Royal Anthropological Institute

Series Disappearing World Series
Director Leslie Woodhead, Mette Bovin
Country/Production UK
Release 1988
Length 52 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon / Africa
Ethnic Group Wodaabe

Order No RAI-200.196
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... is the Wodaabe world disappearing? and how are we to place the painted male faces? The very considerable success of this film is the ways it answers these questions. J. Picto The Wodaabe follow their herds in an endless migration across the borders of Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon in search of pasture. The droughts which have ravaged the Sahel since the late 1960s have devastated Wodaabe cattle herds, and this film looks at the daily pattern of survival of one hard-pressed family group at the height of the dry season. Gorjo bi Rima and his family have been the focus of Mette Bovin's fieldwork since 1968 and she has seen his herds decline from more than 300 cows to less than half a dozen. Yet, as she emphasises, the Wodaabe see their life as a balance between hardship and joy, and the film expresses this in sequences which record a child's naming feast and the Wodaabe's obsession with male beauty and adornment. `We like beauty,' Gorjo says. `We like to see people who are young and handsome and this is why we put on make-up.' The elaborate make-up of the young men and their dances, a kind of male beauty contest to gain the attention of women, are linked to a complex system of taboos which the Wodaabe insist they will maintain despite mounting pressures to abandon their nomadic lives. For another view of the Wodaabe and additional bibliographic references, see the entry for Deep Hearts (in RAI Film Library Catalogue Volume II). A.M. Bonfiglioli, 1988. Dudal. Histoire de Famille et Histoire de Troupeau Chez un Groupe de Wodaabe du Niger. Cambridge University Press. M. Bovin, 1974/5. `Ethnic Performances in Rural Niger: An Aspect of Ethnic Boundary Maintenance'. Folk (Copenhagen), Vol. 16/17, pp. 459–74. M. Bovin, 1985. `Nomades "Sauvages" et Paysans "Civilisés": Wodaabe et Kanuri au Borno'. Journal des Africanistes, Vol. 55, No. 1/2, pp. 53–73. M. Bovin, 1990. `Nomads of the Drought: Fulbe and Wodaabe Nomads between Power and Marginalisation (Burkina Faso and Niger Republic)'. In M. Bovin and L. Manger (eds.) Adaptive Strategies in African Arid Lands. Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, Uppsala. M. Bovin, 1990. `"Mariages de la Maison" et "Mariages de la Brousse" dans les Sociétés Peules, WoDaaBe et Kanuri autour du Lac Tchad'. In N. Echard et al (eds.) 4ème Colloque MEGA-TCHAD. ORSTOM and CNRS, Paris. M. Dupire, 1975 (1962). Peuls Nomades. Etude Descriptive des WoDaaBe du Sahel Nigérien. Institut d'Ethnologie, Paris. J. Picton, 1988. Review of the film. Anthropology Today, Vol. 4, No. 5, p. 23. C. Ver Eecke, 1989. Review of the film. American Anthropologist, Vol. 91, pp. 835–36. C. White, 1984. `Herd Reconstruction; The Role of Credit Among WoDaabe Herders in Central Niger'. Cambridge Anthropology Vol.9, No.2, pp.30–42.

Director Kim Longinotto, Claire Pollack
Country/Production UK
Release 1979
Length 57 mins
Format B&W / DVD / PAL / All region
Location UK, Soho, London / Europe
Ethnic Group English
Collection Kim Longinotto

Order No RAI-200.345
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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.

Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Mari Finnestad
Country/Production UK
Release 2002
Length 32 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Zimbabwe / Africa, Norway / Europe
Ethnic Group African, Norwegian
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester

Order No RAI-200.3056
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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

Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Henriette Levaulx-Vrecourt
Country/Production UK
Release 2001
Length 31 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location India, Ladakh / Asia
Ethnic Group Ladakhi
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester

Order No RAI-200.3113
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In Tia village, in an isolated area of Ladakh - North West India - lives an amchi (a local herbal doctor) and his wife. It is summer - a short season in the Indian Himalayas and the only period of the year when food harvesting is possible, after which the country gets cold and isolated for eight months. Watch as the amchi devotes his time both to this intense process as well as to healing the local community.

Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Cristina Grasseni
Country/Production UK
Release 1998
Length 30 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL or NTSC / All region
Location Italian Alps / Europe
Ethnic Group Italian
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester

Order No RAI-200.3027
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An observational documentary about dairy farmers in the Italian Alps Caught between pride for tradition and the pressure for modernisation, the story of one family is told through the eyes of teenager Sara, full of hopes and doubts, and of her grandmother, tired and frustrated after a life of hard work.

Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Rebecca Savage
Country/Production UK
Release 2006
Length 22 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Mexico / America
Ethnic Group Nahuatl
Language Spanish (English sub)
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester

Order No RAI-200.3083; 209.2007.148
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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.

Director M. Trinh Nguyen
Country/Production USA
Release 1998
Length 57 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location Vietnam / Asia
Ethnic Group Viatnamese
Language English & Vietnamese w/subtitles
Prizes/Commendations Basil Wright Film Prize 2000

Order No RAI-200.315
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Tiger's Apprentice is the story of m. Trinh Nguyen's journey to her native Vietnam. She observes and documents her great-uncle's folk medicine practices treating many patients and making his medicines for tumours, leprosy, and infections. She also seeks out people cured by her great-uncle, talks to local doctors and herbalists, battle Vietnamese government censors fearful her footage might make them seem backward to the Western world, and ultimately realises that through her investigation she has unwittingly begun to apprentice.

Director Dawa T Lepcha, Anna Balikci-Denjongpa, Asen Balikci
Country/Production India
Release 2005
Length 60 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location India, Dzongu reserve, North Sikkim / Asia
Ethnic Group Lepcha

Order No RAI-200.346
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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

Director David MacDougall
Country/Production Australia
Release 1978
Length 70 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Australia
Collection MacDougall

Order No RAI-200.245
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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.

Director David MacDougall
Country/Production Australia / USA
Release 1972
Length 90 mins
Format B&W / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location Uganda, North-eastern Uganda / Africa
Ethnic Group Jie
Collection MacDougall

Order No RAI-200.56
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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.

Director Luc de Heusch
Country/Production Belgium
Release 1983
Length 48 mins
Format Colour, B&W / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location Mali / Africa
Ethnic Group Dogon

Order No RAI-200.212
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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.

Director Johannes Sjøberg
Country/Production UK/Sweden
Release 2007
Length 58 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Brazil, Sao Paulo / America
Ethnic Group Brazilian
Language Portuguese (English sub)
Collection S

Order No RAI-200.3098; 209.2007.160
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Transfiction explores 'ethnofiction' - an experimental ethnographic documentary film style in which the participants collaborate with the filmmaker to act out their own and others' life experiences in improvisations. The film focuses on identity and discrimination in the daily lives of transgendered Brazilians living in São Paulo. Fabia Mirassos projects her life through the role of Meg, a transsexual hairdresser confronting intolerance and re-living memories of abuse. Savana 'Bibi' Meirelles plays Zilda who makes her living as one of the many transgendered sex workers in São Paulo, as she struggles to find her way out of prostitution.

Director Gary Kildea, Jerry Leach
Country/Production UK / USA
Release 1974
Length 50 mins
Format Colour, B&W / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Papua New Guinea, Trobriand Islands / Pacific
Ethnic Group Trobriand Islanders

Order No RAI-200.66
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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.

Director Graham Johnston
Country/Production UK
Release 1985
Length 47 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location Alaskar, Kobuk River, USA / America
Ethnic Group Kuvanmiit Eskimo
Comments Joint purchase with Muktuk recommended

Order No RAI-200.222
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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.

Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Andy Benfield
Country/Production UK
Release 1999
Length 25 mins
Format Colour / PAL / All region
Location UK / Europe
Ethnic Group English
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester

Order No RAI-200.3031
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Duncan Williamson is of Traveller descent and lives in Scotland, Amy Douglas is fifty years younger and lives in Cheshire. But they share a love for telling stories and both manage to make a living from it. The film shows them telling stories to school children, fair-goers, tourists as well as to the film-maker. The stories they tell are filled with timeless heroes and an otherworldly charm. Around a camp-fire at night, they meet to discuss their art and their passion for it.

Series Disappearing World Series
Director Stephen Cross, Peter Fry
Country/Production UK
Release 1977
Length 52 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location Brazil / America
Ethnic Group South Ameriacans

Order No RAI-200.76
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Umbanda is a syncretic religious movement, combining elements from orthodox Catholicism with submerged African and indigenous Indian spiritual beliefs. In spite of past attempts to suppress it, Umbanda flourishes in the heterogeneous culture of contemporary urban Brazil. The film somewhat ambitiously seeks to give an exposition of the eclectic repertoire of the Umbanda movement. There is lengthy coverage of ritual performances, including interviews with mediums and their clients, which emphasise the role the movement plays in the management of personal malaise and affliction experienced as a by-product of change and urbanisation. The concluding sequences of the Sea Goddess, Yemenya – identified with the Virgin Mary – show the annual Umbanda festival where half a million participants from all over the country assemble on the beaches of Säo Paulo. The film's strength lies in its graphic footage of spiritual possession and healing but it has been criticised for not providing a fuller account of the functioning of Umbanda groups, and the movement's articulation with the political authorities in Brazil. R. Bastide, 1960. Les Religions Africaines au Brésil. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris. D. Brown, 1979. `Umbanda and Class Relations in Brazil'. In M.L. Margolis and W.E. Carter (eds.), Brazil: Anthropological Perspectives. Essays in Honour of Charles Wagley. Columbia University Press, New York. Jean Comaroff, 1978. Review of the film. RAIN, 26, pp. 6–7.m S. & R. Leacock, 1972. Spirits of the Deep: A Study of an Afro-Brazilian Cult. Doubleday Natural History Press, New York. I.M. Lewis, 1971. Ecstatic Religion: an Anthropological Study of Spirit Possession and Shamanism. Penguin, Harmondsworth. R.J. Perelberg, 1980. `Umbanda and Psychoanalysis as Different Ways of Interpreting Mental Illness'. British Journal of Medical Psychology, Vol. 53, pp. 323–332. E. Pressel, 1974. `Umbanda Trance and Possession in Sao Paulo, Brazil'. In I. Zaretsky (ed.), Trance, Healing and Hallucination, Part Two. Wiley-Interscience, U.S.A. E. Willems, 1966. `Religious Mass Movements and Social Change in Brazil'. In E.N. Baklanoff (ed.), New Perspectives of Brazil. Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville. Article in T.V. Times, Vol. 89, No. 47, November 1977.

Director David Picard
Country/Production UK
Release 2009
Length 46 mins
Format Colour / DVD PAL / All region
Location Madagascar, Africa

Order No RAI-200.261
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Uncanny Strangers has been filmed in a fishing village in the South-West of Madagascar. Through a series of everyday life episodes the film provides insight into the relationships between the villagers and various human and non-human ‘strangers’ – ancestor and tromba spirits, Western NGO workers, ecotourists, fish collectors, cattle rustlers and the ethnographic filmmaker.
Through its specific ethnographic focus, the film points towards more generic issues related to hospitality practice, frictions in the field of environmental action and transnational forms of collaboration.

Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Staff Film
Director Ricardo Leizaola
Country/Production UK
Release 1998
Length 60 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Venezuela, Caracas / America
Ethnic Group South American
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester

Order No RAI-200.3028
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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.

Director David MacDougall, Judith MacDougall
Country/Production USA/Australia
Release 1973
Length 15 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Uganda / Africa
Ethnic Group Jie
Language Jie with English subtitles
Collection MacDougall
Comments on same dvd as Nawi

Order No RAI-200.37B
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At Jie cattle camps in Uganda men often gather under a special tree to make leather and wooden goods and talk, relax, and sleep. This brilliant ethnographic documentary by renowned filmmakers David and Judith MacDougall captures one particularly riveting discussion one afternoon under the men's tree. The conversation on this particular afternoon becomes a kind of reverse ethnography, centering on the European's most noticeable possession, the motor vehicle. This is a uniquely delicate and intimate film, filled with the humor of the Jie and, implicitly, the ironic wit of the filmmakers.

Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director James Vybiral
Country/Production UK
Release 2008
Length 28 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Greenland / Europe
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester

Order No RAI-200.3096
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‘Untouched Rock’ follows a British climbing expedition to Greenland where six young men hope to establish new routes on the mountains of 'the un-named valley'.

Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Michaela Schäuble
Country/Production UK
Release 2001
Length 32 mins
Format Colour / PAL / All region
Location Togo / Africa
Ethnic Group African, German
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester

Order No RAI-200.3046
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In the 1980s Ursula Heimer leaves behind her husband and children in Germany and goes to live in the African bush. We meet her seventeen years later in a tiny village in Togo, where she has been living in her own eccentric world, far away from the life she once knew.

Director John Baily
Country/Production UK
Release 2008
Length 55 mins
Format Colour / DVD PAL / All region
Location Afghanistan, Heart, Asia

Order No RAI-200.258
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Shot in the city of Heart, western Afghanistan 1994, in the period between the fall of the last leftist government and the coming of the Taliban, this is a portrait film of an outstanding musician, Ustad Rahim Khushnawaz. He was a master of the Afghan rubab, a double-chambered plucked lute with sympathetic strings. Using the observational cinema style the film shows Ustad Rahim in various contexts. These include a guided tour of the photos in his music room that recount his musical career, being at home with his wife and children, showing off his pigeons, erecting the tombstone for his father’s grave, and teaching and playing the rubab. Of particular interest is the gormani ritual, a gathering of musicians where Rahim accepts a new student.

Series Granada Center for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Caroline Corral Paredes
Country/Production UK
Release 2009
Length 25 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Mexico
Ethnic Group Maya
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-200.3110
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Carlos is an enthusiastic tour guide and Doña Rosa is an indigenous old woman that sells crafts in the market. Both of their life’s works are an effort to provide what inquisitive tourists might be looking for in an indigenous and picturesque region in southern México.

Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Sharis Coppens
Country/Production UK
Release 2003
Length 28 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Peru, South America / America
Ethnic Group Peruvians
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester

Order No RAI-200.3066
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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.

Director Kim McKenzie
Anthropologist Les Hiatt
Country/Production Australia
Release 1980
Length 57 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Australia
Ethnic Group Anbarra
Language Anbara, English (English subt)
Prizes/Commendations RAI Film Prize 1982

Order No RAI-200.100
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Although the events around which this film was planned were the final mortuary rites for Les Angabarraparra, the subject of the film became interaction. Interaction between the anthropologist Les Hiatt and the Anbarra people of northern Australia, between the Anbarra and other Aboriginal groups in the area, and finally the relations between various Anbarra and the ever-absent Harry. The film-makers are effective in using this interaction to create a continuity, giving the viewer insights into Anbarra life as everyone grows tense waiting for Harry. Harry is the dead man's maternal uncle and a leader in the community of Maningrida. He is vital for the mortuary ritual because his appearance authorizes the use of motifs on the coffin and bones. Frank Gurrmanamana, instigator and narrator for the film and classificatory brother of the dead man, needs important people such as Harry to give the rites validity and a proper respect for the dead man. The men build a shade structure and prepare a hollow log coffin for the necessary painting. They wait three weeks, but still no Harry. Frank begins the painting without Harry. Then, wonder of wonders, Harry arrives. They make a sand sculpture but Harry has to leave again because his son has a court case. People from other groups arrive for the ceremony, but no Harry. Les Hiatt is an integral part of the film. Both he and Frank cope together in various ways with the frustration of the delays. Finally Frank suggests that Les go into town and get Harry. After some negotiation, Les agrees, Harry returns with him-the magistrate had never shown up for the court case-and the ceremony begins. Another group arrives to inspect the accuracy of the coffin painting. The bones are covered with ochre and smashed, then put in the hollow log. Part of what makes this film intriguing is the triangular involvement of the audience, the film-makers and the filmed. It is as much a film about film making as it is about a ceremony, but it works. Les and Frank negotiate to have the ceremony performed during the day so they can film and we see Frank telling various people who are participating in the ceremony about the film and its purpose.

Series Disappearing World Series
Director Brian Moser
Anthropologist Peter Silverwood-Cope, Stephen Hugh-Jones, Christine Hugh-Jones
Country/Production UK
Release 1971
Length 52 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location Columbia / America
Ethnic Group Makú and Barasana, Amazonian Indians

Order No RAI-200.62
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While relying on a polemical stance directed against the cultural genocide wrought by missionaries, War of the Gods also contains a wealth of information and detail about Amazonian Indian cosmology, social life and sexual division of labour. Two groups of Indians from the Vaupés region of Colombia are shown, the Makú, who live mainly by hunting and gathering, and the sedentary Barasana, who live mainly by farming. The film contrasts the belief systems and way of life of the Indians, presented by the anthropologists who worked and lived with them, with those of Protestant and Catholic missionaries. The Protestants, North American Fundamentalists from the Summer Institute of Linguistics, are said to have used their organisation as a cover in order to be allowed to work with the Indians, because open Protestant missionary activity would not have been acceptable to the authorities. No attempt is made to gloss over the complexities of contact between Whites and Indians: the Barasana themselves want change, and the missionaries' influence is undoubtedly more beneficial to the Indians than that of rubber gatherers. Included in this film is an interview — using voice-over — with a Makú shaman, and there are scenes from the Barasana moloka, the communal house which is a centre of social and domestic activity. The climax of the film is a contrasting look at a church service at the S.I.L. headquarters, a Barasana ritual dance (accompanied by the ritual use of the hallucinogen yagé), and a Mass at the Catholic mission attended by some of the Indians who took part in the ritual dance. Some missionaries who have seen this film consider that its editing is unfair to the S.I.L., but the head of another important missionary organisation has said that it should be screened during missionary training courses. C. Hugh-Jones, 1979. From the Milk River: Spatial and Temporal Processes in Northwest Amazonia. Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology, No. 26. Cambridge University Press. S. Hugh-Jones, 1978. A Closer Look at Amazonian Indians. The Archon Press, London. (Book intended for children aged 10–14.) S. Hugh-Jones, 1979. The Palm and the Pleiades: Initiation and Cosmology in Northwest Amazonia. Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology, No. 24. Cambridge University Press. B. Saler, 1974. Review of the film. American Anthropologist, Vol. 76, pp. 210–212

Series Disappearing World Series
Director Debbie Christie, Tone Bringa
Country/Production UK
Release 1993
Length 52 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL or NTSC / All region
Location Bosnia, Sarajevo / Europe
Ethnic Group Bosnian
Prizes/Commendations Winner RAI Film Prize 1994

Order No RAI-200.291
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The effect of war on families in a racially mixed village outside Sarajevo, Bosnia, where Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Moslems ahve hitherto lived peacefully together. In January, year, Disappearing World set out to make a film about how war affected families and friendships in a village in Bosnia. Eight weeks after they finished filming, they heard that violence had erupted there.This is the programme they made earlier in the year, followed by the film of their return visit.

Director Frank Speed, Raymond Prince
Country/Production USA, Nigeria
Release 1963
Length 30 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Nigeria
Ethnic Group Yoruba
Language English
Collection Frank Speed Film Collection on Nigeria

Order No RAI-200.64
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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. The film shows a number of aspects of both types of institution, including sequences of male Gelede masqueraders and women of the Egun possession cult. In spite of the diversity of ethno-medical practices which are portrayed, the film has been criticised for not drawing sufficient distinction between major and minor forms of healing.

R.G. Armstrong, 1967. Review of the film. American Anthropologist, Vol.69, p.426.

P.C. Lloyd, 1965. 'The Yoruba of Nigeria'. In J.L. Gibbs (ed.), Peoples of Africa. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York. (General ethnographic material on the Yoruba.)

R. Prince (ed.), 1968. Trance and Possession States. Proceedings of the Second Annual Conference, R.M. Bucke Memorial Society, Montreal.

A. Seronde, 1975. Review of the film. American Anthropologist, Vol-77, pp.181-182.

Director Rahul Roy
Country/Production India
Release 2000
Length 43 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Delhi, India
Ethnic Group Indian
Language Hindi with English subtitles

Order No RAI-200.357
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Bunty, Kamal, Sanjay and Sanju, best of friends and residents of Jehangiripuri, a working class colony on the outskirts of Delhi are young and trying to make their lives in an environment which is changing rapidly…girls seem to be very bold…stable jobs are not easy to come by…sex is a strange mix of guilt and pleasure…families are claustrophobic…and the blur of television the only sounding board…

Series Disappearing World Series
Director André Singer, John Ryle
Country/Production UK
Release 1982
Length 52 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL or NTSC / All region
Location Ghana
Ethnic Group Azande

Order No RAI-200.141
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`Witchcraft among the Azande' is suitable for showing in undergraduate and graduate classes on topics of religion, philosophy, and African ethnography. It could also be stimulating to discussions of psychology and medicine. The success of the Granada series on public television in England indicates its appeal to a much wider audience as well. P. Leis Evans-Pritchard's book Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande has become a classic of both ethnography and theories of witchcraft. Now, anthropologist John Ryle and film-maker André Singer, who was himself one of Evans-Pritchard's students and has published on the Azande, have teamed together to produce the film Witchcraft among the Azande for Granada Television's Disappearing World series. Singer wanted to learn for himself the accuracy of Evans-Pritchard's analysis and to note the changes since the original fieldwork carried out between 1926 and 1930. Among the Azande, witchcraft is considered to be a major danger. They believe that witchcraft can be inherited and that a person can be a witch, causing others harm, without realising her or his influence. Because of this danger, effective means of diagnosing witchcraft are, for them, vital. One method is through the use of an oracle. Several kinds of oracles are explored in the film, the most important being benge, a poison which is fed to baby chickens. The chick's death or survival provides the oracle's answer. Azande also use benge to judge other evidence in a court before a chief. Anthropologists have long argued about the nature and significance of beliefs in witchcraft and sorcery and, more generally, about the similarities and differences between `traditional' thought and Western science. This film treads a delicate path, exploring an explanation of reality incomprehensible to a majority of Westerners and, at the same time, trying to portray the Azande as a clear-thinking, and almost familiar group of people. In this aim the film succeeds by creating a tension whereby the oracle's answers are important to the viewers because they have become involved and are forming their own opinions about the guilt or innocence of the defendants. Zande is not a static society and much has changed since Evans-Pritchard's original fieldwork. The area filmed is influenced by Catholicism; people are Christian, but the church cannot give answers to many of the questions of the Azande people. The older people see their children abandoning traditional moral and other values. For this schism, the older people seem to blame the government more than the church as the church teaches a value system consonant with the traditional one. Yet, alongside the Christian influence and changes among the younger generation, the power of beliefs in witchcraft and oracles remains. If Singer wanted to give support to Evans-Pritchard's ethnography, he has done so with Witchcraft among the Azande. Catalogue number (VHS): RA/VHS141 £8. J. Beattie, 1982. Review of the film. RAIN, No. 50, pp. 19-20. M. Douglas, 1967. `Witch Beliefs in Central Africa'. Africa, Vol. 37, pp. 72-80. M. Douglas (ed.), 1970. Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations. Tavistock, London. E.E. Evans-Pritchard, 1937. Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande. Faber and Faber, London. E.E. Evans-Pritchard, 1971. The Azande: History and Political Institutions, Clarendon Press, Oxford. E.E. Evans-Pritchard, 1974.(ed.) Man and Woman among the Azande. Faber and Faber, London. E. Gero, 1968. Death among the Azande of the Sudan (Beliefs, Rites, Cults). Nigrizia Press, Bologna. [A Catholic priest's impressions of witchcraft after living with the Azande for thirty years.] R. Horton, 1967. `African Traditional Thought and Western Science. 1 and 2'. Africa, Vol. 37, pp. 50-71 and pp. 155-87. [African ideas of causation, differences from Western beliefs.] P. Leis, 1984. Review of the film. American Anthropologist, Vol. 86, pp. 1066-67. L.Mair, 1969. Witchcraft, Weidenfield and Nicholson, London. C.C. Reining, 1966. The Zande Scheme, Northwestern University Press, Evanston Illin

Series Doon School Project
Director David MacDougall
Country/Production Australia
Release 2001
Length 110 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL
Location Dehra Dun, Uttaranchal, India / Asia
Ethnic Group Indian
Collection MacDougall
Comments Special rate for ordering whole Doon School Series, 5 for 4

Order No RAI-200.301
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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 their 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 member of the group, to their separation from the house at the end of the year.

Director Hua Cai
Country/Production China
Release 1995
Length 26 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL or NTSC / All region
Location China, South-East / Asia
Ethnic Group Na
Prizes/Commendations Winner of the JVC Student Video Film Prize 1996

Order No RAI-200.312
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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.

Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Joanna Hill
Country/Production UK
Release 1997
Length 22 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Indonesia, Java / Asia
Ethnic Group Javanese
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester

Order No RAI-200.3020
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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. D

Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Staff Film
Director Paul Henley
Country/Production UK
Release 1996
Length 30 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Venezuela / America
Ethnic Group Panare Indians
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester

Order No RAI-200.3015
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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.

Director Laurent van Lancker, Robin Shuffield
Country/Production Belgium
Release 1998
Length 52 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location Ivory Coast, West Africa
Ethnic Group African
Prizes/Commendations Basil Wright Film Prize 1998

Order No RAI-200.316
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Winner of the (RAI) Basil Wright Film Prize 1998 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’.

Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Joao Nicolau
Country/Production UK
Release 1999
Length 29 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Cape Verde / Africa
Ethnic Group African
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester

Order No RAI-200.3032
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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.

Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Rane Willerslev
Country/Production UK
Release 1997
Length 30 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Siberia / Asia
Ethnic Group Yukhagirs
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester

Order No RAI-200.3021
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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.