verandah: Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942)

Relates to: Intro, Theory, Melanesia
#354 & #F14, 52 minutes, Colour
Strangers Abroad, 1980, VHS
Filmmakers: Bruce Dakowski and André Singer

Bronislaw Malinowski was the anthropologist who really changed the way that field studies were carried out. A Pole who chose to live in England, he began to work on a remote group of Pacific islands – the Trobriands – and lived for long periods among the people he was studying. A brilliant linguist, he quickly learned their language and later published books which brought the islanders to life. In this way, he made their work and lives intelligible to the West. The idea that native peoples were primitive savages was altered for good with Malinowski's insight into their mastery of the world.

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Shackles of Tradition: Franz Boas (1852-1942)

Relates to: Theory, Native America
#355, 52 minutes, Colour
Strangers Abroad, 1980, VHS
Filmmakers: Bruce Dakowski and André Singer

In 1883, a young German scientist, Franz Boas, arrived in the Canadian Arctic to map the coastline and indulge in his new interest: the study of other cultures. He became so absorbed by the common features that unite humans everywhere that he made the study of culture his life's work, doing fieldwork in both the arctic and the northwest coast of America among the Indian tribes. Boas was the first distinguished social scientist in the United States to challenge the prevailing concept of racial inferiority and actively campaigned on behalf of black people in America in the early part of the 20th century. He is considered the founding father of American anthropology.

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Strange Beliefs: Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard (1902-1973)

Relates to: Theory, Africa
#356, 52 minutes, Colour
Strangers Abroad, 1980, VHS
Filmmakers: Bruce Dakowski and André Singer

University professor Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard taught that Western ideas have many features in common with other cultures. He was the first trained anthropologist to do work in Africa, where he lived among the Azande and studied their belief in witchcraft; later, he worked among the Nuer tribe in the Sudan. His work on witchcraft found philosophers asking what could be considered rational thinking in any society; his study of tribal organization was intriguing to political theorists; and his attention to sophisticated religious sentiments of so-called primitive peoples has had a strong influence on theologians.

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Fieldwork: Sir Walter Baldwin Spencer (1860-1929)

Relates to: Intro, Theory, Australia
#357 & #F11, 52 minutes, Colour
Strangers Abroad, 1980, VHS
Filmmakers: Bruce Dakowski and André Singer

This film shows the work of Sir Walter Baldwin Spencer with the Australian Aborigines who had, up until then, been regarded as a step in the evolutionary ladder between Neolithic man and the ‘civilized' Victorian. Spencer began to work with Frank Gillen, operator of the telegraph station and an initiated elder of the Aranda tribe. Gillen's special place in aboriginal society enabled both men to witness scenes that no white man had ever seen. The approach that the two men used to study the aborigines came to be known as fieldwork and strongly influence the way that other cultures have been studied since.

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Edward Said: On Orientalism

Relates to: Theory
#358, 40 minutes, Colour
Media Education Foundation, 2002, DVD

Edward Said's book Orientalism has been profoundly influential in a diverse range of disciplines since its publication in 1978. In this engaging and lavishly illustrated interview he talks about the context within which the book was conceived, its main themes, and how its original thesis relates to the contemporary understanding of "the Orient."
Said argues that the Western (especially American) understanding of the Middle East as a place full of villains and terrorists ruled by Islamic fundamentalism produces a deeply distorted image of the diversity and complexity of millions of Arab peoples. He unearths the intellectual roots of "orientalism" in the history of imperial conquest stemming back to the 18th century. Looking ahead to the 21st century, he argues that it is this legacy of "difference" and mistrust that must be overcome if conflict, discord and violence are not to be humanity's permanent future.

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Race Is a Four-Letter Word

Relates to: Theory, Miscellaneous
#359, 55 minutes, Colour
National Film Board of Canada, 2006, DVD
Director: Sobaz Benjamin

Biologically speaking, 'race' is a spectral concept: black, brown, red, white and yellow, considered purely as skin colours, merit no more significance than a tattoo. Scientists remind us we all have the same genetic ancestor. Nevertheless, history, politics, sociology and economics transform skin colour - 'race' - into eith a golden sheath or a leaden prison of shame.
In Race Is a Four-Letter Word, director Sobaz Benjamin highlights Canadian conflicts around race. Heroically, he exposes himself, too: a black man who grew up trying to bleach his skin with chemicals, and then struggled to appreciate the meaning of his heritage as an 'Afro-Saxon' Briton, then Grenadian and now Haligonian-Nova Scotian-Canadian.
We also meet a white man who is culturally and psychologically black, a black woman who wants to be considered iconically Canadian, another black woman who retreats to England rather than continue to face Canada's racial cold war.
In the end, Race Is a Four-Letter Word teaches us that the soul has no colour. Yet, we also learn that race is a marathon we are all forced to run.

Popular Culture

Pink's Famous Chili Dogs

Relates to: Pop Culture, Urban
#376, 20 minutes, Colour
1998, VHS
Producer: Elise Pearlstein

This deft and delightful documentary explores the importance of community history and landmarks -- however modest or humble -- to the quality of the urban experience. A concise, economical, and frequently humorous case study, the film relates the unlikely survival of Pink's, a 60-year-old hot dog stand that has attained landmark status in Los Angeles, a city notorious for tearing down landmarks and replacing them with parking lots. Pink's attracts the rich and famous, the poor and struggling, and everyone in between. It is one of the few truly democratic institutions in Movieland, and one of the few that appeals to both young and old and to all of the many cultures that make up the city.

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Before Reggae Hit the Town

Relates to: Pop Culture, Ethnomusicology
#377, 21 minutes, Colour
1992, VHS
Producer: Mark Gorney

This unusual documentary explores the African roots of music, religion, and dance in Jamaica. It captures several of the principal folk traditions that still survive, including the music of the Maroons; Pocomania, a complex blending of African and Christian traditions; the dancing of the Junkanoo, which is celebrated every Christmas; and the music of the rebellious and persecuted sect of the Nyabinghi. Noted Rasta singer Justin Hinds links these traditions, which predate Jamaican popular music by hundreds of years, with today's reggae.

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Pepsi War

Relates to: Pop Culture
#378, 30 minutes, Colour
RAI, 1992, VHS
Director: Charlie Clay

The post-colonial period in Papua New Guinea has seen a resurgence in tribal warfare. Pepsi War follows the story of a fight between two clans, which developed from a dispute over cola bottles

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The Battle in Seattle: This is What Democracy Looks Like

Relates to: Pop Culture, Political
#379, 55 minutes, Colour
Seattle Independent Media Centre, 1999, VHS

Tuesday, November 30, 19999 was a moment in history when nearly 100,000 unions, farmers, artists, environmentalists, students, NGO's, professionals and many others took to the streets of Seattle in protest against what is arguably the world's most secretive and powerful undemocratic body. Protestors forced the WTO to cancel its opening ceremony and prevented the vast majority of the 3,000 delegates from entering the convention centre for the first day of meetings. From that day on, as protests continued across the street, the conference barely stumbled ahead.

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The Effect of TV on Culture in India

Relates to: Pop Culture, India
#380, 30 minutes, Colour
Films for the Humanities & Sciences, 1998, VHS

This program focuses on the cultural effects of television broadcasting in India. It examines the rapid rise of satellite TV and cable channels and discusses their role in altering Indian perceptions about caste, class, and gender. Interviews with Indian academics and representatives from TV and film are combined with specific information on TV viewing habits in urban and rural locations in India.

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The Japanese Version

Relates to: Pop Culture,
#381, 56 minutes, Colour
Center for New American Media, 1991, DVD
Filmmakers: Louis Alvarez and Andrew Kolker

The Japanese Version goes beyond the stereotypical images of Japan that are too often presented to Americans, and asks the questions: What happens to Western cultural ideas and objects when they are placed in a new setting? How have the Japanese navigated the flood of foreign influences that has been inundating their culture for a thousand years? With its series of entertaining yet revealing sequences, The Japanese Version is truly a cross-cultural surprise, as well as a warm and funny portrait of Japan today.

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Up the Yangtze

Relates to: Pop Culture
#382, 93 minutes, Colour
National Film Board of Canada, 2007, DVD
Filmmaker: Yung Chang

A luxury cruise boat motors up the Yangtze – navigating the mythic waterway known in China simply as "The River." The Yangtze is about to be transformed by the biggest hydroelectric dam in history.
At the river's edge a young woman says goodbye to her family as the floodwater rise towards their small homestead.
The Three Gorges Dam – contested symbol of the Chinese economic miracle – provides the epic backdrop for Up the Yangtze, a dramatic feature documentary on life inside the 21st century Chinese dream.
Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Yung Chang crafts a compassionate account of peasant life and a powerful documentary narrative of contemporary China.

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Mickey Mouse Monopoly: Disney, Childhood and Corporate Power

Relates to: Pop Culture
#383, 52 minutes, Colour
Media Education Foundation, 2002, DVD

The Walt Disney Company's animated films are almost universally lauded as wholesome family entertainment, enjoying massive popularity among children and endorsement from parents and teachers. Mickey Mouse Monopoly takes a close and critical look at the world these films create (in terms of the stories told about race, gender and class) and reaches disturbing conclusions about the values propagated under the guise of innocence and fun.
Including interviews with cultural critics, media scholars, child psychologists, kindergarten teachers, multicultural educators, college students and children, Mickey Mouse Monopoly will provoke audiences to confront comfortable assumptions about an American institution that is virtually synonymous with childhood pleasure.

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Ladysmith Black Mambazo: On Tip Toe

Relates to: Pop Culture, Ethnomusicology
#384, 56 minutes, Colour
Docurama, 2004, DVD
Director: Eric Simonson

A joyously moving portrait of the World Music super group Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Academy Award nominee On Tip Toe is as uplifting and ultimately inspiring as their culture-bridging performances themselves.
Directed by Eric Simonson and spanning three continents, On Tip Toe follows the captivating story of South African musician Joseph Shebalala and his unique singing ensemble. Best known on these shores for their innovative support on Paul Simon's Grammy-winning album Graceland, Mambazo has crafted an extraordinary hybrid of traditional Zulu harmonies and unconventional Western influences, including gospel, ragtime, Doo Wop, and even rock ‘n roll. Made up of seven bass voices, a tenor, a male alto, and Shebalala as lead vocalist, Mambazo amazingly incorporates the light, syncopated stomping of "isacathamiya" (Is-Cot-A-Me-Ya, meaning "on tip toe"), a style born through the strains of apartheid.

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Being Osama

Relates to: Pop Culture
#385, 45 minutes, Colour
Arab Film Distribution, 2004, DVD
Directors: Mahmoud Kaabour and Tim Schwab

Being Osama is an intimate exploration of six men with highly diverse backgrounds, interests and personalities, united by their first names and their experiences as Arabs living in Canada in the post-9/11 world.
Shot against the cultural backdrop of Montreal, the film follows the six Osamas from the time of the American invasion of Iraq in March of 2003 to the anti-WTO demonstrations in late July of the same year.
Touching on subjects as diverse as Arab names, rock-n-roll, religion, Middle East politics, weddings, funerals and the meaning of identity, Being Osama is a sensitive and thoughtful portrait of six unique individuals and of the new Canada in which they live.

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Breakin' In: The Making of a Hip Hop Dancer

Relates to: Pop Culture
#386, 57 minutes, Colour
National Film Board of Canada, 2006, DVD
Director: Elizabeth St. Philip

Breakin' In follows three young black women – Tracy, Linda and Michelle – as they compete for roles in hip hop music videos, whose popular images promote a billion-dollar industry that's worldwide.
These highly sexualized videos tend to depict dancers as eye candy, with lyrics that seem to demean and stereotype women. Fully aware of their status as sex objects, the three and confident enough in their talent to leave school, jobs and family for a chance at game. As we follow our trio through grueling workouts and nerve-wrecking auditions, they speak candidly about their concepts of beauty and self-image, and of a thriving urban culture that makes being black "cool."

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Dashan: Ambassador to China's Funny Bone

Relates to: Pop Culture
#387, 50 minutes, Colour
National Film Board of Canada, 2006, DVD
Director: Guy Nantel

Mark Roswell may well be one of the most popular comedians Canada has ever produced. A virtual unknown in his own country, Roswell has an enormous following in mainland China, where he is known as Dashan. His appearances on Chinese television have drawn up to six hundred million viewers. Together with his Chinese partner and mentor, Ding Guangquan, Roswell practices a comedic art form known as crosstalk, whose roots stretch back centuries. While Roswell was in Beijing studying Mandarin in 1988, he made a guest appearance on a nationally-televised variety show. He became an instant hit and went on to make regular television appearances and to perform live throughout the country. Dashan gives us a unique look at China through the eyes of a man who has become fully at home in Chinese culture. The video captures Roswell performing, talking about his art and popularity, and discussing the West's role in the development of the new China.

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Days of the Miners: Life and Death of a Working Class Culture

Relates to: Pop Culture, Europe
#388, 43 minutes, Colour
2003, CD
Filmmaker: David A. Kideckel

Note: CD must be viewed using a computer or smart classroom, not compatible with most DVD players…

Filmed in the Jiu Valley of southwestern Romania, Days of the Miners details labor and social conditions among a fabled East Central European mining group. Since socialism's end Valley mining has been greatly cut back, leaving many families in dire situations. Also in recent years there has been a spate of mine accidents and fatalities. Jiu Valley miners are reeling and see their current difficulties as attacks on their very lives and continuity.
The film begins at a memorial service for fourteen miners killed at the Vulcan mine followed by scenes and interviews defining current economic difficulties. The film then considers how such conditions developed by tracing regional mining and the mining way of life from the mid-nineteenth century, through socialism, to the present. Miner strikes and political violence are highlighted as are mining community social relations. A segment then follows miners through a typical work day, emphasizing their cohesion in the underground, the difficulty of mine labor, and thoughts about their lives and occupation. This closes with a description of the Vulcan mine accident in 2001 and the fourteen miners' fates.
Mine dangers notwithstanding, life is more problematic than death for mining families. Thus the film reconsiders present day difficulties through the eyes of miners, mine pensioners, miner wives and widows. The portraits of the present are uniformly problematic, and many people retain ambivalent feelings for socialism. People see their lives as an unremitting challenge but take meaning and joy where they can, as shown in closing scenes of neighbourhood life and celebration. Despite danger, death and economic decline, the Jiu Valley miners and the mining way of life still survive.

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Advertising Missionaries

Relates to: Pop Culture, Papua New Guinea
#389, 52 minutes, Colour
1997, CD
Filmmakers: Chris Hilton and Gauthier Flaunder

Note: CD must be viewed using a computer or smart classroom, not compatible with most DVD players…

In Papua New Guinea, where over three quarters of the population cannot be reached by the regular advertising mediums of television, radio or print, 'the market' must be developed by other means. Small theater groups travel the remote highlands performing soap operas devised around advertising messages for a variety of products.
Advertising Missionaries follows the mission of one theater company to bring the consumer revolution to the people of the highlands.
In bigger and more modern towns, the company plugs the qualities of farming products or car parts. In the more remote villages, a set is unfolded on the back of a flat-bed truck, portraying a modern Western living-room where the advantages of Coca-Cola, Colgate, clothing, canned food, and washing powder are touted.
The film observes the impact of the advertising theater on a previously 'untouched' village in the remote valley of Yaluba, where it enters the lives of Aluago, Tintiba and their two children. We see the village before, during and after first contact by the new missionaries -- and what happens as a result of their visit.

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Tough Guise: Violence, Media and the Crisis in Masculinity

Relates to: Popular Culture, Gender
#390, 56 minutes, Colour
Media Education Foundation, 2002, DVD
Filmmaker: Jackson Katz

Tough Guise is the first educational video geared toward college and high school students to systematically examine the relationship between images of popular culture and the social construction of masculine identity in the U.S. at the dawn of the 21st century.
In this innovative and wide-ranging analysis, Jackson Katz argues that the widespread violence in American society - including the tragic school shootings in Littleton, Colorado, Jonesboro, Arkansas, and elsewhere - needs to be understood as part of an ongoing crisis in masculinity. Tough Guise is extensively illustrated with examples from popular culture, ranging from Howard Stern to Stone Cold Steve Austin, from Good Will Hunting to Boyz 'N the Hood, from Garth Brooks to hip hop.

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Behind the Screens: Hollywood Goes Hypercommercial

Relates to Popular Culture, Consumption, Film
#391, 37 mins., Colour
Media Education Foundation, 2002, DVD
By Sut Jhally

Behind the Screens explores this trend toward 'hypercommercialism' through phenomena such as product placement, tie-ins, merchandising and cross-promotions. It combines multiple examples taken directly from the movies with incisive interviews provided by film scholars, cultural critics, political economists, and an Oscar-nominated screenwriter.

Behind the Screens presents an accessible argument designed for school and college-age audiences-- precisely the demographic most prized by both Hollywood studios and advertisers alike. It features examples drawn from movies such as Wayne's World, Forrest Gump, The Lion King, Summer of Sam, and Toy Story. Interviewees include Jeremy Pikser, Oscar-nominated screenwriter of the Warren Beatty film Bulworth; Mark Crispin Miller, Professor of Communication at New York University; Susan Douglas, Professor of Communication at the University of Michigan; Professor Robert W. McChesney of the Univeristy of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and Professor Janet Wasko of the university of Oregon.

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Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood

Relates to Popular Culture, Consumption
#392, 67 mins., colour
Media Education Foundation, 2008, DVD
By Adriana Barbaro andJeremy Earp

Consuming Kids throws desperately needed light on the practices of a relentless multi-billion dollar marketing machine that now sells kids and their parents everything from junk food and violent video games to bogus educational products and the family car. Drawing on the insights of health care professionals, children's advocates, and industry insiders, the film focuses on the explosive growth of child marketing in the wake of deregulation, showing how youth marketers have used the latest advances in psychology, anthropology, and neuroscience to transform American children into one of the most powerful and profitable consumer demographics in the world. Consuming Kids pushes back against the wholesale commercialization of childhood, raising urgent questions about the ethics of children's marketing and its impact on the health and well-being of kids.

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India Reborn: The Rise of the World's Emerging Superpowers

Relates to Social Class, Caste, Consumption, Television, Subsitence, Food, Environment
# 393, colour
Mongrel Media, 2009, 134 and 124 mins., two DVDs
By Gert Anhalt, Neil Docherty

INDIA REBORN charts the rise of one of the world's emerging superpowers. Cinematic in scope, the four-hour series unfolds with intimacy and insight, giving viewers a window into the lives of the people living through India's dramatic transformation. A potent mixture of dreams and despair, INDIA REBORN is a fascinating look into a land that has a leading role in reshaping the world. In the first part of the series, Myth & Might, we journey into India's rich tapestry of myth and growing economic might. Next, in Manufacturing Dreams, the spotlight is on a society where rising prosperity has set traditional values in turmoil, with the stories seen through the colourful prism of Bollywood. Part 3, India is on the Move, displays the excitement of life in cities pulsating with new wealth, but which is in dramatic contrast to rural life and the archaic caste system. Finally, in Mother India, food both unites and divides in today's India as we see how this sprawling, diverse land feeds itself at a time of unparalleled change.

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Malls R Us

Relates to Consumption, Cities, Urbanism
#394, colour
Filmoption International, 2009, 78 mins., DVD
By Helene Klodawsky

What do Al Gore, the Tower of Babel, science fiction, gothic cathedrals, artichokes and roller coasters have in common? All come together in Malls R US, a feature documentary with a multiplex of critical reflections and revelations on one of North America's most popular suburban institutions - the enclosed shopping center.

Mixing nostalgia, architectural ambition, pop culture and politics, Malls R US travels from North America, the mall's origins, to some of its newer hosts - Poland, Japan, India and Dubai. Along the way, the film meets Dead Mall activists mourning the loss of their crumbling hangouts, Sci-Fi guru Ray Bradbury extolling the virtues of getting lost in a mall, a popular mass uprising against malls by shopkeepers in India, and a church gathering contemplating the sacredness of shopping centers. Some of the world's most renowned contemporary retail architects and developers explain how malls are the medium through which the 21st century will rebirth decaying cities, inspire monument building, unite mankind, and even help the planet grow green. We'll see Mother Earth - pushed over to make way for the mall - reconfigured in air-conditioned splendor, through babbling fountains, evergreen trees, and glass ceilings. Religious, environmental and labour critics gaze past security cameras onto the shrinking public space, to ask whether community can ever be born out of food courts and superstores.

Walking among shoppers and workers of many tongues and cultures, Malls R US wonders, 'is there only one true language at the mall - the one where money talks?' Ironic, sobering and visually stunning, this surprising documentary offers a trip to the mall like no other.

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Miscellaneous

Now That the Buffalo's Gone

Relates to: Miscellaneous
#401, 7 minutes, Black & Red
1968, VHS
Filmmaker: Burton Gershfield

Experimental film, largely in infra-red and negative/positive superimpositions, on the fate of the red Indian.

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Tahtonka: The Plains Indians and Their Buffalo Culture

Relates to: Miscellaneous
#402, 30 minutes, Colour
1973, VHS

This short video presents viewers with over 300 years of Sioux history. The Sioux cultural infrastructure is largely based on the buffalo (tahtonka). In 1820, 40 million buffalo roamed the United States, giving the Sioux an abundant resource for food and clothing, and a pervasive influence on art, dance, and music. Narrator Ben Black Elk, Sioux elder and Holy Man, helps viewers learn about the symbiotic relationship between the Sioux and the buffalo through actual footage of various practices.

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Threatening Sky (Wa-Re-Ni)

Relates to: Miscellaneous
#403, 30 minutes, Colour
VHS

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Elliot Lake: Indian Relocation

Relates to: Miscellaneous
#404, 30 minutes, Black & White
National Film Board of Canada, 1967, VHS
Producer: John Kennedy

An experiment to prepare Indians for city life, through a program of vocational and academic education carried out with families who were moved to the town of Elliot Lake in northern Ontario from neighboring reserves. The film listens in on classes and discussions, and interviews some families who stayed, some who went back. It offers insight into the sort of adjustments that the Indians face in this kind of 'programmed' integration.

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The Exiles

Relates to: Miscellaneous
#405, 72 minutes,
1961, VHS

Many American Indians have left the tribal reserves to try to find a life in large cities. There they found themselves caught between two cultures – unwilling to become a part of the dominant pattern they saw around them and yet unable to return to their own was of life, lost in the past. The film shows the story of one anguished but typical night in the lives of three young Indians who have come to live in downtown Los Angeles. The camera follows them through 14 hours of drinking, card playing, picking up girls, and fighting until their frustration finally erupts on a wind-swept hill. There, they beat the drums until dawn, drunkenly trying to swing and dance the tribal songs. This unusual film of life evolved entirely from the actual lives of protagonists. The young Indians play themselves in their everyday haunts, they improvised their own dialogue and narration, and the continuity was based on their suggestions.

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The Amish: A People of Preservation

Relates to: Intro, Miscellaneous
#406 & #F22, 50 minutes, Colour
1975, VHS

Shot in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, 1975, this film attempts to show an Amish family and community life. Contains brief history of the Amish previous to their migration to North America, and as well shows their adaptations to modern life while attempting to preserve the traditional values of humility, peace, honesty, and hard work. Worldliness and modern technology are carefully controlled in an effort to keep the Amish community free from profane influences. Family farming, religious practices, rearing of children, education, marriage, and relationships with modern society are shown.

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CNN Today: Anthropology (Volume 1)

Relates to: Miscellaneous
#407, 46 minutes, Colour
1994-2001, VHS

A short collection of various segments, including: Women in Afghanistan, Oil Spill Impacts, South Africa Endangered, Papua New Guinea Tourism, Ancient Egyptian Language, Snaps, Forensic Anthropologists at Work, Genetically Modified Crops, Genetics Today, Interview with Jane Goodall, Archaeology Field School, and Trash Dump Riches

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CNN Today: Cultural Anthropology (Volume 6)

Relates to: Miscellaneous
#408, 41 minutes, Colour
1993-2002, VHS

A short collection of various segments, including: Terror Language, TV Weddings in India, Gay Partnership Rights in Britain, Bangladesh Dowry, Queen Noor, Gender Benders, Creationism vs. Evolution, Peru's Debt for Nature, Latino Immigrants in the U.S., AIDS and Indigenous Peoples in Africa, Caste Killings in India, Indigenous Rights in Mexico, Tribal Justice in Pakistan, and the Harry Potter Witchcraft Controversy.

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CNN Today Video: Cultural Anthropology (Volume 1)

Relates to: Miscellaneous
#409, 40 minutes, Colour
1994-1998, VHS

A short collection of various segments, including: India's Sexual Revolution, Egyptian Nubian Tradition, Tokyo Fast Food, Gaza Theater, Toy Barriers, Japan No Romance, Ramadan Nights, India: Arranged Marriage, Strip of Peace, Yanomamo, World Women's Inequality, Female Infanticide, Lost Language, Buffalo, English Only, China's Dying Culture, and Brazil Racism

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CNN Today Video: Cultural Anthropology (Volume 2)

Relates to: Miscellaneous
#410, 31 minutes, Colour
1995-1999, VHS

A short collection of various segments, including: Native American Traditions in Conflict with Contemporary Values: The Whale Hunt, Brazil's Dying Tribe, Russian Social Protest, Yugoslavia History, Yugoslavia Religion, The Hajj, China's Last Remaining Shamans, Insight into African American Culture in Colonial New York, Ancient Pueblos, Culture Crimes: Stolen Peruvian Artifacts, and Lessons in Culture: American Students in Africa.

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CNN Today Video: Cultural Anthropology (Volume 3)

Relates to: Miscellaneous
#411, 30 minutes, Colour
1996-1999, VHS

A short collection of various segments, including: The State of Human Rights in Central Africa, Culture Crimes: Myanmar Stolen Artifacts, A Glimpse Inside Afghanistan, The Promising Future of a Central American Nation: Guatemala, Life on the Edge: The Town of Churchill, The Politics of Reconciliation: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge, Chocolate Cravings, The Mexican Bullfight, and Mississippi River History.

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CNN Today Video: Cultural Anthropology (Volume 5)

Relates to: Miscellaneous
#412, 41 minutes, Colour
1994-2001, VHS

A short collection of various segments, including: Women in Afghanistan, Oil Spill Impacts, South Africa Endangered, Ancient Egyptian Language, Language Lineage, Snaps, Ethnic Diversity, Multiracial Families, Papua New Guinea Tourism, Gay Marriage, Singapore Singlish, and Muslim Patients.

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Anthropology: Real People, Real Careers

Relates to Anthropology
#413, 42 mins., colour
American Anthropological Association
2006, DVD

'What can you DO with a degree in anthropology?" This  product provides exciting information about the vast array of careers available to anthropologists. Whether students are considering an anthropology degree, a declared major or are simply curious about what kind of jobs are available to anthropologists, this is a valuable source of information. Anthropology: Real People, Real Careers is comprised of interviews with individuals working in ten different fields in applied anthropology. These include:

• Sociocultural Anthropology
• Archaeology
• Physical Anthropology
• Linguistic Anthropology
• Medical Anthropology
• Forensic Anthropology
• Business and Corporate Anthropology
• Visual Anthropology
• Environmental Anthropology
• Museum Anthropology

This DVD does not provide exhaustive information about careers in applied anthropology; however, it gives wonderful examples of anthropologists at work. Designed to be played in its entirety or by chapter, this is an ideal classroom instrument.

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Archaeology/Physical Anthropology

Tobias on the Evolution of Man

Relates to: Archaeology/Physical
#426, 17 minutes, Black & White
National Geographic Society, 1975, VHS
Anthropologist: Phillip Tobias

Dr. Phillip Tobias, paleoanthropologist, traces the evolution of man. The film discusses and shows the fossil hominid remains – australopithecines, Taun, Ples, Zinj, and others. Tobias speculates on speciation, extinction and the origins of man.

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4-Butte-1: A Lesson in Archaeology

Relates to: Archaeology/Physical
#427, 33 minutes, Black & White
1968, VHS

The excavation of a Maidu Indian village in California's Sacramento Valley is the medium through which the main purpose of this film is communicated: to involve the student in the contemporary relationship between archaeology and other disciplines of anthropology. It opens with an impressionistic treatment of the creation of the Maidu world, intercut with shots of an archaeologist reading the legend. The pace is thus set for past/present orientation that holds through the preliminary research phase, the field renaissance, (where devastating evidences of the Gold Rush are shown), and the excavation itself. The discovery and analysis of artifacts, an archaeologist explains, is aimed at finding order in the archaeological record and revealing relationships between man's products and behaviour. Other concepts of modern archaeology are heard in sound montage as students work in their pits. An old newspaper account is read: soldiers have taken the Maidu away to a reservation – but not before the Maidu destroyed their own homes. At this point, we are shown in the pits the charred, blackened housepots of a vanished people.

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Baboon Ecology

Relates to: Archaeology/Physical
#428, 23 minutes, Colour
1962, VHS

This video is based on early studies of savanna baboons in Africa. It illustrates the daily life cycle of baboon groups and their interactions with other species that share their habitat. Graphics are used to introduce the concept of home range.

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Blades and Pressure Flaking

Relates to: Archaeology/Physical
#429, 21 minutes, Colour
1969, VHS
Anthropologist: Francois Bordes

Francois Bordes, Director of the Laboratory of Prehistory, University of Bordeaux, demonstrates how stone blades were probably made by direct percussion and by the punch technique, and Don Crabtree, an expert in lithic technology, demonstrates various methods of manufacturing tools by pressure-flaking techniques. Chronological implications of various techniques are explained. Pressure-flaking techniques were probably invented as a method of retouching and refining tools formed by percussion flaking; this improvement enabled men to develop delicate and elaborate tools and greatly increased his efficiency not only as a hunter but later as an agriculturalist and artisan. From stone blades, Professor Bordes fashions upper Paleolithic tools such as burins, awls, scrapers and knives. Mesolithic techniques of fabricating microburins used to make sophisticated hafted tools are shown. Also illustrated is the working of Solutrean bifacial foliate points by direct percussion, indicating that laurel leaf points were probably made by percussion flaking, not by pressure flaking as was formerly thought. Professor Bordes demonstrates the initial percussion shaping of a tool, which Don Crabtree then completes by means of pressure flaking. Mr. Crabtree also shows in detail the fluting of Folson points and the elegant Valley of Mexico technique. Methods of working with flint and obsidian are illustrated, and the uses of many tools are described as their production is shown. In a dramatic conclusion, the film demonstrates that the Valley of Mexico blade, made from obsidian, had the sharpest cutting edge man has ever been able to devise.

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Early Stone Tools

Relates to: Archaeology/Physical
#430, 20 minutes,
1967, VHS

Some of the percussion flaking techniques, which early man and his predecessors may have used to produce a variety of tools are demonstrated by Professor Bordes, Director of the Laboratory of Prehistory at the University of Bordeaux in France. These tools range from simple pebble choppers and flake tools through finely worked hand axes, to the more sophisticated Neanderthal scrapers, points, and other forms made from flakes struck off disc cores. In addition to Professor Bordes' expert reproductions, actual prehistoric tools from such sites as Olduvai Gorge, Clacton by the Sea, and various Neanderthal sites are shown. Through animation, the development of these tools is clearly shown.

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Meadowcroft Rock Shelter: A Question of Questions

Relates to: Archaeology/Physical
#431, 30 minutes, Colour
1975, VHS
Anthropologist: Francois Bordes

This southwestern Pennsylvania site has documented man's earliest known migrations into the eastern United States. There are indications that people have been using the rock shelter for at least 19,000 years. Meadowcroft represents the longest known sequence of continuous human occupation in the Western Hemisphere. This documentary explores the archaeological techniques used at the site. Laboratory procedures such as radiocarbon and amino acid dating, geological analysis, and computerized cultural research are also explained. Locations include the Geophysical laboratory of the Carnegie Institution, the Radiation Biology Laboratory of the Smithsonian Institution, and the electron microscopy lab of Queens College. Meadowcroft Rock Shelter geologists and archaeologists explain what they are doing and, perhaps more importantly, why they are engaged in research for man's past.

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Introduction

The Kazakhs of China

Relates to: Intro, Indonesia
#F1, 53 minutes, Colour
RAI: Disappearing World, 1983, VHS
Anthropologist: Shirin Akiner
Producer/Director: André Singer

The nomadic, fiercely independent Kazakhs live in the mountains between Tibet and Mongolia, away from the Chinese authorities. They have adapted to communism and now enjoy what they believe to be considerable advantages over their more conventional neighbours.

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The Basques of Santazi

Relates to: Intro, Europe
#176 & #F2, 52 minutes, Colour
RAI: Disappearing World, 1987, VHS
Director: Leslie Woodhead
Anthropologist: Sandra Ott

"This film follows the lives over one year, shot during three intervals, of two Basque shepherding families who live in Santazi, a village in the foothills of the French Pyrenees. The film is the only Disappearing World film make in western Europe and it focuses on the continuity and change in the community.
Change has come to the village of Santazi in recent years along the avenues of introduced roads and improved communication systems with the outside world. The effects stretch from people's relationships with the Catholic religion to inheritance customs. Television has of course also entered these villagers' homes. The traditional life of shepherding is also changing amidst the conflict of interest between those who have formed a syndicate in an effort to maintain the viability of shepherding and the sons who have taken jobs as linemen for the electricity company. This film shows the rationality behind the choice the villagers are making."

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Raju and His Friends

Relates to: Intro, Urban, India
#F3, 40 minutes, Colour
RAI, 1988, VHS
Anthropologist/Filmmaker: Marcus Banks

This film is set in the city of Jamnagar, western India. The film focuses on the emotions, quality of life, and on duty. Raju's friendship with different people, including the director, provide a map of contemporary Indian urban life.

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Without Fathers or Husbands

Relates to: Intro, Indonesia, Social Organization
#F4, 26 minutes, Colour
RAI, 1995, VHS
Anthropologist/Filmmaker: Hua Cai

The Na are an ethnic group in south-east China. Their particularity is that all the members of each household are consanguineous relatives; their social organization is absolutely matrilineal, and as incest is prohibited, like elsewhere, their sexual life mainly takes the form of nocturnal visits of men to women.

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Kataragama: A God for All Seasons

Relates to: Intro, Religion/Ritual, India
#F5, 52 minutes, Colour
RAI: Disappearing World, 1973, VHS
Director: Charlie Nairn
Anthropologist: Gananath Obeyesekere

In ever-increasing numbers Sinhalese of all religious (Muslims, Christians and Buddhists) are turning to Kataragama, an ancient Hindu God, at times of trouble and desperation. Once a year pilgrims make the journey to Kataragama's shrine in southeast Sri Lanka (Ceylon) to fulfil vows by performing acts of penance and worship in payment for a favour received. Kataragama is called on to help with a wide range of problems (unemployment, sickness, examinations, personal relationships) and is appealed to by people of all social backgrounds, notably the growing middle class and urban dwellers.
A good third of the film is concerned with the annual festival, showing the often gruesome and sensational acts which the pilgrims perform, including fire-walking, and the piercing of body and tongue with needles – all acts designed to obtain forgiveness and grace. One man is suspended from hooks in his back – a self-torture undertaken with apparent joy by a man who, like many others that perform such acts, feels himself (after a time) to be possessed by the God's spirit.
These rather sensational acts are interwoven with the story of a peasant family whose son has disappeared, leading them eventually to seek help from Kataragama. The unfolding of this personal drama (with reconstruction of early episodes, and voice-over to detail their thoughts and feelings) forms the context for the events we see at the festival. The effect of the interweaving of these two ‘stories' is to place the otherwise purely exotic spectacle of the pilgrims' acts of penance within a universally understandable social context – that of the despair of a family whose young son is lost. The unplanned return of the boy, apparently in response to the family's appeal to Kataragama, provides a dramatic and moving finale to a film which has been compared in some respects to the great Italian neo-realist films.

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Dadi's Family

Relates to: Intro, India, Social Organization
#F6, 58 minutes, Colour
DER, 1981, VHS
Filmmakers: James MacDonald, Rina Gill and Michael Camerini

Dadi is the grandmother and mother-in-law, or, as she explains, the "manager" of an extended family. In the Haryana region of Northern India, women leave their natal villages and come as strangers to the households of their husband's mothers. This film explores the family and its problems, particularly through the women of Dadi's family. The women speak about inherent tensions created by the authority of Dadi, the loneliness of veiled daughters-in-law who always remain outsiders, and husbands' expectations that wives will labor in the fields, fetch water and cow dung, and still have food and water waiting at home.
Beyond the internal tensions, social and economic changes outside the village also threaten the stability and cohesion of the family. Dadi's third son, for example, marries a teacher in the city and Dadi frets that he will no longer contribute financially to the farm and that all the family wealth will be subdivided. In the family, says Dadi, "we can bear anything because we all suffer together." Yet it is clear that her children's generation is already ambivalent about life on the farm, and a daughter-in-law speaks of her wish for her own children to leave the village and its dirt. Dadi herself is keenly aware of these processes: "Doesn't everything change?" she asks.

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The Three Worlds of Bali

Relates to: Intro, Indonesia, Ritual, Visual
#214 & #F7, 59 minutes, Colour
DER, 1979, VHS
Anthropologists: Ira R. Abrams & Stephen Lansing
Producer: Michael Ambrosino

On the Indonesian island of Bali, the arts permeate almost every aspect of daily life. Gamelan music, wayang (shadow puppet) theater, dance, and elaborately constructed offerings of foods and flowers all represent attempts to please the gods and placate demons. In Balinese cosmology, demons are thought to dwell in the watery underworld, gods in the upper world, and human beings in the middle realm between the two. Much of human effort is directed toward maintaining the proper balance between these worlds, and between the forces of growth and decay.
The pinnacle of such efforts is the ritual Eka Dasa Rudra, held once every hundred years. The entire population of the island is mobilized for this event, preparing offerings and streaming from thousands of village temples in processions to the sea. Eleven demons, of which Rudra is the most powerful, must be transformed into beneficient spirits. No one who participated in the ritual filmed in 1979 had ever witnessed its performance, which last occurred a century ago, and so the ritual was based on writings in ancient lontar-palm manuscripts.
There is also a political dimension to Eka Dasa Rudra. In 1963, upon the urging of then President Sukarno, Balinese priests prepared to hold the ritual before the calendrically proper year. Preparations were met with the first eruption in recorded history of Bali's great volcano, Gunung Agung. This terrible disaster was seen as a confirmation of the gods' and demons' powers and the necessity of honoring the traditional calendar. In the spring of 1979, when Eka Dasa Rudra was finally held, President Suharto arrived, but not by his helicopter, which, it was feared, might have impeded the demons' descent.

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A Man Called "Bee": Studying the Yanomamo

Relates to: Intro, Amazonia
#F8, 40 minutes, Colour
DER, 1974, VHS
Anthropologist: Napoleon Chagnon
Director: Timothy Asch

This is one of the few ethnographic films in which the anthropologist appears as one of the subjects, and as such it is a lively introduction to the nature of fieldwork. Napoleon Chagnon, who lived among the Yanomamo for 36 months over a period of eight years, is shown in various roles as "fieldworker": entering a village armed with arrows and adorned with feathers; sharing coffee with the shaman Dedeheiwa who recounts the myth of fire; dispensing eyedrops to a baby and accepting in turn a shaman's cure for his own illness; collecting voluminous genealogies – making tapes, maps, Polaroid photos; and attempting to analyze such patterns as village fission, migration, and aggression. The commentary touches on the problems of the fieldworker (all the genealogies compiled in the first year were based on false data, and had to be discarded). Between the image and the commentary we also glimpse some of the ambiguities of the anthropologist's role and his relation to the subjects of his study, for example in the tension between mutual exploitation and reciprocity. The film complements Chagnon's book on his fieldwork, Studying the Yanomamo.

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The !Kung San: Traditional Life

Relates to: Intro, Africa
#232 & #F9, 26 minutes, Colour
DER, 1987, CD/VHS
Filmmaker: John Marshall

Note: CD must be viewed using a computer or smart classroom, not compatible with most DVD players…

This video depicts traditional Ju'hoan life by using vignettes from longer films in the !Kung San series. Footage selected shows tool-making technology, hunting and gathering, social life and children at play, and gives the viewer a feel for the vastness and beauty of the Nyae Nyae region of the Kalahari Desert.

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First Contact

Relates to: Intro, Papua New Guinea
#F10, 54 minutes, Colour
Filmmakers Library, 1983, VHS
Producer: Bob Connolly
Anthropologist: Robin Anderson

When Columbus and Cortez ventured into the New World there was no camera to record the drama of this first encounter. But, in 1930, when the Leahy brothers penetrated the interior of New Guinea in search of gold, they carried a movie camera. Thus they captured on film their unexpected confrontation with thousands of Stone Age people who had no concept of human life beyond their valleys. This amazing footage forms the basis of First Contact.
Yet there is more to this extraordinary film than the footage that was recovered. Fifty years later some of the participants are still alive and vividly recall their unique experience. The Papuans tell how they thought the white men were their ancestors, bleached by the sun and returned from the dead. They were amazed at the artifacts of 20th century life such as tin cans, phonographs and airplanes. When shown their younger, innocent selves in the found footage, they recall the darker side of their relationship with these mysterious beings with devastating weapons.
Australian Dan Leahy describes his fear at being outnumbered by primitive looking people with whom he could not speak. He felt he had to dominate them for his own survival and to continue his quest for gold.

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Fieldwork: Sir Walter Baldwin Spencer (1860-1929)

Relates to: Intro, Theory, Australia
#357 & #F11, 52 minutes, Colour
Strangers Abroad, 1980, VHS
Filmmakers: Bruce Dakowski and André Singer

This film shows the work of Sir Walter Baldwin Spencer with the Australian Aborigines who had, up until then, been regarded as a step in the evolutionary ladder between Neolithic man and the ‘civilized' Victorian. Spencer began to work with Frank Gillen, operator of the telegraph station and an initiated elder of the Aranda tribe. Gillen's special place in aboriginal society enabled both men to witness scenes that no white man had ever seen. The approach that the two men used to study the aborigines came to be known as fieldwork and strongly influence the way that other cultures have been studied since.

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Asante Market Women

Relates to: Intro, Gender, Economic
#F12, 50 minutes, Colour
RAI: Disappearing World, 1982, VHS
Filmmaker: Claudia Milne
Anthropologist: Charlotte Boaitey

As retailers, wholesalers, and negotiators, Asante women of Ghana dominate the huge Kumasi Central Market amid the laughter, argument, colour and music. The crew of this Disappearing World film have jumped into the fray, explored, and tried to explain the complexities of the market and its traders. The success of this crew is impressive. As the film was to be about women traders, an all female film crew was selected and the rapport between the two groups of women is remarkable. The relationship was no doubt all the stronger because the anthropologist acting as advisor to the crew, Charlotte Boaitey, is herself an Asante. The people open up for the interviewers, telling them about their lives as traders, about differences between men and women, in their perception of their society and also about marriage.
The women control the market through Queen Mothers who are leaders of particular sections of the market such as the yam or tomato sections. Generally these Queen Mothers are elected by the traders. However, Oba, the Plantain Queen Mother, acquired her position through influence and because of this she has less control over her workers and over the resolution of differences. Market traders work long hours and make less money than a shop assistant or office worker yet the rewards for them can be many. The residual matrilineal system of Asante society means that inheritance moves from a man to his sister's children. One result is that an Asante woman is left with no means of support if her husband dies. The traders have gone to work to protect themselves against this possibility, to pay for their children's education and to maintain their independence.
Implicit in this analysis of women traders is the relationship between men and women in Asante society. Marriage is polygamous and the crew interview women about their feelings on marriage and their hopes of coming marriages. The film portrays the influence women have in the market as a direct contrast to their position in the home. Interviews with several husbands reveal, perhaps not surprisingly, that their perception of women differs from the women's perception of themselves. The men talk of the importance of having two wives, one to serve when the other is tired; one to grant sexual favours while the other is menstruating; each to compete with the other for male attention thus allowing the husband to retain control. Although the men accept a woman earning extra money, they still say a woman should be submissive and serve men. The women regard themselves as assertive, capable, and in control. Interviews with two young women demonstrate a desire for equality in the home. The film's analysis is a sympathetic one and full of insight. The focus is, though, rather narrowly on the husband-wife relationship, and women's important relationships with their female and male kin are given little attention.

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War of the Gods

Relates to: Intro, Amazonia, Religion
#F13, 66 minutes, Colour
RAI: Disappearing World, 1974, VHS
Director: Brian Moser
Anthropologists: Peter Silverwood-Cope, Stephen and Christine Hugh-Jones

While relying on a polemical stance directed against the cultural genocide wrought by missionaries, War of the Gods also contains a wealth of information and detail about Amazonian Indian cosmology, social life and sexual division of labour. Two groups of Indians from the Vaupés region of Colombia are shown, the Makú, who live mainly by hunting and gathering, and the sedentary Barasana, who live mainly by farming.
The film contrasts the belief systems and way of life of the Indians, presented by the anthropologists who worked and lived with them, with those of Protestant and Catholic missionaries. The Protestants, North American Fundamentalists from the Summer Institute of Linguistics, are said to have used their organization as a cover in order to be allowed to work with the Indians, because open Protestant missionary activity would not have been acceptable to the authorities.
No attempt is made to gloss over the complexities of contact between Whites and Indians: the Barasana themselves want change, and the missionaries' influence is undoubtedly more beneficial to the Indians than that of rubber gatherers. Included in this film is an interview - using voice-over - with a Makú shaman, and there are scenes from the Barasana moloka, the communal house which is a centre of social and domestic activity. The climax of the film is a contrasting look at a church service at the S.I.L. headquarters, a Barasana ritual dance (accompanied by the ritual use of the hallucinogen yagé), and a Mass at the Catholic mission attended by some of the Indians who took part in the ritual dance.
Some missionaries who have seen this film consider that its editing is unfair to the S.I.L., but the head of another important missionary organization has said that it should be screened during missionary training courses.

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Off The Verandah: Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942)

Relates to: Intro, Theory, Polynesia
#354 & #F14, 52 minutes, Colour
Strangers Abroad, 1980, VHS
Filmmakers: Bruce Dakowski and André Singer

Bronislaw Malinowski was the anthropologist who really changed the way that field studies were carried out. A Pole who chose to live in England, he began to work on a remote group of Pacific islands – the Trobriands – and lived for long periods among the people he was studying. A brilliant linguist, he quickly learned their language and later published books which brought the islanders to life. In this way, he made their work and lives intelligible to the West. The idea that native peoples were primitive savages was altered for good with Malinowski's insight into their mastery of the world.

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Nigeria: A Tale of Two Families

Relates to: Intro, Africa
#F15, 20 minutes, Colour
Films for the Humanities & Sciences, 1994, VHS

This program reflects the diversity of the entire continent. Nigeria is Africa's most populous country, and ranges from tropical forest in the south to sub-Saharan savannah in the north. The program looks at the effect of climate on the lives and survival strategies of two farming families living in very different locations, and at the influence of culture on the children and their ambitions.

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Benny and the Dreamers

Relates to: Intro, Australia
#F16, 48 minutes, Colour
Films for the Humanities & Sciences, 1993, VHS

An elderly traditional and his kinfolk recall the impact of their tribe's first contact with white people in the 1930s. Using extensive archival footage, this program traces the reactions of a people whose culture had survived for 40,000 years to the dramatic and irreversible changes brought by the early white settlers.

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A Great Wonder: Lost Children of Sudan

Relates to: Intro, Africa
#F17, 61 minutes, Colour
2004, CD

Note: CD must be viewed using a computer or smart classroom, not compatible with most DVD players…

More than 2 million Sudanese have died in the longest uninterrupted civil war in the world, now in its 20th year. Another 5 million civilians have fled their homes to escape the fighting.
A Great Wonder traces the extraordinary journey of three young Sudanese orphans, a fraction of the 17,000 so-called 'Lost Boys' of Sudan, who have spent the majority of their lives either in flight from war or in refugee camps in Ethiopia and Northern Kenya. Having navigated the hazards of warfare, disease and starvation, their arrival and resettlement in Seattle, WA, is not your average immigration story.
Over the course of 18 months, these youths have recorded their own experiences through their own eyes and in their own words using digital video cameras. The resulting 'diaries' serve as a personal thread throughout the film, incorporating first-hand accounts of their experiences in war with their radically different lives as immigrants in America.
A story of survival in its most elemental form, A Great Wonder explores the concepts of loss, faith, community and freedom as it bears witness to the spirit that drives these young people to rebuild their lives.

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Invisible Indians: Mixtec Farmworkers in California

Relates to: Intro
#F18, 43 minutes, Colour
1993, CD

Note: CD must be viewed using a computer or smart classroom, not compatible with most DVD players…

This important video provides an interdisciplinary look at the history, culture, and current social and economic conditions of the Mixtec people of Oaxaca, Mexico. It examines the factors causing ever-increasing numbers of Mixtecs to become migrants, living part of the year in Oaxaca and part in California, where they make up between five and ten percent of the total agricultural work force. The video provides an excellent introduction to Mixtec culture and invaluable background information for understanding the role of migrant farmworkers in California and America.

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The Pathans

Relates to: Intro, Political
#F19, 39 minutes, Colour
RAI: Disappearing World, 1970, VHS
Director: André Singer
Anthropologist: Akbar Ahmen

There are twelve million Pathans. Bound by a common language, a common heritage and the unifying force of Islam, these proud and independent people do not acknowledge the geographical boundary which divides them between Afghanistan and Pakistan. This film was shot at the same time as Khyber (see RAI Film and Video Library list) in Pakistan, close to the Afghan border.
The Pathans accept no imposed leadership, from without or from within. Their laws are the decisions of the democratic assembly of the village, known as the jirga. To disobey the jirga is to court heavy penalties against which there is no appeal.
Their code of living is called pukhtunwali ­ the way of the Pathan. At its core are the principles of hospitality, personal honour and revenge. A man will fight to the death to avenge a wrong done to himself, his family or friends or, above all, his women. The film is noteworthy for the way in which it brings out the importance of these values.
Their fierce loyalty, coupled with the independence of spirit which tolerates no formal leaders, makes the Pathans a formidable enemy, as the British once found out and, more recently, the Soviet invaders of Afghanistan have discovered.

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North Indian Village

Relates to: Intro, India
#F20, 32 minutes, Black & White
1955, VHS
Director/Producer: Patricia J. Hitchcock

This study of village life was filmed between 1953 and 1955 at a Cornell University Indian program field station with the generous cooperation of the villagers and field staff. Filming and research was supported by a grant from the Ford Foundation.
The village of Khalapur has never been a completely static community, if only because it has always shared the vicissitudes of a larger region and civilization. The loud, intermittent "beep-beep-beep" of its diesel-driven grain mill is a reminder of one of the many changes which have occurred in the village.
But although Khalapur has not remained the same during the long course of its history, there are features of its way of life which have been quite stable. Some of these features are the subject of this film. They were selected because they seemed to give Khalapur its most distinctive social coloring. They also account for its similarity to many villages in India, and distinguish it from villages elsewhere in the world.

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The Hunters

Relates to: Intro, Africa
#F21, 72 minutes, Black & White
DER, 1957, VHS
Filmmaker: John Marshall

This re-release of an early classic in anthropological film follows the hunt of a giraffe by four men over a five-day period. The film was shot in 1952-53 on the third joint Smithsonian-Harvard Peabody sponsored Marshall family expedition to Africa to study Ju/'hoansi, one of the few surviving groups that lived by hunting - gathering. John Marshall was a young man when he made this, his first feature length film. He was a natural cameraman who found a subject that would dominate the rest of his life. He has since shot over 600,000 feet of film from which 24 films were edited. The value of the footage as an encyclopedia of !Kung life is unequaled by any other body of ethnographic film. The entire series is currently available through DER.

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The Amish: A People of Preservation

Relates to: Intro, Miscellaneous
#406 & #F22, 50 minutes, Colour
1975, VHS

Shot in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, 1975, this film attempts to show an Amish family and community life. Contains brief history of the Amish previous to their migration to North America, and as well shows their adaptations to modern life while attempting to preserve the traditional values of humility, peace, honesty, and hard work. Worldliness and modern technology are carefully controlled in an effort to keep the Amish community free from profane influences. Family farming, religious practices, rearing of children, education, marriage, and relationships with modern society are shown.

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The Mursi

Relates to: Intro, Africa, Political
#229 & #F23, 53 minutes, Colour
RAI: Disappearing World, 1974, VHS
Director: Leslie Woodhead
Anthropologist: David Turton

The Mursi, an unadministered tribe living in remote south-west Ethiopia, are a cattle-keeping and agricultural group without chiefs or leaders. This film, made under extremely difficult conditions, focuses on the way decisions are made in this society at a time of crisis. The crisis occurs when a shortage of grazing land, during a draught in 1974, led to warfare with their neighbours, the Bodi. The greater part of the film is concerned with a debate over the Bodi peace proposals. The Mursi reach their political decisions in formal debate at which point each warrior who rises to speak is heard patiently until all the important issues have been raised and a measure of agreement has emerged.
The Mursi is a serious and important film, both ethnographically and as a contribution to the understanding of political systems.

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Saints and Spirits

Relates to: Intro, Religion, Ritual
#F24, 26 minutes, Colour
RAI: Disappearing World, 1979, VHS

Explores the personal dimensions of Islam during three events in Morocco--all seen through the eyes of one woman, Aisha bint Muhammad. The events are 1) the annual renewal of contact with a spirit through a ritual festival of celebration in the city of Marrakech; 2) the pilgrimage to the moussem or festival of a powerful saint, whose shrine lies in the mountains of the High Atlas; and 3) the veneration of a new saint's shrine in a small plains village.

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The Kawelka: Ongka's Big Moka

Relates to: Intro, Papua New Guinea, Ritual
#6 & #F25, 52 minutes, Colour
RAI: Disappearing World, 1974, VHS
Director: Charlie Nairn
Anthropologists: Andrew and Marilyn Strathern

"Ongka is a charismatic big-man of the Kawelka tribe who live scattered in the Western highlands, north of Mount Hagen, in New Guinea. The film focuses on the motivations and efforts involved in organising a big ceremonial gift-exchange or moka planned to take place sometime in 1974. Ongka has spent nearly five years preparing for this ceremonial exchange, using all his big-man skills of oratory and persuasion in order to try to assemble what he hopes will be a huge gift of 600 pigs, some cows, some cassowaries, a motorcycle, a truck and £5,500 in cash. As an example of the big-man familiar from written texts, Ongka is memorable, and the film manages to convey through this main character the importance of pigs, of exchange and of prestige in the life of these Highlanders.
The film-crew never in fact managed to film the big moka, as the conspiratorial and complex manoeuvres involved in setting the date thwarted their plans. But we are shown Ongka replacing tee-shirt and shorts with his ceremonial feathers and setting off to a little moka where he collects pigs he `invested' with his wife's father. The interview with Ongka's wife raises the issue of the sexual division of labour and the importance of the wife's labour in pig-rearing and moka preparation, as well as the role of women in the establishment of a big-man. "

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Trobriand Cricket: An Ingenious Response to Colonialism

Relates to: Intro, Polynesia, Papua New Guinea
#26 & #F26, 54 minutes, Colour
(Company), 1976, VHS
Filmmaker: Gary Kildea
Anthropologist: Jerry Leach

"An extraordinary ethnographic document of the modifications made by the residents of the Trobriand Islands, in Papua New Guinea, to the traditional British game of cricket. In response to colonialism the islanders have changed the game into an outlet for mock warfare, community interchange, tribal rivalry, sexual innuendo and a lot of riotous fun. Intercut sequences explaining traditional cricket indicate how much the game has been altered; historical footage and commentary review the history of British colonialism in the area. This is not a glimpse of a disappearing culture, but a piece of propaganda by indigenous Trobrianders in favor of their national game which, with good reason, they consider to be far superior to the English 'rubbish' from which it was derived."

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Witchcraft Among the Azande

Relates to: Intro, Religion/Ritual, Africa
#254 & #F27, 52 minutes, Colour
RAI, 1981, VHS
Filmmaker: André Singer
Anthropologist: John Ryle

Evans-Pritchard's book Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande has become a classic of both ethnography and theories of witchcraft. Now, anthropologist John Ryle and filmmaker André Singer, who was himself one of Evans-Pritchard's students and has published on the Azande, have teamed together to produce the film Witchcraft among the Azande for Granada Television's Disappearing World series. Singer wanted to learn for himself the accuracy of Evans-Pritchard's analysis and to note the changes since the original fieldwork carried out between 1926 and 1930.
Among the Azande, witchcraft is considered to be a major danger. They believe that witchcraft can be inherited and that a person can be a witch, causing others harm, without realizing her or his influence. Because of this danger, effective means of diagnosing witchcraft are, for them, vital. One method is through the use of an oracle. Several kinds of oracles are explored in the film, the most important being benge, a poison which is fed to baby chickens. The chick's death or survival provides the oracle's answer. Azande also use benge to judge other evidence in a court before a chief.
Anthropologists have long argued about the nature and significance of beliefs in witchcraft and sorcery and, more generally, about the similarities and differences between `traditional' thought and Western science. This film treads a delicate path, exploring an explanation of reality incomprehensible to a majority of Westerners and, at the same time, trying to portray the Azande as a clear-thinking, and almost familiar group of people. In this aim the film succeeds by creating a tension whereby the oracle's answers are important to the viewers because they have become involved and are forming their own opinions about the guilt or innocence of the defendants.
Zande is not a static society and much has changed since Evans-Pritchard's original fieldwork. The area filmed is influenced by Catholicism; people are Christian, but the church cannot give answers to many of the questions of the Azande people. The older people see their children abandoning traditional moral and other values. For this schism, the older people seem to blame the government more than the church as the church teaches a value system consonant with the traditional one. Yet, alongside the Christian influence and changes among the younger generation, the power of beliefs in witchcraft and oracles remains.

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Courts and Councils: Dispute Settlement in India

Relates to: Intro, India
#F28, 30 minutes, Colour
1981, VHS

The film takes a look at some judicial bodies in India: the Nyaya Panchayat adjudicating a farmer's dispute, and a nandiwalla panchayat council that assigns its own fines and penalties according to tradition and group census among members of the bull-herding caste. Contrasting with this form of dispute settlement is the formal court tribunal, reflecting the British legacy of codified law.

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Rites of Passage: Videocases of Traditional African Peoples

Relates to: Intro, Africa, Ritual
#F29, 90 minutes, Colour
2002, VHS

This video is divided into six segments of a traditional African life: three segments from birth to adolescence and three segments in adulthood. Each segment describes a rite of passage - birth, naming, circumcision, marriage, elderhood, and death - which is commonly ritualized and celebrated in the traditional African villages.

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Pomo Shaman

Relates to: Intro, Religion/Ritual, Medical
#257 & #F30, 20 minutes, Black & White
1964, VHS
Producer: William Heick

Rare record of the second and final night of a shamanistic curing ceremony among the Kashia group of Southwestern Pomo Indians. The Indian 'sucking doctor' is a prophet of the Bole Maru religion and the spiritual head of the community.

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Potlatch: A Strict Law Bids Us Dance

Relates to: Intro, Religion/Ritual, Economic
#258 & #F31, 54 minutes, Colour
1975, VHS
Director: Dennis Wheeler
Producer: Tom Shandel

Over the centuries, the Kwakwaka'wakw First Nations of the Northwest Coast developed a sophisticated culture based on the ceremonial giving away of surplus wealth. This was the basis of an indigenous social and economic ecology. With the arrival of European settlers intent on the accumulation of property, traditional Native society came under attack. For years, the Canadian government outlawed the potlatch, crushing a unique culture and seizing its artifacts to be studied and "protected."
Directed by Dennis Wheeler and produced by Tom Shandel, this film was created in collaboration with the Kwakwaka'wakw First Nations of Alert Bay, British Columbia who retained editorial control. It is based upon historical research compiled by the U'mista Cultural Society of Alert Bay and features important testimony from Kwakwaka'wakw elders. The film is narrated by Gloria Cranmer Webster. Her father Dan Cranmer came into conflict with the Canadian government when he held a potlatch in 1921 and people were arrested. The Kwakwaka'wakw First Nations continue to hold the potlatch today, in the tradition of their ancestors.

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Teyyam: The Annual Visit of the God Vishnumurti

Relates to: Intro, Religion/Ritual, India
#251 & #F32, 57 minutes, Colour
DER, 1998, VHS
Filmmaker: Erik de Maaker

In Northern Kerala, Hindus revere numerous Gods through Teyyam rituals. Each Teyyam is dedicated to a specific God. In Teyyam worship a ritual specialist, a teyyam performer, takes the shape of the God and becomes transformed. The rituals are performed at yearly festivals held at small temples devoted to Teyyam Gods which offer devotees the opportunity to communicate directly with them, asking for support to deal with problems such as illness and theft. The Gods worshipped are violent, demanding offerings like chicken sacrifices and palm wine. The ritual specialists work in small groups of male relatives, all of whom belong to the lower castes. Each group holds rights to the annual performance of rituals at dozens of Teyyam temples. During the Teyyam season, December through March, the work at the festivals is a major source of income for the performers. The rest of the year most of them do low paying labour as "beedi" (cigarette) rollers.
This program shows one teyyam ritual for the popular God Vishnumurti, it is a visually dazzling event which is one of the few occasions that brings both the higher and the lower castes of the different Hindu communities together. The performers are shown in the preparations and also after the festival. We have an opportunity to experience the entire socio-cultural context within which this event takes place.

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We Are All Neighbours: Bosnia

Relates to: Intro, Europe
#185 & #F33, 52 minutes, Colour
RAI: Disappearing World, 1993, VHS
Producer: Debbie Christie

In a Muslim/Catholic village near Sarajevo, rumors fly and suspicions spread. Neighbors who had been
close friends for 50 years no longer speak to each other, and the peaceful coexistence between Croats
and Muslims disintegrates into mutual distrust and fear.

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Anthropologists At Work: Careers Making a Difference

Relates to: Intro
#F34, 36 minutes, Colour
1993, VHS

A short film developed by the National Association for the Practice of Anthropology (NAPA), a section of the AAA, it shows anthropologists in the various fields in which they may find themselves employed.

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Beyond Ethnography: Corporate and Design Anthropology

Relates to: Intro
#F35, 25 minutes, Colour
AAA, 2008, DVD
Filmmaker: Emily L. Altimare

Beyond Ethnography: Corporate and Design Anthropology is the second DVD in a series on careers in anthropology distributed by the American Anthropological Association. Produced by Emily L. Altamire, with production assistance by Clinton D. Humphrey, the DVD draws on ethnographic research projects conducted at General Motors Corporation. It offers a successful model for the use of anthropology in corporate settings. Those interested in how anthropological theory and methods relate to real-world problem solving, and those seeking anthropological careers involving both in-house research and external consulting, will find the DVD useful and compelling.