Royal Anthropological Institute

Director Tone Bringa, Peter Loizos
Country/Production UK
Release 2001
Length 48 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL or NTSC / All region
Location Bosnia / Europe

Order No RAI-200.325
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The film is the sequel to, We are all Neighbours, the 1993 Granada Disappearing World film, about the breakdown of relations between Muslims and Croats as war overtakes their ethnically mixed village in Central Bosnia. Returning Home follows the same Muslim families seven years later as they rebuild their lives in their devastated village. It illustrates the decisive role of the international community in facilitating returns, the steely determination of displaced villagers to return, and their surprisingly sympathetic attitude toward Croat refugees living in their homes.

Directors Dawa Lepcha, Anna Balikci
Country/Production India
Release 2011
Length 75 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / all region
Location Sikkim, India
Ethnic Group Lepcha
Language Lepcha (English Sub)

Order No RAI-200.372
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The film is an intimate portrait of Merayk, an 80 years old Lepcha shaman or Padim. Merayk lives with his family in Dzongu, a Lepcha reserve in North Sikkim.  He performs healing rituals for individuals as well as rituals for the well-being of the household, the clan and his village community. Cameraman Dawa Lepcha followed Meyrak and recorded his daily life and rituals between 2003 and 2007.

Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Fotini Stefani
Country/Production UK
Release 2001
Length 24 mins
Format Colour / PAL / All region
Location Greece / Europe
Ethnic Group Greek
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester

Order No RAI-200.3045
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The monks from the monastery of Saints Augustine and Serapheim Sarow on mainland Greece have found modern ways to appeal to young people. The film explores how their traditional life co-exists with their popular means of bringing people closer to God.

Director Itsushi Kawase
Country/Production Japan
Release 2006
Length 23 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Gondar, Ethiopia / Africa
Ethnic Group Amhara
Language Amharic (English sub)
Collection Kyoto University

Order No RAI-209.2007.194
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The film recounts the life of children living on the street in Gondar, Ethiopia, by witnessing the interactionbetween two children and myself. The entire film was shot in the room of Ethiopia Hotel. This limited space allows the film to focus on our communication and captures some of the ideas that enable them to endure and survive on the street. Indeed, this film is more a sensitive testimony than a scientific documentary. This hybrid approach aims to explore new trends in visual anthropology, including the issue of dealing with intimacy and subjectivity.

Director Kim Longinotto
Country/Production UK
Release 2008
Length 103 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location South Africa / Africa
Language English
Collection Kim Longinotto

Order No RAI-200.350
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Jackie, Mildred, Eureka and Thuli are the women behind Bobbi Bear, a nonprofit organization based in Durban, South Africa, that counsels sexually abused children and works to bring their abusers to justice. Born out of recognition of cultural stigmas that discourage reporting abuse and inadequate methods of communicating with young victims, Bobbi Bear developed a method of letting children use teddy bears to explain their abuse. Since 1992, the multiracial staff has become the fearless and powerful voice for those victims who would otherwise continue to live in fear, powerless against their oppressors and ignored by the legal system.

Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Angela Torresan
Country/Production UK
Release 1999
Length 36 mins
Format Colour / PAL / All region
Location Portugal, Lisbon / Europe
Ethnic Group Brazilian, Portugese
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester

Order No RAI-200.3030
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Portrait of a Brazilian woman and her friends, now living in Lisbon, exploring the basis of their sense of identity in the context of a transnational way of life.

Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Carlos Flores
Country/Production UK
Release 1997
Length 45 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Guatemala / America
Ethnic Group Maya-Q’eqchi
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester

Order No RAI-200.3019
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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.

Director Kim Longinotto, Ziba Mir-Hosseini
Country/Production UK
Release 2001
Length 87 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Iran, Tehran / Asia
Ethnic Group Iranian
Collection Kim Longinotto

Order No RAI-200.326
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This film is set in a refuge for girls in Tehran 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 the 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.

Director Mark Brice
Country/Production UK
Release 1984
Length 85 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location USA, Sand Mountain, Alabama / America
Ethnic Group North Americans

Order No RAI-200.221
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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.

Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Hanna Musleh
Country/Production UK
Release 1991
Length 46 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Palestine / Asia
Ethnic Group Palestinian
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
Prizes/Commendations Commendation Student Film Prize 1992

Order No RAI-200.3001
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The chronicle of a wedding in a village in Palestine under Israeli occupation at the time of the first Intifada, this film looks at the lives of the bride and groom, and their families. Attitudes toward marriage, the role of women and politics are undergoing great changes, and, despite the military presence, there is hope for the future.

Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Anne-Katrine Hansen
Country/Production UK
Release 2007
Length 30 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location India, Kerala / Asia
Collection
University GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester

Order No RAI-200.3112
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From temples to recording studios of Kochi, Kerala in South India, we follow four musicians -a student and his master, a professional and a promoter - all uniquely devoted to the music that permeates life in India. Most, if not all, members of a family will know how to play the tabla, a popular instrument in Indian music culture. God is believed to be a lover of music and so great care is taken to pass on the skill from generation to generation

Director John Baily
Country/Production UK
Release 2007
Length 97 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL or NTSC / All region
Location Various locations, London, Kabul, Hamburg Dublin / Europe
Ethnic Group Dari speaking people from Afghanistan
Language Dari amd English, English subtitles)
University Goldsmiths, Afghanistan Music Unit, Dept. of Music

Order No RAI-209.2009.199
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Scenes of Afghan Music is Part IV of A Quartet of Afghan Music Films, made in the author’s personal “fieldwork movie” style. It reveals the diversity of music and dance practices in the Afghan transnational community: old and new, male and female, public and private, amateur and professional, controlled and uncontrolled.

Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Navarro Smith
Country/Production UK
Release 2000
Length 30 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Mexico, Chiapas / America
Ethnic Group Mexican indigenous people
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester

Order No RAI-200.3039
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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.

Director David MacDougall
Country/Production Australia
Release 2007
Length 77 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location India / Asia
Ethnic Group Indian
Language English
Collection MacDougall
University Centre for Cross-Cultural Research, Australian National University
Prizes/Commendations Basil Wright Film Prize 2007

Order No RAI-209.2007.41
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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)

Series The Well Being Quest in Botswana
Director Richard Werbner
Country/Production UK
Release 2004
Length 45 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Botswana / Africa
Ethnic Group Tswapong
Language Tswapong, English (English sub
University University of Manchester
Comments Special price 4 for 3, when buying the whole series

Order No RAI-200.336
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Njebe and Martha are a childless couple living in Botswana’s capital. Seeking to recover their well-being, they consult a charismatic diviner and healer, in Njebe’s old village, Moremi. They watch their filmed séances on a monitor and reflect with ethnographer Richard Werbner.

Moved by the diviner’s revelations, about their intimate lives, they try to make sense of the séances puzzling moments. They wonder about the diviner’s rapid recital of highly ambiguous, archaic verse, his leading them in chants of call and response, and his preaching against Christianity and for restored communication with the ancestors. They express their doubts about the healing treatment.

The film turns back and forth in time, and it moves across town and country. It follows the uncertainties of interpretation during and after séances, the blaming of occult attack on others, and the understanding of personal responsibility for failure to be caring of kin. It illuminates predicaments of urban villagers who straddle the city and the village.

Director Lina Fruzzetti, Alfred Guzzetti, Ned Johnston, Akos Östör
Country/Production USA
Release 1989
Length 36 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Bangladesh, Janta, near Bishnupur town / Asia
Ethnic Group Indian
Comments Study guide available

Order No RAI-200.305
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Seed on Earth is a film about everyday life in rural Bangladesh (village of Janta, near Bishnupur town). It follows the daily schedule of two families and observes the complementary and difference of gender and generation in 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. Village life and people are presented through their own activities in their own words in naturally occurring situations.

Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Maria Elena Planas
Country/Production UK
Release 2002
Length 28 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Peru, Ayacucho / America
Ethnic Group Peruvian
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester

Order No RAI-200.3053
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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.

Directors Anni Seitz, Sophie Elixhauser
Anthropologist Sophie Elixhauser
Country/Production Germany
Release 2008
Length 64 mins
Format Colour / DVD PAL / All region
Location Greenland, Arctic, Inuit

Order No RAI-200.260
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The people of East Greenland inhabit a small string of coastal land at the edge of the biggest island of the world. Long winters have always shaped daily life here, a life that has gone within a few generations from earth house to modernity, complete with helicopters, satellite TV and alcohol. This documentary shows us East Greenland today, the village in summer and winter, the family between seal hunting and computer games. It lets us experience in clear and poetical scenes normality in an extraordinary world, quietly observing events, faces, gestures that combine to form a portrait that is at the same time strange and strangely familiar. (Winner of the Wiley-Blackwell Student Film Prize, RAI Film Festival 2009)

Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Declan Healey
Country/Production UK
Release 2004
Length 28 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Ireland, UK / Europe
Ethnic Group Ireland Traveller community (nomadic people)
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester

Order No RAI-200.3071
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Ireland's Traveller community - traditionally a rural nomadic people - have survived despite the effects of modernisation. Based around the experiences of one particular Traveller community in Cork, this film looks at the ways in which Traveller culture and identity have altered as a result of broader changes within Ireland and asks what the future may hold for a people who have come under increasing presssure to settle.

Series The Well Being Quest in Botswana
Director Richard Werbner
Country/Production UK
Release 2006
Length 60 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Botswana, Moremi Village, Gaborone / Africa
Language Tswapong, English (English sub)
University University of Manchester

Order No RAI-209.2007.171
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Set in Moremi village within Botswana’s awesome Tswapong hills, the film makes village elders self-consciously reflexive. The elders, including a controversial healer, view and discuss an earlier film of his séances with a participant, a former patient, now the anthropologist’s research assistant.

Their main subject is Seriti. Literally ‘Shade’, the idea ties dignity, power and charisma to the light in which a person is seen by others, the dead and the ancestors above all. The healer’s own Seriti is regarded at risk. He is accused of polluting the earth, of wrongly mixing the Christian and the non-Christian, of making the public private for personal gain. Elders condemn him but he defends his God-given mission for ‘the original way’. The film discloses the intimate play of light and dark in villagers’ lives, their concern for well-being and the public good, against the background of séances, a funeral, a wedding, and a sacrifice to restore communication with the ancestors.

Series Disappearing World Series
Director Leslie Woodhead, Sherry Ortner
Country/Production UK
Release 1977
Length 52 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location Nepal / Asia
Ethnic Group Nepalese

Order No RAI-200.74
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Thami is a village 12,000 feet up in the Himalayas in the Kingdom of Nepal. As the film's opening shots illustrate, in a type of filmic short-hand, Thami is composed of a patchwork of individual farms – indicative of the Sherpa emphasis on independence and family self-sufficiency. The main concern of the film is to examine what it means to be Sherpa today in both cultural and economic terms: to this end the film concentrates on the varied career choices of three brothers from Thami – peasant farmer, Buddhist monk and head guide. Interviews with the brothers, enabling them to express their own attitudes and expectations, deepen the analysis. The second half of the film deals with the preparations for the festivities of a Sherpa wedding, emphasising that negotiations about bridewealth are lengthy – often taking years – since marriage is viewed primarily as an economic transaction. Sequences showing peasant farming activities, in combination with scenes of Sherpa life in Katmandu, contrast the old way of life with the new and illustrate the changing socio-economic conditions encountered by Sherpas today. C. von Furer-Haimendorf, 1964. The Sherpas of Nepal. University of California Press, Berkeley. E. von Furer-Haimendorf, 1977. Review of the film. RAIN, 21, pp. 7–8. S.B. Ortner, 1978. Sherpas through their Rituals. Cambridge Studies in Cultural Systems, No.2. Cambridge University Press.

Director Kim Longinotto, Jano Williams
Country/Production UK
Release 1997
Length 54 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Japan, Tokyo / Asia
Ethnic Group Japanese
Collection Kim Longinotto

Order No RAI-200.xx
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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.

Series Granada Center for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Sara Asadullah
Country/Production UK
Release 2009
Length 28 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location London, UK
Ethnic Group Bengalis
Language English, Bengali (engl.subt.)
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester

Order No RAI-200.3107
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Four scenes from a Bangladeshi community in London. Each scene is an encounter with a different generation (children, teenagers and adults) until the final scene where all generations are brought together in a wedding.

Director Valerie Hänsch
Country/Production Sudan/Germany
Release 2009
Length 70 minutes
Format Colour / DVD / Pal / All region
Location Sudan
Language Sudan, Arabic (English subtitles)
University of Bayreuth, Germany
Comments Winner Material Culture & Archaeology Film Prize 2011

Order No RAI-200.384
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A film about mobility, human creativity, and technology in a Sudanese truck community.
The English Bedford-Lorry was introduced to Sudan in the late 1960s. Since then, local craftsmen technically modify the truck into an ideal vehicle, adequate for traveling off-road and for performing customers’ expectations.

The craftsmen and drivers call the lorry “Sifinja” because it is soft and comfortable like the plastic slippers it is named after. In different places in Sudan the carpenters and blacksmiths not only create a shiny iron bride, but they change the whole structure of the lorry through a highly unorthodox performance.

Following closely the daily work, art and history of truck-modding on the Nile, a fascinating way of African creativity dealing with global commodities – the automobiles - is opened up.

The documentary weaves the original sound of hammering and sawing, drilling and riveting, into a rhythmic, exhilarating audio-visual adventure.

Director Ulrich Grossenbacher, Damaris Luethi
Country/Production Switzerland
Release 1997
Length 63 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location India, Nagercoil, South Indian / Asia
Ethnic Group Indian

Order No RAI-200.255
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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.

Series Granada Center for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Stacey Williams
Country/Production UK
Release 2009
Length 23 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Ecuador
Ethnic Group Shuar
Language Spanish with English subtitles
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester

Order No RAI-200.3108
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Shuar traditions and land are intimately tied to another. This film explores how the traditions and relationships change when foreign mining companies enter their territory.

Director Russell Hawkins
Country/Production Australia
Release 2001
Length 52 mins
Format Colour, B&W / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Salomon Islands / Pacific
Language English (English sub)
Collection NA

Order No RAI-200.321
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Set in the South Pacific, in a remote Solomon Islands village, SINCE THE COMPANY CAME is the story of a community coming to terms with social, cultural and ecological disintegration. When village leaders invite a Malaysian company to log their tribal land, the Haporai people of Rendova Island in the Solomon Islands find themselves at a difficult crossroads. Most of the men embrace the chance to earn money and participate in the modern economy; many of the women are more concerned with preserving the forests and traditions that sustain their families. At a village meeting, Chief Mark Lamberi calls into question the tribe's finances, only to find himself the target of furious accusations from the new 'big man' of the community and Chairman of the logging project, Timothy Zama. The community is embroiled in conflicts over land ownership and logging royalties, conflicts that threaten the very core of their traditional social values. Mary Bea and Katy Soapi are two village women who are desperate to stop the logging before it destroys their land. Although women are custodians of land according to matrilineal tradition, their power is severely diminished. Forests have become a source of money, and money is the domain of men. Mary tells us: "Men don't want to hear anything from women, but we women are actually the centre of life in our village." As Rendova's forest rapidly disappears, the loggers turn to Tetepare, a nearby, pristine island held sacred by the villagers. Evocative archival footage from the 1920's provides an insight into Solomon Islands' colonial experience, and raises questions about the ongoing legacy of colonialism. We witness the ongoing disruption of their land and society, and see those same forces at work internally within the people themselves, even to this day.

"The film has significant pedagogical value in anthropological, ecological, and economic instruction... The cinematography lends a sense of realism and sensitivity to the film. Guided only by visual imagery and indigenous voices, (the film goes) beyond western representations of global processes and faces (the viewer) with actual human impacts, illustrating the ongoing legacy of colonialism. We come to see that the manner of exploitation, which plays on vulnerabilities within traditional societies to the pressures and promises of westernization, has not changed much in the last century." Keith Prufer, Dept. of Anthropology, Auburn University, for Anthropology Review Database

Director Lina Fruzzetti, Ákos Östör
Country/Production USA
Release 2005
Length 45 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location India, Kolkata, West Bengal / Asia
Prizes/Commendations Winner Material Culture &Archaelology Film Prize 2005

Order No RAI-200.343
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Material Culture and Archaeology 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.

Director Kim Longinotto, Florence Ayisi
Country/Production UK
Release 2005
Length 104 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location Cameroon / Africa
Language English (English sub)
Collection Kim Longinotto
Prizes/Commendations Commendation Basil Wright Film Prize 2005

Order No RAI-209.2005.46
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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)

Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Hugh Hartford
Country/Production UK
Release 2004
Length 37 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Indonesia, Sumatra / Asia
Ethnic Group Asian
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
Prizes/Commendations Commendation Student Film Prize 2005

Order No RAI-200.3073
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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'.

Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Julie Milling
Country/Production UK
Release 2003
Length 28 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Denmark, Christiania, Copenhagen / Europe
Ethnic Group Danish
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester

Order No RAI-200.3065
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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.

Director Maarten Rens
Country/Production UK
Release 1991
Length 28 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location Netherlands, Monikkendam / Europe
Comments Joint purchase with John the Eel Trapper recommended

Order No RAI-200.217
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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.

Director David MacDougall
Country/Production Australia
Release 2005
Length 74 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location India / Asia
Ethnic Group Indian
Language English
Collection MacDougall

Order No RAI-200.327
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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. 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

Series Disappearing World Series
Director Melissa Llewelyn-Davies, Elizabeth Fernea
Country/Production UK
Release 1977
Length 52 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location Morocco, Marrakech / Africa

Order No RAI-200.75
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In Marrakech, traditional attitudes to women prevail perhaps more strongly than in other Moroccan cities. This is especially true for those women who live by the standards of traditional ideals in the Medina, the old city of Marrakech still enclosed by its ancient walls. This film attempts to say something about women such as Aisha and Hajiba – two main characters – who have experienced the hardships of life for women in such a society. Aisha's husband is an unskilled labourer and so she is forced to find work cooking and cleaning. Hajiba has been thrown out of her natal home by the brother who became household head on her father's death and she works as a dancer (shaykha) in a troupe entertaining men for money. For both of them the ideal of seclusion remains unrealisable, economic factors taking them out into the public world of men. The all-women film-crew were privileged to be allowed to attend a series of events involving women – a visit to the steam baths, a religious celebration, a wedding, a visit to a shuwafa (fortune teller), a possession cult trance and a trip to the market to buy cloth. At many of these social events the guests entertain each other, and the film is remarkable not least for sequences showing women dancing and playing musical instruments, the brilliant colours of their dress and surroundings adding to the visual interest. Some Women of Marrakech is important for the manner in which it situates these `ethnographic events' in relation to the division between women in the private world and men in the public world, providing an analysis which puts in the foreground questions of women's consciousness, sexuality and male/female division. K.L. Brown, 1977. Review of the film. RAIN, 19, pp. 7–9. L. Brown, 1978. `The Two Worlds of Marrakech'. Screen, Vol. 19, No. 12, pp. 85–118. E.W. Fernea, 1976. A Street in Marrakech. Anchor/Doubleday, New York. V. Maher, 1974. Women and Property in Morocco. Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology, No. 10, Cambridge University Press

Director Timothy Ash, Asen Balikci, David Newman, Richard Sorensen
Country/Production USA
Release 1978
Length 58 mins
Format Colour / VHS / PAL / All region
Location Afghanistan, North-Eastern / Asia
Ethnic Group Lakenkhel, Pashtun

Order No RAI-200.268
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Haji Omar and his three sons belong to the Lakenkhel, a Pashtun tribal group in northeastern 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; and Ismail, the youngest, attending school with a view to a job as a government official.Much of the film is concerned with 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. Haji Omar's family home is near the small market town of Nahrin, which the nomads visit on their spring migration; further sequences show life in the bazaar, classes in the high school, dealing with government officials and the expression of local rivalries in the Central Asian sport of buzkashi.

Director Frank Speed, Deirdre LaPin
Country/Production USA
Release 1984
Length 25 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Nigeria, Jos Plateau / Africa
Ethnic Group Ngas
Collection Frank Speed Film Collection on Nigeria
Comments A study guide is available for this film (more titles will be released soon)

Order No RAI-200.332
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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.

Director Peter Loïzos
Country/Production UK
Release 1985
Length 35 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Cyprus, Nicosia / Europe

Order No RAI-200.149
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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.

The film is powerful because the members of this large refugee family become individuals for the viewer, each with his or her dissatisfactions, illusions, and dreams. The film manages to go beyond merely viewing the hardships these people are trying to overcome to a thought-provoking glimpse into the dynamics of a family. The film is recommended for both secondary school and university courses that are concerned with refugees, Mediterranean anthropology, politics, gender, or psychology.

P. Allen, 1988. Review of the film. American Anthropologist Vol. 90, p. 782.

K. Kyle, 1984. Cyprus Minority Rights Group Report No. 30 (second edition revised) [Gives overview of how Cyprus came to be invaded by Turkey in 1974 and partioned de facto].

P. Loizos, 1975. The Greek Gift: Politics in a Cypriot Village. Basil Blackwell, Oxford.

P. Loizos, 1977. `A Struggle for Meaning: Reactions to Disaster among Cypriot Refugees'. Disasters, Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 231-39.

P. Loizos, 1981. The Heart Grown Bitter: A Chronicle of Cypriot War Refugees. Cambridge University Press.

Director Elhum Shakerifar, Ed Owles, Jamie Taylor (facilitators; plus students from Greenwich College)
Country/Production UK
Release 2007
Length 13.15 mins
Format Colour / PAL / All region
Location UK, London / Europe
Language English
University RAI, Greenwich College

Order No RAI-200.4006
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These 3 films on Southeast London were made by GCC college students who took a course in anthropology & film. ANGLESEA ROAD: Situated in Woolwich, South East London, Anglesea Road is a small world rich in Somali culture and tradition. THE GOOD OL' DAYS: The well-established butchers, Kennedy’s, famed for it’s sausages, is closing down this December after 130 years of business. TALK OF TRADE: Since the 1600s, Woolwich market has been a source of food, clothing and conversation for all who know it. This film explores the multi-cultures introduced by the 100 open and closed stalls.

Series Indonesia Series, ANU, DVD 3
Director James J. Fox, Timothy Asch, Patsy Asch
Country/Production Australia
Release 1988
Length 22 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Indonesia, Roti / Asia
Ethnic Group Rotinese
Collection Asch
University Australian National University

Order No RAI-200.238B
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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.

Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Jakob Hogel
Country/Production UK
Release 1994
Length 30 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Faroe Islands, Kingdom of Denmark
Ethnic Group Faroese
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester

Order No RAI-200.3009
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The Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic are a Danish dependency and for generations, young people have gone to Denmark to complete their studies. When they return for the summer, there is a tradition to put on a satirical theatrical revue. Through following the preparation and performance of the revue at a time of severe economic crisis, this film reveals what young Faroese feel about their identity and their relationship to Denmark.

Series Netsilik Eskimo Series Group B
Director Asen Balikci
Country/Production Canada / USA
Length 90 mins
Format Colour / VHS
Location Canada, Pelly Bay Canadian Arctic / America
Ethnic Group Netsilik

Order No RAI-208.43
Sale Info Currently not distributed, contact RAI Film Officer
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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.

Director Massimiliano Mollona, Marker LTD
Country/Production UK
Release 2005
Length 45 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL or NTSC / All region
Location UK, Sheffield / Europe
Prizes/Commendations Commendation Student Film Prize 2003

Order No RAI-200.344
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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.

Series Granada Center for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Siobhan McGuirk
Country/Production UK
Release 2009
Length 26 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location UK
Ethnic Group Migrants in the UK
Language English
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester

Order No RAI-200.3109
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“I am here because I can’t go home.” Subject to strict controls in the UK, three women asylum seekers wait for claims to be processed and decisions made. Here they find the lives which they fled to save put on indefinite hold.