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The holdings below are arranged in alphabetical order by title, except when the titles begin with the words The or A, whereupon the dvds/cassettes are alphabetised by the word following these two. New additions are listed at the beginning. Student films, and staff films from the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology are listed in separate sections. Pricing and ordering information is at the end.

The video cassettes are available in PAL and NTSC, the DVDs in PAL only, world-wide except where otherwise indicated beside the title.

NEW ADDITIONS

Photography is known in China as the “Art of Regret”. In the rapidly changing city of Kunming, people are ambivalent about whether they want photography to be a medium of preservation and evidence, or of transformation and fantasy. While old photographs are cherished, digital technology can now make old people look young again. At computerized stalls in department stores, faces and clothing can be instantly transformed. An old-established studio digitally enhances the images made on their wooden 19th century portrait camera. Choices about how to regard history, reality, and material culture constantly confront everyone in contemporary China.

Filmmaker: Dawa Tsering Lepcha, Anthropologist: Anna Balikci-Denjongpa, Advisor: Asen Balikci; Namgyal Institute of Tibetology, Sikkim, India. 2007

Every winter, over a period of six days, the lamas of Lingthem's village monastery hold their annual cham. These dramatic ritual masked dances impart elementary Buddhist teachings while providing entertainment to villagers. Their main purpose is to remove obstacles and ward off misfortune for the village, its inhabitants and the monastery. However, for lamas and more serious Buddhist practitioners, these cham and their rituals hold deep philosophical meanings. The dances were beautifully filmed by Dawa Tsering Lepcha in his own village monastery in the Lepcha reserve of Dzongu, North Sikkim. In the course of this village event, the deities who emerge in the period between death and rebirth make their rhythmic appearances followed by the Lord of Death who judges one's good and bad deeds in the after life. This film is the second produced by the Namgyal Institute of Tibetology as part of its visual anthropology project. This training program for indigenous filmmakers aims to produce a documented video record of Sikkim's vanishing indigenous and Buddhist cultures. Its primary purpose is to record and preserve the meaning and proper performance of Sikkim's rituals within their social and economic context.

East London Muslim girl Shahanara is changing form pink hot pants into a sari to meet her husband at the airport. She has only met him once before, when she was married in a union arranged by her Bangladeshi family. Shahanara only agreed to the marriage to try and heal old wounds with her father, who had banished her from her family for her Western ways. Meanwhile her devout Muslim sister Hashnara is being groomed for her own arranged marriage, something that at 19 she does not feel at all ready for. Filmed by a close friend of the family this film explores universal theme of love and the conflicts between first and second generations of a British Bangladeshi family. (Winner RAI Film Prize 2007)

The film portrays a vibrant range of contemporary and historical images by artists and photographers in Ghana. While glancing through the history of black & White photography in Ghana, the film focuses on present-day social practices of studio photographers and the impact of their work on contemporary image arts.

Among the Wana people, semi nomads from the Indonesian (Sulawesi) forest, Indo Pino is a shaman recognized by everybody. Her Nephew, who is also a shaman’s son, converted to Christianity some months ago and is now preaching the visions. And for him, if the visions come from God, the visions of the shamans inevitably must come from Satan. Through the Christian concepts of sin and original fault, good and evil notions are revised, The traditional healing practices of the shamans are heavily under attack. Under our eyes a fight between two worlds of religious conceptions is taking place.

THE DEVIL’S MILLS / Ördögmalom (Roundabouts don’t build houses any more…’)

The everyday life of migrant fun fair operators is the filter through which we view the social and economic factors of the 20th and early 21st century that define the life and work of this social group. Hungary's accession to the EU has presented new challenegs and difficulties to them continuing their traditional trade and lifestyle. Interest in their services has decreased considerably, so this once thriving form of business is now on the decline. (Commendation Material Culture & Archaeology Film Prize 2007)

In the Saigang Hills, 12 miles from the ancient capital of Mandalay are hundreds of pagodas, stupas, monasteries and nunneries which form a focal point of worship for Buddhism in Burma. In 1986 the filmmaker used to live for 15 month as a nun in the Thameikdaw Gaung nunnery. Some years later she is coming back for a visit in order to see what has changed. This is an intimate insight into the daily live of a nunnery as well a portrait of the monastic economy and its interactions with the society.

In ‘Koriam's Law’ Australian anthropologist Andrew Lattas meets his match in philosopher-informant Peter Avarea of Matong village, Pomio, Papua New Guinea. Motivated by their lively dialogue the film sets out to traverse that most misconstrued cultural phenomenon: the Melasanian ‘cargo-cult’. A local leader called Koriam founded the Pomio Kivung Movement in 1964. In the face of official condemnation its political and religious philosophy sought to uncover that path to a perfect existence which whites so convincingly seemed to have found and, so selfishly, monopolised. ‘Koriam’s Law’ concerns itself with the contemporary works and understanding of the Pomio Kivung. Its leader is keen to show that the movement has nothing to do with ‘waiting for cargo’. Rather, its mission is to prepare the way for the coming ‘change’ and, at the same time, to organise for a better society in the here and now. (Winner RAI Film Prize 2005)

A rarely seen classic, PRIDE OF PLACE was made as a first project while Longinotto was a student at England’s National School of Television and Film. As a teenager, the filmmaker had been condemned to a girls' boarding school in an old, isolated castle in Buckinghamshire. Wisely, she ran away at the age of 17, and years later took the opportunity for sweet revenge. In this dark and expressive film, Longinotto exposes the repressive school from the students’ perspective—as a kind of miniature state with bizarre rules, indigestible food and absurd punishments. One year after the release of the film, the boarding school was closed down. With Pride of Place, Longinotto sets the tone for a long career of films in which individuals revolt against oppressive authorities and stifling traditions

Inspired by the cinema of Lumière and the ideas of the 20th century Indian thinker Jiddu Krishnamurti, David MacDougall follows up the Doon School Quintet, his series of films about a traditional school in North India, with this film made at the Rishi Valley School, a famous progressive co-educational school in Andhra Pradesh, South India.

Throughout his life, Krishnamurti taught that one should strive to observe the things around one more calmly and clearly. This was also how cinema began, and what excited its first audiences. SchoolScapes attempts to recapture that freshness of observing the world. It is dedicated to the simple act of looking, in which each scene is a single shot. (Winner Basil Wright Film Prize 2007)

A film about the famous experimental, co-educational boarding school in South India, the Rishi Valley School, founded by the influential Indian thinker Krishnamurti.
In this film about a progressive co-educational boarding school in South India, young boys and girls jokingly accuse each other of being like "alien creatures." In exploring this divide the filmmaker, David MacDougall, examines the lives of three boys at the school: Ashutosh, aged 10, Anjney, aged 12, and Deepak, aged 14. The engaging portraits that emerge reveal the thoughts and resourcefulness of the boys as well as their problems, dreams, and daily activities. The film gives an insight into contemporary Indian childhood which should catch the interest of Australian children of the same age. At the same time, it presents the everyday reality of one of India's most famous schools, founded on the educational ideas of Krishnamurti, one of India's most prominent 20th century thinkers. The film will be especially useful in opening up discussions about gender relations.

Six year old Manka has run away from home, fleeing her abusive aunt. Sonita has daringly accused her neighbor of rape. Amina has decided to end her brutal marriage by taking her husband to court. Set in Kumba, a small town in Southwest Cameroon, Sisters in Law follows the work of the female State Counsel and Court President as they try to help women to change their lives. Incredibly moving and at times disturbing, Kim Longinotto's latest film spectacularly encompasses courage, hope, and the possibility of change. Longinotto is known for her insightful, compassionate studies of women's lives, and the pull between tradition and change. (Audience Prize and Commendation Basil Wright Film Prize 2005)

For generations the Patua (Chitrakara) communities of West Bengal have been painters and singers of stories depicted in scrolls. The film follows the daily lives of Muslim Patua women from Naya villages near Kolkata, which have formed a scroll painters' cooperative. (Material Culture and Archaeology Film Prize 2005)

The anthropologist spent several months working as unskilled labourer alongside Sheffield steelworkers at Morris for his PhD. This film is a look into the working lives of men who earn a living in what remains of the Sheffield Steel Industry.

Endcliffe is an industrial area in the East End of Sheffield. The film follows the daily routine at the workshop as well as family and leisure activities and portraits the reactions to de-industrialization and work realities.

Shot in 1989, Kafi's Story captures Nuba life at the moment before it was engulfed in the Sudanese civil war. Kafi narrates his own story into a portable tape record as he travels from his village, Torogi, to Khartoum to earn enough money to buy a new dress for his second wife, Tete. Kafi is quite consciously negotiating his own path between modernity and tradition.

Kafi and the other Nuba react to the presence of the camera with neither awe nor apprehension; they seem to welcome the camera as an extension of their open, out-going, hospitable lifestyle. At the same time, they rapidly become sophisticated about the way film conventions can frame reality. When a friend walks away from a shot, they joke that he is walking into the screen. At the film's end Kafi asks the filmmaker for one thing: a camera of his own. (Commendation Basil Wright Film Prize 1990)

Ten years after he made Kafi's Story, director Arthur Howes returns to the Sudan to find the members of the Nuba who featured in his earlier documentary film. Soon after he had left the Sudan, the mountain area they had been living in became the battlefield of the civil war that has been destroying much of the Sudan ever since. With a government that is attempting to gain absolute control, the people of Nuba have been persecuted, deported, and deprived of much of their land. Children have been put into camps, many of them brainwashed in the military. Many of their fathers have voluntarily joined the army and are now being forced to fight their own people, as they have not been able to find any other way of making a living. Some of the Nuba people have fled to other countries, such as Ethiopia and Kenya. Groups of women have withdrawn further into the mountains. Howes, who had a great deal of difficulty obtaining a visa for the Sudan, manages to find several of the Nuba men and women he filmed back in the late eighties, and their testimonies are, without exception, revealing. He succeeds in organizing secret screenings of Kafi's Story, which they have never seen before, and the contrast between their lives then and now is shocking. It is rare to hear stories collected from so deeply within a community. Howes gives his personal perspective during much of his commentary.

Years of war and ethnic conflict in the Sudan have created a generation of young men, known as the "Lost Boys," who have spent more years in refugee camps than in their home communities. This intimate film recounts the story of Benjamin and William Deng, brothers joined in the struggle of a seemingly never-ending exile, who are then separated when one is accepted into a United States resettlement program while the other remains in a Kenyan refugee camp

Ethnomusicologist John Baily visits Fremont, California, the new home of the large community of exiled Afghans. He is joined by Kabuli master-musician, Ustad Asif Mahmoud, who plans to open a small private music school to teach traditional tabla drumming to young Afghans. However, Fremont is also a centre of musical innovation, with electronic keyboards and their built-in drum machines. In a series of in context performances we witness the co-existence of traditional and modern Afghan music and the dancing that goes with them both.

The “Theatre Girls Club” is a hostel for homeless, destitute and alcoholic women in Soho, London. It is run by six paid workers and it is the only hostel in London which takes any women at any time. The filmmakers lived in the hostel for more than two months, establishing an extraordinary level of trust with their “cast” —from the home’s feisty cook to an elderly resident who was a terminal alcoholic. In what will later be recognized as a signature style, Longinotto films without judgement and finds the humor and humanity in situations and characters that might otherwise be seen as tragic.

In isolated mountain hamlets in Nigeria’s Jos Plateau the Ngas have traditionally observed the movements of the moon in the night sky. The moon is a key symbol in Ngas cosmology, believed to regulate the rhythm of all life. The film traces the moon’s influence on Ngas work and thought during a single growing season. The documentary tells the story form the point of view of a single traditional Ngas bard. A study guide is available for this film.

This ethnopsychiatric film shows the management of psychiatric disorders by the Yoruba of Nigeria. There are two basic types of institutions to deal with psychiatric disorders. First there are treatment centres managed by herbalists and diviners with specialist knowledge of traditional psychiatric therapy. Second there are cult groups that provide a setting for the expression of otherwise socially unacceptable behaviour through ‘possession’ and masquerade dances.

“Business Process Outsourcing” is the fastest growing industry in the world. In India, approximately 350,000 people are currently working in call centres to maintain the contact between western companies and their customers. Vikhee Uppal is one of them. From a busy office in Calcutta, he pretends to be a guy named Ethan Reed and calls Americans, Brits and Australians to try and sell them cell phones and subscriptions. Vikhee hopes to make it in this sector. On the bulletin board, we see that he and his colleagues keep track of who sells the most. The Americans are the most impolite: they yell at the salespeople and hang up on them. The English, on the contrary, are the most willing to listen to their sales pitch. Even though Vikhee pretends to be a westerner at work, Indian traditions remain very important for him. He wants to get married to a girl from Punjab, and if he doesn’t` t succeed, his family will find a bride for him. At work, Vekhee gets tutored in English. Each night, he watches English soccer matches to see what the people on the other end of the line actually look like.

Cemeteries are not only places for the dead. They are also spaces in which the living interact with each other – and with the dead. “Cultivating Death” depicts the different ways in which bereaved people remember and commemorate their deceased family members and friends, by visiting and tending their graves at a Victorian cemetery in London. It is a common belief in the West that the bereaved have to ‘let go’ and ‘get over the loss’ of their deceased kin, in order to return to a ‘normal’ life. In contrast to these cultural norms, many survivors maintain strong social relationships with their dead. “Cultivating Death” portrays some visitors of Kensal Green Cemetery in West-London, as they actively sustain these continuing bonds by arranging and tending the graves of their deceased, talking to them and bringing them gifts. They thereby speak frankly about this important aspect of their mourning for which the cemetery constitutes a unique environment.

This film is an exploration of transsexuality in the Islamic setting of Iran. The film follows 22 year old Bardia, a female-to-male transsexual, now living in America, who war previously known as Roya, when he was a girl, and as Omid, when he dressed up as a boy. His testimony of sex change contrasts with those of Handry, Lila and Donya, male to female transsexuals still living in Iran and enduring the difficulties of losing the rights they enjoyed as men, and embodying their new roles as women, an inferior sex.

NEW STUDENT FILMS FROM THE GRANADA CENTRE OF VISUL ANTHROPOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER

For the people of Olympos, a small mountain village on the Greek island of Carpathos, preserving tradition is of great importance, not least as a source of income. The parading 'brides' of the Virgin Mary festival, dressed up in their glittering costumes to attract grooms, are now just as keen to attract tourist photographers. But the visitors bring change as well as money and the young women to whom the village looks to preserve its traditions are increasingly reluctant to do so.

Majê Molê is an Afro-Brazilian dance group which offers girls and young women in Olinda, Northeast Brazil, the opportunity to rise above the poverty, drug addiction and crime that scars their community. For teenager Simone it is the central focus of life, but for Leda it is something she must leave behind as she confronts prospective responsibilities as a mother. This is a film about miserable childhoods, sorrow and loss but also about joy, hope found through dance and, eventually, the happiness of motherhood.

Anne and Rosemary both chose to bury their husbands in the woods, whereas Tony was certain he didn't want a vicar at his wife's funeral. Focusing on the experiences of three grieving widows, the film explores how, in the absence of strong religious faith in modern Britain, people are looking to ideas of nature and regeneration to cope with grief and loss.

This film looks at the meaning of 'home' in the Czech Republic through the eyes of two women - one an old woman trying to assert her right to return home from an old person's residence, and the second, a prisoner, returning home at the end of a prison sentence.

Arne Bakke Mælen lives alone on the small family farm he inherited on the edge of a fjord. The farm is no longer viable economically and, like many small farmers in Norway, he has not found a woman to share this life. But for Arne, the landscape is suffused with memory and he does not wish to leave. Instead he dreams of making a living as a wood sculptor, distilling the intensity of his feelings into works of art.

This film explores the dreams and frustrations of camp squatters in Rio de Janeiro State, as, supported by the MST (Landless People's Movement), they wait for permission to settle on unused land close by.

For Jack and Stan, two men from Manchester koi carp have become something more than an obsession. Not only have their pets become a source of fame and distinction, but of affection and mutually fulfilling relationships. For these men, koi are not the half-living ornaments of garden centres, but an altogether more human kettle of fish.

Júlia is a young Angolan woman who lives in a poor neighborhood of Lisbon, together with her daughter Magui. The story of how she arrived in Portugal and what happen to her afterwards is dramatic, and we follow her as she tries to make sense out of her life. As much as being a portrait of Júlia, the film highlights ambivalences that are common to many migrants in: feelings of belonging, the importance of intergenerational relations and the relation between the past, the present and the future. The film focuses on Júlia's story and her daughter's future. It explores some of the challenges they face everyday, and the importance of the wider community to her life.

In the teeming cities of the most populated country on earth, 20 years of economic reform have brought new opportunity, new energy, and new dangers. This film follows one family's efforts to navigate the choppy waters of the new China as they run a restaurant in Kunming, Yunnan Province

During the celebration of the Feast of San Juan Bautista in the village of Chuao, on the Caribbean coast of Venezuela, an image of Jesus appeared on a drinks tray. The community is trying to find out whether this is a miracle and what it could mean. Whilst some believe it is a message from San Juan himself, others think is it is just a series of stains. This film is about the foundations of popular religious belief and the development of cults.

In Malta, devotion to the Virgin Mary is very fervent, particularly in the village of Naxxar, where the most important annual feast, taking place over several days, is dedicated to her honour. But beside the religious celebration, there are also more secular festivities, based on traditional local rivalries, which are conducted with a similar intensity.

The Shabani family have been living in Manchester as refugees and are homesick for Kosovo. Feeling increasingly unwelcome in Britain, they return home to confront the nightmares of their recent past, but discover that it is not quite the place that they imagine it to be.

Cali in Colombia is celebrated for salsa music and beautiful women and is also the base of the Internet Bride agency, 'Latin Best' with 900 women on its files. Accompanying the British and American men who arrive at the agency, the film-maker meets the potential brides and discovers their motivations for leaving the past behind and following the dream of a life elsewhere.

Into the Field follows the everyday “secular” lives of nuns in a Orthodox nunnery in Romania. Documenting the nuns’ activities, relationships and roles within their community, the film also incorporates sequences of stop-motion animation to depict some of the anthropologist’s own challenges of working in the field.

Once brutally persecuted under the Soviet regime, Buddhism is re-emerging in Siberia. But with a past where Lamas were killed in prisons and temples burnt to the ground, there are few masters left to pass on the tradition. Whether or not the faith survives depends on an incarnate Tibetan Lama, scholar and meditational master who travels to remote villages to reawaken Buddhism.

In 1992 the film-maker worked at an orphanage in Guatemala. Nine years later he returns to find out what has happened to the children that he once looked after. A personal testimony, the film faces up to some painful truths about the work of foreign volunteers.

The Caribbean island of Culebra is located between Spanish speaking Puerto Rico and English speaking Virgin Islands. Musicians from the island are inspired from a variety of regional, national and global influences when composing and producing their distinct island music. This film follows two music groups from the island of Culebra and specifically looks into the processes and relationships that constitute an island musical identity. This film was shot in the course of doctoral fieldwork.

This film follows the lives and choices of two monks living at Mar Musa, the Abyssinian Monastery in the desert of Syria. Through their daily lives, the issue of dialogue with Islam emerges.

'Wise'? 'Serene'? 'A Sage'? Mythologized as the Daoist physician from the Jade Dragon Mountain of Lijiang in South, Dr Ho receives hundreds of visitors in search of the 'Real China' every year. But what lies behind the doctor and his fame?

A day without laughter is the most wasted of all days according to veteran circus performer Jan Erik, a.k.a 'Fips the Clown'. So when his back goes in the middle of the summer tour round Scotland, it's no joke. Through following the trials and tribulations of training new girl Mahri to work with his younger partner Emile, this film gives an insight into the realities of modern-day circus life on the road.

Street boys Ravi and Bhajay lead a tough life on the pavements of Mumbai in India. To get away from it, they visit the nearby holy city of Ujjain with the film-maker. But the call of life on the streets is still strong.

A series of portraits of life in a Zapatista indigenous community in Chiapas, Southern Mexico. This film invites us into the people's everyday lives, and presents their own views of the fight against misrepresentation and oppression.

In HIV testing, the second red line is the indication of a positive result. This film follows two volunteers working with HIV & Aids sufferers in the Buduburam Refugee Camp in Ghana. In the absence of medication, the only thing the volunteers can offer is care, compassion and religious faith.

With the Shining Path guerilla movement in decline, the government in Peru set up a Commission for Peace and Reconciliation to hear the testimonies of those who had suffered in the war. Framed by the Commission's hearings in Ayacucho, this film follows one of the witnesses back to her village in the mountains and hears of the terrible atrocities that were committed there.

Murray Collins leaves his city life in search of a bipedal ape. On his journey to highland Sumatra, he meets an academic, three farmers, two conservationists and a shaman, all of whom advise him on his search for the Orang Pendek, the 'small man of the forest'.

Through following the daily life of a home for the elderly in Kathmandhu, Nepal, run by Catholic nuns but situated beside the cremation ghats of Pashupathinath Hindu temple, this film explores cross-religious views on old age, death and karma.

Christiania is a self-governing community in the heart of Copenhagen set up by squatters at the height of 1970s idealism. Faced with extinction or urban redevelopment, residents struggle to redefine a fading ideology.

Through combining their own dramatic reconstructions and real life observation, this film tells the story of children who run away from their homes in search of a better life on the streets of Blantyre, Malawi.

Suspension of the living body from hooks has been practiced in various cultural contexts and places in the past, but today forms part of a growing global interest in body modification. This film joins a group of contemporary British practitioners at a week-end meeting in Norfolk, examining what the experience of suspension means to them, and particularly its role in their understanding of the relationship between their selves, their bodies and the world.

This film deals with the culture of Jamaican dancehall music as it exists in New York. It follows one young dancehall participant who makes his living performing and promoting dancehall music.

Although the Saxons arrived in Transylyvania, Romania over 800 years ago, they have retained a strong sense of their distinctive identity and still speak German. After the Revolution of 1989, most Saxons left the country. But Rosi and her father have stayed behind, determined to live in harmony with the Romanians and Gypsies who have moved into the formerly Saxon villages.

The Zimbabwean girls' team comes to Norway to take part in the world's largest kids' football tournament. The film questions the outcome of this well-intentioned cultural exchange because some of the girls begin to wish that they were white.

The ‘Quinceañera’ celebration is a lived illusion. A day dream shared by the whole community of Tetlanohcan, a rapidly urbanising agricultural town in Tlaxcala, Central Mexico. The dream is shared even by those living and working in the USA. 'Tiempo de Vals' mixes observational footage and testimonials from three generations of women to analyse the meaning of the celebration in the context of the massive social and economic changes in this part of Mexico over the last 40 years.

Chicha music evokes the experiences of the many Peruvians who migrate from the high Andes down to the cities. This film tells the story of Aurora Ramos, a cobbler and market saleswoman, and the role that chicha plays in her life.

ALPHABETICAL LIST

ADHIAMBO - Born in the Evening

Adhiambo means 'the one born in the evening' in the Language of the Luo in western Kenya. The film follows NyaSeme, a married mother and grandmother in her late 30s, during the last month of her pregnancy and through the first weeks of her newborn daughter's life. The first part of the film focuses on everyday life in NyaSeme's home, as well as on the work of the anthropologists, who themselves are expecting a child. The second part follows the various small illnesses that the child goes through. NyaSeme employs herbal resources of the bush surrounding the home as well as those from the government dispensary. Simultaneously the anthropologists' son falls ill and receives various forms of medical treatment. The film creates a personal account of a woman's life, motherhood, children and the maintenance of bodily health in rural western Kenya, as well as an insight into the nature of ethnographic fieldwork. (Winner of the 2003 Student Video Prize)

AEROPLANE DANCE

December 1942: US bomber ‘Little Eva’ was returning to base after a bombing raid over New Guinea. It hit a storm and crashed at Moonlight Creek in Australia’s far north. Aeroplane Dance dramatises the Americans’ struggle to survive in an unfamiliar land, a place they experienced as hostile, and brings together the and Yanyuwa peoples’ tales of war, survival, story-telling and the creation of legends.

THE AGE OF REASON (5)

In this fifth and final film of the Doon School quintet, MacDougall focuses on the life of one student whom he discovers at the school. The film was made in paralell with The New Boys and intersects with it at several points. However instead of looking at the group, it explores the toughts and feelings of Abhishek, a 12-year-old from Nepal, during his first days and weeks as a Doon student. This is once the story of the encounter between a filmmaker and his subject and a glimpse of the mind of a child at the 'age of reason'. This is the most intimate and interactive film of the series. ( Joint purchase with 'The New Boys' is recommended ).

THE AINU BEAR CEREMONY

The RAI has reedited the original film of this ceremony among the Ainu people of Japan. In the bear ceremony, now no longer performed, a specially reared bear was reverently killed and its flesh and blood eaten by the participants. The film shows a series of ritual acts with some commentary on their meaning.

AMIR

Amir, an Afghan refugee in Pakistan, tells his story through music. His work with other musicians and his precarious existence as a refugee are at the centre of the film. Sensitive camerawork and direction makes this a film of insight and beauty.

BARBARA AND HER FRIENDS IN CANDOMBLELAND

In the divine Afro Brazilian cult Candomble is an initiation religion centred around possession. The filmmakers concentrate on children who introduce and guide us to this world. The children play at Candomble. Passing from simulation of the representation, the children touch on the possession dance. Many are eager to be possessed. The film explores what Candomble may offer them.

Between two Villages tells the story of Aldeia da Luz, population of 330, bound to disappear with the construction of the Alqueva dam in the south of Portugal. A new village is being built a few kilometres away as a compensation for the polulation.

The film focuses on the daily life of Aldeia da Luz, with its strong rural tradition and its prospect of change. From the negotiations to the construction of the new houses, the film shows how the authorities and the population try to recreate the village identity. The situation of the village of Aldaia da Luz reflects a mutating society. (Commendation RAI Film Prize 2005)

BRIDEWEALTH FOR A GODDESS (Not for sale in North America, South Africa, Australia & New Zealand, and Japan)

A unique insight into a secret spirit cult among the kawelka people in the western highlands of Papua New Guinea. After a dream, a clan leader initiates a long and complex ‘work’, when he and a group of male supporters seek to make marriage with the spirit goddess Amb Kor.

THE BLOOMS OF BANJELI: TECHNOLOGY AND GENDER IN WEST AFRICAN IRONMAKING

The filmmaker and two historians went into the village of Banjeli in 1985 to recreate for the film the traditional iron smelting techniques (which are no longer used) of the area. By focusing on the traditional technology the film offers fascinating insights on the society as a whole, and in particular the gender relations. The film also contains some early footage of the village.

THE CARROT AND THE STICK

When they retired from selling insurance and teaching, John and Irene Brown volunteered to work overseas under a British Aid programme. They were sent to expand a marketing project aimed at gardeners in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. The film brings out the conflicts within a development project, where expectations of European market capitalism clash with the local subsistence system.

CELSO AND CORA

The film is about one family who live in the slums of Manila. Gary Kildea and a Filipino collaborator enter this family's life, filming them as they eat, as they care for their children, as they work on their daily chores, as they sell cigarettes at night in front of the Tower Hotel. The film employs very little voice-over: the major voice is the sub-titles Tagalog conversation of Celso and Cora. Kildea makes the sequences of events portrayed in the film clear through the use of blanks placed between certain sequences explaining an event or time change. The camera, as Kildea's eye, is very much part of the film. As a political and emotional statement, the film is powerful. Because of the filmmaker's unique use of the camera and because of his narrative style, the film became a classic. It is recommended for courses in anthropology, filmmaking, urban studies, development studies and sociology. (Winner of the 1984 RAI Film Prize)

CHANTAL’S CHOICE

Adolescents in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, West Africa create a play for their peers in Europe and the USA They enact an African folktale about a girl who faces a painful dilemma because she is determined to stay in school.

COLLUM CALLING CANBERRA (PAL only)

An account of Aboriginal people steering their way through the often frustrating processes of official decision-making, as it is seen from their viewpoint far away from Canberra. Gordon Smith, head of the co-operative that runs ‘Collum Collum’ Station in northern New South Wales, and Sunny Bancroft, its manager, are trying to get a government loan to stock the property with breeding cattle so that it can become financially independent. This means preparing budgets, arguing their case and keeping up the pressure. The hardest thing, always, is to find out what is going on in Canberra.

THE CONDOR AND THE BULL (For sale in UK only)

Filmmakers: Peter Getzels & Harriet Gordon.
Anthropologists: Penny Harvey & Peter Getzels

Villagers from remote hamlets high in the Andes join together with people from the roadside village of Ocongate for the Peruvian Independence Day celebration. Festivities require that a wild condor be captured and pitted against a bull during a bullfight in the town plaza. Through this event power relations are revealed between the villagers of Ocongate and the highlanders, and of both of them to the Peruvian state.

CONVERSATIONS WITH DUNDIWUY WANAMBI

A series of interviews with Dundiwuy Wanambi, shot over twelve years. They reveal the struggles of one man in the face of the huge changes brought about by the coming of a mining project, and alcohol, to north-east Arnhem Land.

COPPERWORKING IN SANTA CLARA DEL COBRE, Michoacán, México. Artisans facing change.

Santa Clara del Cobre is well-known for its copperwork, a craft originating from pre-Spanish times. In the late 1940s the people of Santa Clara tried to find new possibilities for their copper production. Craft fairs and competitions gave new impetus to the work and development organisations also became interested to implement projects. These activities caused the copper craft to florish again. In 1991 a rough-cut of the film was shown to the craftmen in Mexico and their remarks have been included in the final version.

CUYAGUA (Sold in two separate parts)

The Devil Dancers (Cuyagua Part I, 52 minutes)

The men of the Afro-Caribbean population of Cuyagua enact a ritual that occurs 60 days after Easter. The film is a portrait of two men who direct the devil dancing. They tell the history of the village, the organisation of devil dancing, and stories associated with the Devil. The film also focuses on the intriguing ritual of the dancing itself.(Back to top)

The Saint With Two Faces (Cuyagua Part II, 56 minutes)

The film centres on the predominantly female celebration of the feast of Saint John. The women sing the songs associated with the Feast, describe their beliefs and how they organise the feast. Preliminary scenes establish the themes that underlie the Feast a mixture of the sacred and the profane, eroticism and death, celebration and mourning.

DABA / NA SHAMAN

After more than a quarter of a century without any form of religious ceremony, the Na, an ethnic group living on the Himalayan plateau, began openly practising their religion again in the early 1990s. Their priests are called daba. Among the few old shamans who are still living today, Dafa Luzo is the most remarkable. As the main character in the film, we see him looking after his farm and his family, as well as performing rituals to expel all unclean spirits and demons and honour the ancestors. His main worry, and his greatest hope, is to make sure his knowledge is safely handed down to the next generation.

THE DANCER AND THE DANCE (DVD / VHS)

Javanese palace dancing has long attracted outsiders by it exotic costumes and effortless grace of movement. These first impressions belie the physical and philosophical rigours 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. Study guide available.

Filmmaker: Kim Longinotto
Consultants: Fardose Ali Mohamed, Eunice Munanie N'Daisi Kwinga

The documentary explores the local dimension of the female circumcision debate in Kenyan societies. In a region of Kenya that is home to Muslims, Maasai and Somali and crosscut by Christian evangelists, recently passed legislation makes it illegal for a girl to be circumcised without first consenting to the procedure. The film begins with Fardhosa a nurse on a tireles campaign to open people's eyes to the dangers of circumcision, both physical and mental. Next Simalo, a Maasai runaway girl returns from Nairobi to confront her mother, who was responsible for her mutilation and young marriage. Finaly the film shows how a group of Marakwet schoolgirls have successfully challenged their parents and tradition in a court law.

DEMOCRACIA INDIGENA

This film examines the indigenous rights revolution sweeping Mexico through the municipal elections in Huehuetla, Puebla. In 1989, the Huehuetla Totonacs formed the Organización Independiente Totonaca (OIT), and joined in an electoral alliance with the Partido de la Revolución Democratica (PRD). For ten years the OIT and the PRD carried out a non-violent revolution. The visible signs of this Totonac renaissance are the health clinics, schools, roads, drinking water and electricity. But the real change is in the new self-confidence and pride of the Totonacs themselves. The camera follows Cruz Garcia, an 'expatriate' Totonac, as he returns to his community.

DEPENDING ON HEAVEN

The film is in two parts and focuses on the Mongols living in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China. Part One (28 minutes) follows the life of a nomadic Mongol family on their yearly journey following their herds across north China. Part Two (28 minutes) gives a more contemporary view of the Mongols trying to reclaim the desert in a more sedentary lifestyle currently encouraged by the Chinese government. The second section highlights disturbing environmental issues regarding the destruction of these northern grasslands.

DISAPPEARING WORLD SERIES

Over fifty programmes form this documentary series, by various filmmakers and anthropologists, noted on each individual programme. Each programme is sold separately.

Granada Television’s major documentary series looks at various aspects of societies from around the world. The titles available, listed in alphabetical order, are as follows:

(For further details on each individual programme, please contact the Film Officer at the RAI.)

DIVORCE IRANIAN STYLE

This film is set in the Family Law Courts in central Tehran. The three main characters are Jamileh who punishes her husband for beating her, Ziba, a 16 year old girl who is trying to get a divorce from her 38 year old husband, and Maryam who is fighting for the custody of her daughters. The film moves away from portraying Iran as a country of war, hostages and Fatwas. It concentrates instead on ordinary women who come to this court to try and transform their lives.(Back to top)

DIYA

A diya is a small terra cotta oil lamp used throughout India in Hindu ceremonies. The film follows the life history of an object through the every day experience of people who make, sell and use it in the town of Dehra Dun, northern India. It begins with a family of potters as they make diyas in the increasingly frantic days before Diwali, the "Festival of Lights". The lamps are produced on a potter's wheel, are taken to be sold in the bazaar, and are then used in the Diwali puja ceremonies. Afterwards they are discarded and returned to the earth. This film attempts to provide a new way of exploring the complex social life surrounding material objects.(Back to top)

DOCTORS OF TWO WORLDS

In the Bolivian highlands an English doctor is setting up a network of health care for remote mountain villages. While teaching the inhabitants the essentials of Western medicine the doctor is confronted with and tries to learn the methods of the local curandero’s methods of healing. The film is a highly revealing document of the encounter of different approaches to illness and is particularly suited for the teaching of Medical Anthropology.

DOON SCHOOL PROJECT, films 1 to 5
DVD or VHS; (special price 5 for 4, when buying the whole series)

David MacDougall's long term visual study of Doon School is now completed. The School, located in Dehra Dun in Uttaranchal, is perhaps the most famous boys' boarding school in India. Although it has sometimes been called the 'Eton of India' it has nevertheless developed its own distinctive style and presents a mixture of privilege and egalitarianism. It was established by a group of moderate Indian nationalists in the 1930s to produce a new generation of leaders who would guide the nation after Independance. Since then it has become highly influential in the creation of the new Indian elites and has come to epitomise many aspects of Indian postcoloniality.
See: Doon School Chronicles
With Morning Hearts
Karam in Jaipur
The New Boys
The Age of Reason

DOON SCHOOL CHRONICLES (Not for sale in North America)

The Doon School is India’s most prestigious boys’ boarding school and has come to epitomise many aspects of Indian postcoloniality. This film, composed of ten ‘chapters’ explores the ideology and social aesthetics of the school through its rituals, physical environment, documents, and the lives of several boys of different ages and temperaments.

DOR, LOW IS BETTER

The film offers an experimental approach to the comparative study of cultures: the monks of a Tibetan monastery compare their own flutes with the Swiss alphorn and the Dutch windhorn 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.(Back to top)

DREAM GIRLS

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.

DUKA'S DILEMMA

Jean Lydall has been making films with the Hamar community of southern Ethiopia since the 1970s. In 2001 she returned with her daughter to follow the continuing life story of Duka. Candid interviews reveal the complex family dynamics when Duka's husband, Sago, takes a second wife, Boro. The film provides an intimate and personel family portrait that captures Duka's ambivalence at sharing her home and husband. The high points of the film include the birth of the new wife's child and heated dispute between the mother-in-law and her son, which leads to the building of a new house. (Winner of the 2003 RAI Film Prize)

EAT THE KIMONO

A compelling biography of Hanayagi Genshu, a dancer who has shocked the traditional elements of Japanese society with her radical politics and avant-garde performances.(Back to top)

FATMAWATI’S WEDDING: THE WEDDING OF TWO SISTERS, THE PREPARATIONS AND TRADITIONAL CEREMONIES

This film records the preparations for the wedding of two sisters in eastern Sumatra in December 1996. There is an emphasis on the importance of the role of women in the village. Ritual exchanges of textiles and cakes, and a series of purification rituals are shown.

FIRTH ON FIRTH

In a series of interviews in his London home and at the London School of Economics, Sir Raymond Firth talks about his life and some of his personel 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 are also used as illustrations.

GARDEN DAYS: VILLAGE IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA

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.

GAEA GIRLS (DVD or VHS)

A film about courage, transformation and dreams in the extraordinary world of Japanese women's wrestling. The film focuses on the hopes and fears of the beleaguered Gaea Japan squad, whose reputation hangs by a thread after a series of setbacks in the ring. There is the spindly 16-year old who spent three years persuading her parents to let her join, the new recruit who ran away but has returned begging for a second chance, and the roockie desperate to make her debut in the ring. At the centre of the film is the tough but popular trainer who - with her own very particular philosophy and personal history - rules the girls, trying to fashion them in her own image.(Back to top)

GOOD-BYE OLD MAN (PAL only)

A last request of a Tiwi man on Melville Island was that a film be made of the pukumani (bereavment) ceremony to follow his death. The film follows his family, from the days of preparation to their final leave-taking of the old man. Commentary by Thomas Woody Minipini, one of the participants.

THE GOOD WIFE OF TOKYO

Kazuko Hohki goes back to Tokyo with her band, the ‘Frank Chickens’, after living in England for 15 years. This wry and delightful film records her re-experiencing of Japan after a long absence, examining traditional attitudes to women and those of Kazuko’s friends who are trying to live differently.

THE GUARDIAN OF THE FORCES

The guardian of the forces introduces the viewer to the world of Sikavi, a ‘fetish priest’ in Lome, Togo. He controls the spirits of several voodoos or gods. The film explores the significance of sacrifice and possession in communicating with spirits of ancestors and voodoo deities. Tradition and modernity are contrasted in this colourful documentary, which provides insight into healing practices of life and death.

HERAT FILMS (In three parts, all on one video tape)

These videos were edited from seven hours of Super 8 film shot by John Baily during two years of ethnomusicological fieldwork carried out in the Herat region of western Afghanistan between 1973 and 1977. The footage was transferred and edited at the TV Unit of Queen’s University Belfast 1981-82. The non-synchronous sound is a problem at certain moments, but overall the editing has made the best of the image and sound available. All three films have a substantial amount of voice-over commentary. The films are of special interest because of the damage suffered by this region during many years of civil war. (This is the city referred to so poignantly in Baily’s later film Amir.)

The City of Herat (21 minutes), using Paul English’s paper ‘The Traditional City of Herat’ as a starting point, sets out to describe systematically the organisation of urban space. The film contrasts the old city and its traditional businesses, against the new city with its modern shops and workshops, and surrounding villages absorbed into the expanding town.

The Annual Cycle of Music in Herat (56 minutes) includes performances of a variety of traditional genres of music and dance. These include sha’er-s (poets) exchanging extemporised quatrains, sorna and dohol (shawn and drum), dutar (long-necked lute) band, nai chaponi (shepherd’s flute), chahartar (long-necked lute), male singer with daireh (frame drum) and Chelu musicians singing and playing sarang (fiddle), tal (small cymbals) and daireh. Dances include atan, aushari and chub bazi. Some of these genres are described in Baily (1988).

The Shrines of Herat (30 minutes) shows four of its many Sufi mazar-s (shrines) for which it is famous: Seyed-e Mukhtar; Karrukh; Kabarzan; and Gazer Gah (the tomb of Ansari). Notable for its controversial visual representation of zikr.

HIDDEN FACES (DVD or VHS)

This film reveals contradictions in the lives of Egyptian women in Muslim society. Living abroad, Safaa Fathy returns to Egypt to interview the internationally renowned feminist writer Nawal El Saadawi. Through her efforts she becomes disillusioned, demonstrating the conflict between modernity and tradition in a Muslim environment.

HOME FROM THE HILL

Anthropology’s relationship with colonialism has been discussed widely. Yet the ethnography of the colonial service remains largely unexplored on film. This entertaining documentary shows, not without human sympathy towards the main character, how after 40 years in the tropics, Colonel Hilary Hook returns from the Kenyan highlands to a London suburb.

THE HOUSE-OPENING (PAL only)

When Geraldine Kawanka’s husband died, she and her children left their house at Aurukun on Cape York Peninsula. In earlier times a bark house would have been burnt, but today a ‘house-opening’ ceremony — creatively mingling Aboriginal, Torres Strait and European elements — has evolved to deal with death in the midst of new living patterns. Although sometimes suggesting a party, its underlying purpose is serious. This film records the opening of the house and Geraldine’s feelings about it in her informative and personal commentary.

IAN GLEADELL: A FALKLAND FARMER

The 1982 war between Britain and Argentina brought the Falkland or Malwinas Islands into the news headlines. This film is less spectacular: it shows the way of life of one inhabitant of this remote island in the South Atlantic. The film tells us in measured style about sheep farmer’s Ian Gleadell’s struggle with the rough landscape, the island’s administration and loneliness.

IMBALU: RITUAL OF MANHOOD OF THE GISU OF UGANDA

An insightful documentary, constructed with visual restraint, about the male circumcision ritual among the Gisu of Uganda. The narrative follows one male participant through the ritual and contrasts his hopes and anxieties on this important day of his life with the expectations of the rest of the village and some rude remarks of his circumcisers.

IN AND OUT OF AFRICA (Not for sale in USA or Canada)

A Nigerian, Gabai Baare, is followed from the Ivory Coast to Long Island, USA, as he conducts his job in the transnational trade of African art. Through commercial exchange the commoditization of these art objects is revealed, as is the negotiation of cultural values between European and American collectors and Africa artists and traders.

The Hamat’sa (or “Cannibal Dance”) is the most important—and highly represented ceremony of the Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwakiutl) people of British Columbia. This film traces the history of anthropological depictions of the dance and, through the return of archival materials to a First Nations community, presents some of the ways in which diverse attitudes toward this history inform current performances of the Hamat’sa. With a secondary focus on the filmmaker’s fieldwork experience, the film also attends specifically to the ethics of ethnographic representation and to the renegotiation of relationships between anthropologists and their research subjects. (Commendation Blackwell Student Video Prize 2005)

JOHN THE EEL TRAPPER (Joint purchase with Smoke recommended)

The fens of East Anglia provide the scenery for this documentary. At the centre of the film is John, a solitary character, who makes his living by trapping eels in the numerous canals of the area. We see him at work and narrating his own story. Eel trapping is illegal, so he is always on the run: this is a tale of poaching, a traditional craft, and the influence of the modern state on the individual.

KARAM IN JAIPUR (3, Doon School project)

The third film in the Doon School quintet follows the main protagonist of With Morning Hearts into the next phase of his life in Jaipur House, one of the five main houses of the school. There he plays hockey, sings, studies and struggles to settle into the House. He must keep up with his classmates, contend with the authority of older boys, and try to find a way to make his mark. He finds it in the gymnastics, for which he is an aptitude .

A KABUL MUSIC DIARY (DVD or VHS)

Ethnomusicologist John Baily returns to Kabul to see what is happening in the world of music one year after the defeat of the Taliban. The film documents a variety of musical activities, including performances of rubab lute music by Kabul's traditional musicians, songs of Afghan orphans,the Music Department of Kabul University and a student pop group playing electric guitars and keyboard. Implicitly, the film identifies some of the dilemmas facing those seeking to help Afghans rebuild their music culture.

THE LAST NAVIGATOR

This is the story of two cultures and two technologies. An American navigator is taught the skills of navigation by a traditional Micronesian navigator on Satawal island. The American tries to navigate a boat through dangerous waters, without Western technology, while the traditional navigator watches him. The making of the film brought out interesting conflicts within the Micronesian community and in the interactions with the American navigator.

LESSONS FROM GULAM

A detailed study of musical enculturation within the Asian community of Bradford in northern England. Gulam Musa is the principal character and he is shown as a teacher and as a musician. The film gives a detailed account of this particular Indian music and music education, both in homes and at school. The filmmaker is an ethnomusicologist.

LETTER TO THE DEATH

The film is about the encounter between tradition and modernity. In a small village of Papua New Guinea three exceptional men rival with each other in the field of rituals and artistic creation in order to win over their neighbours. They send a last letter to their dead who have abandoned them and who may have emigrated to a rich country from which the film-makers come. (Commendation 2003 RAI Film Prize)

LIFE CHANCES: FOUR FAMILIES IN A GREEK CYPRIOT VILLAGE

A careful account of social change in a prosperous Greek Cypriot village, which follows four closely related families before the Turkish made them all refugees. Their lives reflect the possibilities available to individuals and families in the village society.

LINK-UP DIARY (PAL only)

The filmmaker goes on the road with Link-Up, an organisation which re-unites Aboriginal families separated in earlier decades by the New South Wales government. As the film shows, being reunited with one’s family is only the first step in the journey. Then begins the difficult period in trying to come to terms with one’s new found family, a new environment, and one’s new identity. We learn something of the impact this ordinance had upon the children themselves, their families and the Aboriginal history of this century.

LORANG’S WAY (TURKANA CONVERSATIONS 1) (Not for sale in North America)

The Turkana are a group of semi-nomadic pastoralists who inhabit a harsh environment of dry thorn country in northwestern Kenya. Lorang’s Way focuses upon a Turkana elder. Having spent time away from home in the army, Lorang has gained the insights of someone who has viewed his culture from the outside, becoming aware of the changes wrought by the modern world.

MABO: LIFE OF AN ISLAND MAN

On June 3rd 1992, six months after Eddie ‘Koiki’ Mabo’s tragic death, the High Court upheld his claim that Murray Islanders held native title to land in the Torres Strait. The legal fiction that Australia was empty when first occupied by white people had been laid to rest. Mabo: Life of an Island Man tells the private and public stories of a man so passionate about family and home that he fought an entire nation and its legal system. Though his greatest victory was won only after his death, it has forever ensured his place, on Murray Island and in Australian history.

MAN WITHOUT PIGS(Not for sale in North America, South Africa, Australia & New Zealand, and Japan)

John Waiko is the first Papua New Guinean to reach the status of Professor. When John and his family decided to put on a dance drama to welcome his return and celebrate his accomplishment, they were met with challenge and scepticism. Johan had little knowledge of ritual and no customary wealth or list of favours and alliances.

A MONTH IN THE LIFE OF EPHTIM D.

Ephtim D., 73 years old, is a retired postman. He lives in Sofia with his wife Ghinka in a three room suburban apartment. As a socialist he feels confused by the ‘crazy’ democracy and the uncertainties of the transition period. The couple’s combined pensions amount to $66.00.

Ephtim experiences constant difficulties in balancing the family budget. Free medical care and lunches at a subsidised canteen are essential to his survival strategy. This portrait of a Bulgarian pensioner is presented in the context of a global hopelessness and a clearly felt nostalgia for the communist past.(Back to top)

MATAI SAMOA

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 analysed 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.

MUKTUK (Joint purchase with Tuktu recommended)

Shot on the mosquito-ridden shores of the Mackenzie Delta in Canada’s North-West territories, the film deals with the annual Beluga (white whale) hunt. Three families are followed who have migrated 110 miles in order to lay supplies for the winter. Central character, Buster Kalek and his grandson Trevor, are seen in a dramatic Beluga chase. Elders of the Innuvialluit Eskimo feel that the survival of their way of life lies in the transmission of knowledge about traditional fishing.

THE MYSTERY OF THE FROZEN TOMBS: A YOUNG LADY EMERGES FROM THE ICE

The film unfolds the archaeological discovery of the frozen tombs of Altai, part of the Scythian culture in the Siberian steppe.

NETSILIK ESKIMO SERIES (Not for sale in Canada)

These films are for all who wish to see how life used to be among the Netsilik when they still lived apart and depended entirely on the land and their own ingenuity to sustain life through the rigors of the Arctic year. The filming was done in the Pelly Bay region of the Canadian Arctic.

Group A (Each title is offered for individual sale and is approximately 60 minutes long.)(Back to top)

At the Autumn River Camp

At the Caribou Crossing Place

Building a Kayak

Fishing at the Stone Weir

Stalking Seal on the Spring Ice

Group B (Each title is offered for individual sale and is approximately 90 minutes long.)(Back to top)

At the Spring Sea Ice Camp

Group Hunting on the Spring Ice

Group C (The title is offered for individual sale and is approximately 120 minutes long.)(Back to top)

At the Winter Sea Ice Camp

THE NEW BOYS (4, Doon School series)

The social dynamics of the group is the focus of this study of life in Foot House, one of Doon School's dormitories for new boys. It begins a few days before the boys appear and shows them arriving, struggling with their trunks and suitcases. It then follows them for the next two months of their lives in the house. The film provides a comparision to the group viewd in With Morning Hearts, for these boys appear more divided and class-concious. Within the group there is a range of personalities and backgrounds. An important feature of the film is the inclusion of converstions among the boys about the causes of agression and warefare, homesickness, and how to speak to a ghost. ( Joint purchase with 'The Age of Reason' is recommended ).

PHOTO WALLAHS (Not for sale in North America)

This film is an exploration of the cultural and personal meanings of photographs in a hill station in northern India. The ‘photo wallahs’ are the local photographers of Mussoorie, a town which once attracted Indian princes and British residents but now caters to Indian tourists.

POLKA

The film confronts the accordion music of Chicano immigrants in southern Texas with the traditional music of accordion players in Austria. Without making any final judgements on the ‘roots’ of ‘conjunto’ music of the Chicanos, the film is able to reveal the different claims to ethnic identity. Most interestingly, Chicanos in Mexico and Texas and Austrians comment upon each others’ way of playing Polka.

RAJU AND HIS FRIENDS

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.

RECLAIMING THE FOREST

National governments, itinerant gold-miners, and indigenous inhabitants compete for control of an area of the South American rainforest. The film shows the potential conflict between the interests of aboriginal peoples and the responsibility of nation states to implement ecologically sound policies in tropical forest areas. It also demonstrates the complex relationship between culture and ethnic identity under conditions of rapid social change.

THE RED BOWMEN(Not for sale in North America, South Africa, Australia & New Zealand, and Japan)

In a remote part of the West Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea, the Umeda people eke out a difficult living from the sago swamps and primary rain forest that surround them. Until recently, these people performed an annual ceremony, the Ida, which dramatised their relationship to the forest and celebrated their continuing survival. The ceremony was the major social occasion of their year in essence a fertility ritual focussing on a complex metamorphosis of figures representing cassowaries.

This film is a record of the Ida ceremony, and an analysis of it, seen through the eyes of anthropologist Alfred Gell.

RUNAWAY

This film is set in the refuge for girls in Teheran and follows the stories of five girls who come here. These girls, in leaving a situation that has become intolerable, show incredible courage and resourcefulness. The film explores their experience of male authority, their longing for respect and freedom, and their hopes for a brighter future. The centre is run by a dynamic and charismatic Mrs Shirazi, who protects the girls from their families and helps them to renegotiate their relationships. The film shows, how Iranian women are learning to challenge the old rules, and how rapidly their country is changing.

SACRED HARP SINGERS

A moving portrait of harp singers Leonard and Mazine Lacy. Sacred harp music is a kind of harmonised plainsong practised in rural America. This film was shot in Sand Mountain, Alabama, and is recommended for Ethnomusicology in particular.(Back to top)

SEED AND EARTH

Seed and Earth is a film about everyday life in rural Bengal (village of Janta, near Bishnupur town). It follows the daily schedule of two families and observes the complementarity and difference of gender and generation in the work, ritual and leisure activities of men and women, adults and children. The film reveals the strong links between the sacred and social life, the events and ideas of family, cultivation, and worship in Bengal. Eschewing commentary and interviews, the film participates in village life, and presents people and community through their own activities in their own words in naturally occurring situations.

1700 METRES FROM THE FUTURE

Inhabitants of an isolated settlement called Gásadalur (on the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic) discuss the pending tunnel planned to connect them to the rest of the island. They share their outlooks concerning the future impact it will have on their present way of life and living conditions.

A SHEEPHERDER’S HOMECOMING

This film documents a migrant worker’s experiences as a herder on a Nevada sheep ranch who then returns to his family in Mexico after a long absence to renew ties and find a job at home. It contains an original Mexican corrido song track and a voice over based on John Berger’s ‘A Seventh Man.’ The film contributes towards understanding the often temporal and circular process of migration, and its impact on social networks and familial relations.(Back to top)

SHINJUKU BOYS

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.

SILK, MUTHAPPAR AND VHS: PORTRAITS FROM SOUTH INDIA

The documentary, filmed during ethnographic field research, shows three portraits of ‘ordinary’ personalities — Mala, a young weaver sharing a one-bedroom house with nine siblings; Santa Cruz, once a fishtrader and now a healer and magician; and Muthiah, a videographer of upper class weddings — living in a neighbourhood in Nagercoil, a south Indian town. The aim of the video is to show the persons not as representatives of homogeneous masses, but to acknowledge them as individuals who nurse their own specific worries and strategies in a changing world. The protagonists thus themselves comment about their own lives and actions.

SMOKE (Joint purchase with John the Eel Trapper recommended)

The film deals with fish smoking in Monnickendam, a small town twelve miles north of Amsterdam. Using archival footage, interviewing old fishermen, and contrasting the traditional and the modern industrial way to smoke fish, the film offers insight into changing life styles on the Dutch coast.

SOFIA AND HER PEOPLE

Sofia and her family lost their village home in 1975 when Turkey invaded Cyprus. The film, mainly set in Nicosia in 1983, shows the pressures of refugee economic recovery through shift work in a family bakery, and the pains of dislocation felt by Sofia in her laments which she sings at the intervals during the film.

STOCKMAN’S STRATEGY (PAL only)

A film which explores the philosophy of teaching and learning of Sunny Bancroft, manager of an Aboriginal-run cattle station in northern New South Wales. It also tells the story of Shane Gordon, a 16-year-old apprentice, as he takes his first steps towards becoming a stockman under Sunny’s guidance.

STRANGERS ABROAD (A six-part documentary series, NEW available on DVD)

Central Television’s major documentary series looks at the first anthropologists to stop ‘armchair theorising’ and go out to live among the peoples who so interested them. The six part series was filmed all over the world, from the frozen Canadian Arctic to the dry outback of Australia, from New Guinea to India, Africa to the South Pacific.

The programme makers retraced the steps of the pioneering anthropologists in those countries and, by following the life story of each scholar, they reveal how social anthropology has contributed to our lives.

(For further details on each individual programme, please contact the Film Officer at the RAI.)

SUNDANESE CULTURE ALIVE

Jaipongan is a new style of music and dancing which was ‘invented’ about a decade ago on Western Java, Indonesia. Drawing on more classical Javanese music and taking elements from Japanese and Indian music as well, Jaipongan has become widely popular. Dancers and musicians explain the place of Jaipongan within Sundanese culture.

SUNNY AND THE DARK HORSE (PAL only)

A true story of a country family’s gradual involvement and growing passion for ‘picnic racing’. Sunny Bancroft is an Aboriginal cattle-station manager in New South Wales. With his non-Aboriginal wife Liz, two daughters and Liz’s mother ‘Tex’ he searches for a winning horse to triumph on the local circuit — but things don’t always go his way. Filmed as it happened, the events were later fashioned into a narrative in Sunny’s distinctive story-telling style. A film about Australian rural society and one Aboriginal man’s determination to succeed.

TAKEOVER (PAL only)

On March 13, 1978 the Queensland Government announced its intention to take over management of Aurukun Aboriginal Reserve from the Uniting Church. The people of Aurukun complained bitterly, fearing that the state was merely seeking easier access to rich bauxite deposits on their Reserve. When the Federal Government took the side of the Aborigines the stage was set for a national confrontation which soon became front-page news across Australia.

Cinematographer: Dawa T. Lepcha Anthropologist: Anna Balikci-Denjongpa Advisor: Asen Balikci
Produced by the Namgyal Institute of Tibetology, Gangtok, Sikkim.

The film illustrates the changes the Lepcha of the Dzongu reserve, North Sikkim, have been through in the last 60 years. From the 1940s, the Lepcha of Tingvong village gradually abandoned hunting, gathering and the slash and burn cultivation of dry rice, and became settled agriculturalists. Entire mountains sides were converted to cardamom and terraced for the cultivation of irrigated paddy. The irrigated rice and the cardamom cash crop not only brought the Lepcha within Sikkim’s market economy but helped create a surplus which could among other things be invested in religion. In the 1940s, the Lepcha of Tingvong embraced Buddhism and all its complex rituals without however abandoning their strong shamanic traditions. Today, both forms of rituals amiably co-exist in the village. This film is part of a long-term visual anthropology training project for the tribal communities of Sikkim. The first phase aims to document the social life and rituals of the Lepcha of Dzongu. We have accumulated over 100 hours of material which is archived at the institute for research use. This is the first film edited from the material. Short thematic films will be edited for museum use in Sikkim.

SONS OF HAJI OMAR (not for sale in Canada and North America)

Haji Omar and his three sons belong to the Lakenkhel, a Pashtun tribal group in northeathern Afghanistan. Concentrating within one family, the film draw sharp, colourful portraits of the protagonists and their problems. Haji Omar, a wealthy settled nomad, determined on economic diversification through his sons: Anwar, the eldest, his father's favourite, pastoralist and expert horse-man; Janat Gul, cultivator and ambitious rebel; Ismael, the youngest, attending school with a view to a job as a government official. Much of the film is concentrated on pastoral nomadic activities, beginning in the spring camp in the steppe not far from the provincial centre, Baghlan, and moving in May and June up and over the Khawak pass to mountain pastures in the Hindu Kush. Further sequences show life in the bazaar, classes in the high school, dealing with governmental officials and expression of local rivalries in the Central Asian sport of buzkashi.

TAYUBAN: DANCING THE SPIRIT IN JAVA

Once a year a ritual is held in a Javanese village. After a distribution of food, men dance with professional female dancers. Their allegedly sexual ethos makes these ‘tayuban’ unacceptable as national culture, but the dancing is a gift to the protective spirit in exchange for well-being, and represents community identity.

TEMPUS DE BARISTAS / TIME OF THE BARMEN (PAL only)

This film depicts the characters, and social dilemmas of three generations of Sardinian mountain shepherds. Although born roughly 20 years apart, Franchiscu (62), his son Pietro (17) and their friend Miminu (43) are united by ties of family, friendship and common experience. But increasingly these ties are being pulled apart by social and economic circumstance. The youngest, still a schoolboy, is likely to leave shepherding because he has more choices than the two older men have had. They have been committed to their way of life, but for one it has meant celibacy, and for the other, other kinds of hardships. The film makes clear aspects of the transformation of pastoral communities by the squeeze of falling prices for produce, coupled with the attraction of social mobility out of pastoralism via education, or the shorter hours of conventionally waged jobs. While the issues are revealed through the close and intimate observation of the three central characters, revelatory interviews, episodes, and performances.

We are pleased to announce that we are subdistributing the following classical films from Australian National University (on DVD only)

Filmmaker/anthropologists: Timothy Asch, Linda Connor and Patsy Asch
A study guide, Jero Tapakan: Balinese Healer, written by the three filmmakers, complements these films.

A Balinese Trance Séance (30 min)
Jero Tapakan is ‘entered’ by deities and spirits who converse with her clients . Unbeknown to her, they wish to contact the spirit of their dead son to learn the cause of his death and his wishes for his cremation ceremony.

Jero on Jero: A Balinese Trance Séance Observed (16 min)
For the first time Jero sees herself on film as she watches A Balinese Trance Séance. Her spontaneous comments provide insights into her feelings while possessed, her understanding of her practices and her humility in the presence of the supernatural world.

The Medium is the Masseuse: a Balinese Massage (31 min)
Jero uses massage and traditional medicines to treat Ida Bagus, who suffers from sterility and seizures. Through her treatment and her words, Jero reveals her conceptions of the human body, the nature of illness, the contrast between Western and traditional Balinese medicine, and the relationship between human beings and the cosmos.

Jero Tapakan: Stories from the life of a Balinese Healer (26 min)
Jero beings with an account of her family’s extreme poverty that culminated in her desire to leave her family and travel as a pedlar. She describes mystical experiences that led her to recognise her own ‘blessed madness’ and to return home. Jero’s account is unique but themes of poverty, mysticism, madness and humility are common elements in the autobiographical accounts of many Balinese healers.

The Water of Words: a cultural ecology of a small island in Eastern Indonesia

This film examines the ecology and poetry of everyday life. Two Rotinese narrate this film, each offering his perception of the importance of the Lontar (Borassus) palm: a clan leader describes the many practical uses of the palm; a poet tells of its origin and mythic significance. The film complements Fox’s book, The Harvest of the Palm, as well as his essays on ritual language.

The film begins as the groom’s side gathers the animals and money for a bridewealth payment, and discusses problems that might arise in negotiating the exchange. In ritual silence, they walk to the bride’s family house, where discussions proceed, interspersing ritual forms with lively conversation. When agreement is reached, drinking and feasting begin and a chanter recounts the origin of the first bridewealth payment.

This film is a record of the gren mahe rituals of the people of the domain of Wai Brama. The gren mahe is the largest religious event of the Wai Brama ceremonial system and requires the participation of the whole community. The film examines ceremonial leadership and the role of evolving religious practice in a changing society. (See Lewis’ book, People of the Source. The Social and Ceremonial Order of Tana Wai Brama on Flores)

In 1978, as part of the preparations for the island-wide ceremony eka dasa rudra, religious officials urged all Balinese to cleanse the island by cremating their dead. Many were forced to pool resources and hold group cremation rituals. The film shows preparations for such a ceremony and its cycle of rituals: the cremation, post-cremation and casting of the ashes into the sea. This film includes subtitled comments by four of the participants.

In 1993, Anthony Forge filmed the cremation of an older woman from an affluent ‘commoner’ family. As her body was moved from her family compound to the cremation tower, men of the ward seized the body and began to fight over it, as was traditional in that part of Bali. Forge juxtaposes his recording of this event with Gregory Bateson’s 1937 footage of a ngarap and footage of Balinese paintings. The video is based on an unfinished version Forge was working on with Patsy Asch before his death.

These companion films examine the philosophy and ritual practices of the followers of a holy man popularly known as Embah Wali. The movement, centred in Blitar, East Java, regards wayang as a model for living. Their ritual practices involve the performance of a unique form of wayang with human actors.

A TIBETAN NEW YEAR

This outstanding documentary is placed in Northern India among a group of Tibetan refugees. They celebrate the New Year, following a ritual of their religion, Bonpo, which is older than Buddhism.

TIGER'S APPRENTICE (Not for sale in North America)

Tiger's Apprentice is the story of M. Trinh Nguyen's journey to her native Vietnam to observe and document her great-uncle's folk medicine practices. Were her great-uncle's treatments simply "voodoo" as some of her relatives in the United States insisted, or was he one of the dying breed of folk medicine masters? During her visit, Nguyen observes her great-uncle treating many patients and making his medicines for tumors, leprosy, and infections. She also seeks out people cured by her great-uncle, talks to local doctors and herbalists, battles Vietnamese government censors fearful her footage might make them seem backward to the Western world, and ultimately realizes that through her investigation she has unwittingly begun to apprentice.

TO GET THAT COUNTRY (PAL only)

An important historical film of events surrounding early meetings of the Northern Land Council in 1977, where uranium mining, land rights and Aboriginal leadership were the key issues.

TO LIVE WITH HERDS (Not for sale in North America)

The Jie are semi-nomadic pastoral people living in North-eastern Uganda, who are striving to maintain their way of life in the face of unsympathetic government policy, and, at the time of filming, a dry-season famine.

TRACKING THE PALE FOX: STUDIES ON THE DOGON

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.

A TRANSFER OF POWER (PAL only)

Replacing the engine in an old car is a familiar rural task, but how people go about it differs. For these Aboriginal men in New South Wales, it’s an occasion for affirming continuing relationships in characteristically Aboriginal ways, through consensus and humour, and by pooling their skills. For Stevie, the small boy, it’s a chance to learn by watching. And even if he’s only a little help he’s never excluded.

TROBRIAND CRICKET: AN INGENIOUS RESPONSE TO COLONIALISM

The film documents the transformation by the Trobriand Islanders of the game of cricket, first introduced by British missionaries into a highly distinctive political ritual. Shot in 1973-1974, shortly before the independence of Papua New Guinea, the film was made with the active co-operation of the, Kabisawali Movement, a local political organisation. The film has been enthusiastically received by anthropologists, television audiences, film festivals and (most important, perhaps) by the Trobriand sponsors. However, much of the film’s political dimension is related to the way in which it was made, the type of co-operation between Trobriand sponsors and makers, and its role in Kabisawali propaganda, factors which are not explicitly part of the film’s content.

THE TROBRIAND ISLANDERS

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.

TUKTU

Tuktu is the Kuvanmiit Eskimo word for caribou. The film traces the early evolution of Ambler, founded almost 30 years ago on the Kobuk River in Alaska. Change and development mark life now in this village near an old caribou migration path. Subsistence values face rapid Westernization, but the villagers’ desire to combine their old way of life with the new remains the strongest force.

THE WATER GODDESS AND THE COMPUTER

The film demonstrates how in Bali, development projects can threaten a carefully balanced ecological irrigation system that is maintained by temple priests. A biologist and an anthropologist look at the traditional irrigation system and show through the use of a computer how it works. They then present the computer system to the temple priests as an aid to explore the effect of changes in the traditional irrigation system.

THE WEDDING CAMELS (TURKANA CONVERSATIONS 3)

Also about individuals from the Turkana in north-western Kenya (see Lorang’s Way and A Wife Among Wives), this film chronicles a series of events which surround the marriage of Lorang’s daughter Akai to Kongu, his agemate. A large section of the film is concerned with a dispute which arises over the number and size of large and small animals — goats and camels — to be given as bridewealth to Lorang and his kin.

A WIFE AMONG WIVES (TURKANA CONVERSATIONS 2)

This segment of the trilogy on the Turkana of northern Kenya (see Lorang’s Way and The Wedding Camels above) evolves around the role of women in the society. The audience follows the MacDougall’s while they search for an elusive wedding they want to film. Along the way they stay with friends and talk with them about the role of the Turkana women.

WITH MORNING HEARTS (not for sale in North America)

This film continues MacDougall's long-term study of an elite boys' boarding school in northern India. It focuses on a group of twelve-year-olds during the first year in one of the 'houses' for new boys. The film concerns their attachment to the house, but more importantly, their attachment to one another in a communal life. It follows, in particular, the experiences of one boy and several of his close associates, from their initial homesickness, to their life as a member of the group, to their separation from the house at the end of the year.

The Doon school was established by a group of Indian nationalists in the 1930s to produce a new generation of leaders who would guide the nation after Independence. ( Joint purchase with Doon School Chronicles, 2001, recommended ).

WITHOUT FATHERS OR HUSBANDS

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 organisation is absolutely matrilineal and as incest is prohibited, like elsewhere, their sexual life mainly takes the form of nocturnal visits of men to women.

YMAKO

Ymako Teatri, a theatre company based in Ivory Coast, uses street theatre to question some contemporary West-African problems. Their originality consists in using the ‘invisible theatre’ method in order to surprise the public and thus make it react itself to its own problems. This documentary shows how a local theatre company efficiently uses fiction to problematise today’s African reality. This film presents two performances, one criticises the current proliferation of religious sects, the other deals with the awakening of villagers towards AIDS. Ymako, in Bambara, means ‘our concerns’.

STUDENT FILMS

BACK TO BASICS (33 minutes, 1994, Dominic French)

A group of environmentalists and homeless have purchased some land on which to settle and get back to a simpler way of life. But the nearby residents of Somerset’s ‘best-kept village’ are determined to force them to leave .(Back to top)

CAE DAI — A HOME FROM HOME(30 minutes, 1997, Will Grove —White)

After the closure of the North Wales psychiatric hospital in the late 1980s, Sparrow Harrison opened his family home to local people suffering from mental illness. This film explores the humour, bravery and unique family atmosphere of Cae Dai. (Back to top)

FIGHTING FOR CONTROL (30 minutes, 1998, Alexia Coppe)

An unusual household. A heavy past. Two South London women and five children trying to build a future.(Back to top)

FRESH FIELDS (31 minutes, 1995, Alistair Cook)

From conflict to construction — this is the story of two disabled ex-fighters rebuilding their lives. What does the future hold for them in Eritrea, the homeland to which they are committed?(Back to top)

GOING BACK HOME (35 minutes, 1992, Catarina Alves-Costa)

For those who live in the city, each and every summer is about going back to Arga, the village in Northern Portugal which they left to find work. For the few who have stayed, Their return brings back memories of what village life used to be like.(Back to top)

HARPOONS AND HEARTACHE (28 minutes, 1998, Bessie Morris)

Bessie Morris, a Greek-American, portrays the romantic relationships between Greek men and women tourists. She explores the story of Vassilis, a young male bartender in the tourist town of Hania, Crete(Back to top)

THE HEAD CORNERSTONE (27 minutes,1998, Ruth Hammill)

Griffiths takes his responsibilities seriously and works ver hard as a taxi driver in Negril, Jamaica, to support his family. His sense of obligation extends to his siblings, his ageing father and even his deceased mother. As Griffiths recalls a decision made long ago which played a part in his entire family becoming squatters, this film examines the tensions and repercussions that continue to affect his life and his relationships.(Back to top)

LIFE AS WE KNOW IT (25 minutes, 1995, Alex Reed)

‘It was Star Trek that brought us together’. John and Pauline are to be wed beyond the Final Frontier at a convention in Manchester. See them beam up into a universe of Klingons and Hollywood stars.(Back to top)

A LITTLE BIT OF FREEDOM (34 minutes, 1998, Lorna Kirk)

This film explores the relationship between three Nepalese women living under the same roof: a servant girl, Nani; a married woman, Sarita; and a mother-in-law, Ama. An interesting mixture of entrapment, duty and tradition. Add rice, boil and serve.(Back to top)

LOOKING FOR THE MAN OF ARAN (25 minutes, 1995, Sebastian Eschenbach)

It is 60 years since Robert Flaherty made Man of Aran. How do the people of the Aran Islands remember the experience and what do they feel about the image the films gives of their land?

A NEW KIND OF LIFE (28 minutes, 1997, Emma Farrell)

How is someone’s life affected when faced with cancer? This film is a portrait of three people who have chosen to include complementary therapies as part of their daily coping strategies. (Back to top)

OUT OF PLACE (38 minutes, 1993, Peter Lutz)

The Bosnian war drove Nerma and Mavis from their homes. Having found refuge in Sweden, they learn to cope with a new situation.(Back to top)

PEPSI WAR (30 minutes, 1992, 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, (Back to top)

RUB’EL KURUS (BENEATH THE CROSS) (30 minutes, 1997, Carlos Flores)

During the 1980s the Guatemalan army launched ruthless counter-insurgency campaigns against indigenous communities, killing or displacing thousands. This film documents the struggle of a group of Maya-Q’eqchi’ villages to reconstruct their communities and come to terms with their violent past. (Back to top)

SAHAR’S WEDDING (46 minutes, 1991, Hanna Musleh)

The chronicle of a wedding in a Palestinian village under Israeli occupation, this film provides a portrait not only of the bride and groom, but also of their immediate kin. It becomes clear that attitudes about marriage, women’s roles and politics are undergoing great changes. Despite the military presence, there is hope for the future. (Back to top)

A SAINT FROM NEW YORK (30 minutes, 1995, Line Hatland)

Dorothy Day, ex-communist, anarchist, single mother and co-founder of the widespread ‘Catholic Worker’ movement — died in New York in 1980. Soon after the Claretian Fathers started a campaign to get her canonised. But the Philadelphia Catholic Workers oppose the idea.(Back to top)

THE THOMPSONS (29 minutes, 1996, Andy Lawrence)

In 1996 the Troubles in Northern Ireland continued to the sound of beating drums and marching feet. This is the story of a Protestant family in rural Ulster and their fight to remain British and free from Irish rule.(Back to top)

WOMEN OF A DIVIDED LAND (22 minutes, 1997, Joanna Hill)

This film follows the activities of Israeli and Palestinian women peace activists in Jerusalem and the West Bank, portraying both the collective and individual experiences of resistance.(Back to top)

YOU CAN’T LIVE WITH YOUR MOUTH SHUT (29 minutes, 1999, Joao Nicolau)

Cape Verde is an archipelago situated 500km off the West Coast of Africa. On the island of Santiago lives Mano Mendi, the last player of cimboa, a one-string violin used to accompany the traditional batuque music. Through the portrait of Mano Mendi and the learning experience of To, a music teacher in the capital city Praia, the film shows us how this music is rooted in the rhythms of everyday life.(Back to top)

YUKHAGIR STORIES (30 minutes, 1997, Rane Wllerslev)

The Yukhagirs are one of the small indigenous peoples of Northern Siberia. This film, shot in the village of Nelemnoye, explores what it means to be a Yukhagir.

STAFF FILMS

From the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology

UNCLE POISON

Filmed in the city of Caracas, capital of Venezuela, Uncle Poison is an intimate portrait of a traditional faith healer, set against the backdrop of his community’s Easter celebrations. Every day, Benito Reyes receives people at his house looking for all sorts of cures. Through the personal testimony of the healer, this documentary looks at his role as mediator between the social, natural and spiritual worlds. Before curing someone, or even before harvesting medicinal leaves, he must first seek permission from the plant he uses as well as from a variety of Saints. He then uses these plants to extract the sickness and spells from his patients. A conjunction of sacred and profane, celebration and mourning, Easter provides a rare opportunity to look at traditional faith-healing in a wider social and religious context.

WRITING PANARE — PORTRAIT OF A LINGUIST ON FIELDWORK

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.

Pricing and Ordering Information

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Prices for RAI Film Library Catalogues, Volumes I & II:

These catalogues list RAI films and videos that are available for hire (within the UK and Ireland only). They are a useful resource in their own right, providing extensive entries and bibliographic references on nearly 200 films in total. A supplementary list is included for those titles acquired after the publication of the catalogues.

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INTERNATIONAL VIDEO SALES LIST

February 2008

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