Director Gary Kildea
Country/Production Australia
Release 2000
Length 109 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL
Location Philippines, Manila / Asia
Prizes/Commendations RAI 1984 Film Prize
Comments Special rate for ordering whole Doon School Series - £ 200 / EURO 300 / $ 380
Order No RAI-200.127
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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-titled) Tagalog conversation of Celso and Cora. Kildea makes the sequence 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 a part of the film. This film grants itself neither the pretence of being objective nor that the filmmakers are invisible. By the end of the film, the viewer feels she or he has in a small way come to know Celso and Cora, the intensity of their lives, the circumstances in which they live. As a political and emotional statement, the film is powerful. Because of the filmmaker's unique use of his camera and because of his narrative style, this film became a classic. It is recommended for courses in anthropology, filmmaking, urban studies, development studies and sociology
Director Dawa Lepcha, Anna Balikci, Asen Balikci
Country/Production India
Release 2007
Length 52 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location India, Dzongu, North Sikkim / Asia
Language Lepcha (English sub)
Collection NA
Order No RAI-209.2007.123
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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.
Director P.B. Hinckley, Carlyn Saltman
Country/Production USA
Release 1990
Length 30 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location Burkino Faso, Ouagadougou, West Africa
Order No RAI-200.306
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Adolescents in Ouagadougou, Burkino 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.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Ricardo Leizaola
Country/Production UK, Venezuela
Release 1994
Length 27 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Venezuela, El Pedregal, 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-200.3008
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For forty years Alejandro Farfán has been making and showing films in El Pedregal. Now located in the heart of Caracas, this community was a small village when Alejandro first went to the cinema. This is a portrait of a local film-maker and of El Pedregal itself, exploring the place and its memories.
Director David MacDougall, Judith MacDougall
Country/Production Austalia / USA
Release 1983
Length 59 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL
Location Australia, New South Wales
Ethnic Group Aborigines
Collection MacDougall
Order No RAI-200.146
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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.
Series Strangers Abroad, Programme 5
Director André Singer, Bruce Dakowski (writer and presenter)
Country/Production UK
Release 1986
Length 52 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL or NTSC / All region
Location various
Comments Special price for series, 6 for 5
Order No RAI-200.279
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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 most widely read, and best known anthropologist is probably Margaret Mead, an American who went study adolescence in the South Sea-Islands at the age of 23. Although her fieldwork has been criticised, she was nevertheless one of the foremost fieldworkers of her day. In America, Bali and New Guinea she examined child development, sex and temperament to see what role society has in making people what they are. Adolescence was a time of emotional stress and personal conflict in America and Europe. Mead claimed that in Samoa, adolescence was in many ways the most enjoyable and happy time of life.
Series Indonesia Series, ANU, DVD 4
Director Raharjo Suwandi, Patsy Asch, James J. Fox
Country/Production Australia
Release 2000
Length 42 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Indonesia, Blitar, East Java / Asia
Ethnic Group Indonesian
Collection Asch
University Australian National University
Order No RAI-200.273B
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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.
Series Indonesia Series, ANU, DVD 5
Director Michael P. Vischer, Thomas Richter
Country/Production Australia
Release 1996
Length 55 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Indonesia, Palu'e / Asia
University Australia National University
Order No RAI-200.354
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The recording follows a journey from the island of Palu'e to the mainland to purchase water buffalo. Back at Palu'e, a series of sacrifices is held to make amends for transgressions. The events, part of the ceremonial cycle of the domain of Ko'a, are the arena in which the order of precedence is periodically contested and reasserted. The strategies employed by various factions of the domain are highlighted.
Director Ian Dunlop, Philippa Deveson
Country/Production Australia
Release 1984
Length 50 mins
Format Colour, B&W / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location Australia, North-East Arnhem Land / Pacific
Prizes/Commendations Winner of the RAI Film Prize 1996
Order No RAI-200.247
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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.
Director Beate Engelbrecht
Country/Production Germany
Release 2001
Length 52 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location Mexico, Santa Clara del Cobre / America
Ethnic Group Purhepecha
Order No RAI-200.239
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Santa Clara del Cobre, a village in Mexico's province Michoacán, 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 flourish again. In 1991, a rough-cut of the film was shown to the craftsmen in Mexico. By then, the worldwide recession had left its traces in Santa Clara: some workshops had been closed. The craftsmen comment on their experiences and contemporary problems during and after the screening of the rough-cut. Their remarks have then become part of the final film.
Director Martin Gruber
Country/Production UK
Release 2003
Length 23 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location UK, London / Europe
Ethnic Group English
Collection Goldsmiths, University of London
Order No RAI-200.4001
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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.
Director Hua Cai
Country/Production China
Release 1999
Length 40 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL
Location China, Himalaya / Asia
Ethnic Group Na
Comments Study guide available
Order No RAI-200.256
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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.
Director Bruce Pacho Lane
Country/Production USA / Mexico
Release 2000
Length 39 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location Mexico, Huehuetla, Puebla / America
Order No RAI-200.318
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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
Director Peter Entell
Country/Production Switzerland
Release 1988
Length 56 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location China / Asia
Ethnic Group Mongols
Order No RAI-200.178
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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.
Series Disappearing World Series
Director Brian Moser
Country/Production UK
Release 1973
Length 52 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location Iran / Asia
Ethnic Group Kurds
Order No RAI-200.8
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A community of Kurds resident in Iran on the border with Iraq forms the subject of this film. Many of the inhabitants of the community are refugees from Kurdish areas of Iraq and the villagers are Qadiri Dervishes – followers of an ecstatic mystical cult of Islam. The unusual manifestations of the Qadiri Dervish faith are explored in this film, both in the context of religious ceremonies and everyday life, with the main focus on the spiritual and temporal power wielded by their leader, Sheikh Hussein. For the Durvishes, Hussein is the direct representative of Allah and, therefore, by serving the Sheikh they are also serving God. In rituals presided over by him they have the power to carry out acts which would normally be harmful, such as having electricity passed through their bodies, eating glass, handling poisonous snakes and skewering their faces. The film includes interviews, not only with members of the cult, but also with the local mullah (representative of orthodox Islam), in an attempt to explore the difference between those two manifestations of the same faith. The film is visually compelling, especially the sequences showing religious celebration and ceremony. F. Barth, 1953. Principles of Social Organisation in South Kurdistan. Universitetets Etnografiske Museum Bulletin No. 7, Oslo. A. Singer, 1973. `Dervishes'. In T. Stacey (editorial director) Peoples of the World, Vol. 15, Western and Central Asia, Tom Stacey and Europa Verlag, [London.] A. Singer, 1974. `The Dervishes of Kurdistan'. Asian Affairs, Vol. 61, Part 2, pp. 179–182. M. Van Bruinessen, 1978. Agha, Shaikh and State. On the Social and Political Organization of Kurdistan. Utrecht.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Patrícia Pedrosa
Country/Production UK
Release 2008
Length 31 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Guinea-Bissau
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-200.3088
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Four Christian women work and live in a Muslim and patriarchic world. The ‘Sisters of the Consolata Missionaries’ are building a new library in Empada, a small village in the south of Guinea-Bissau, West Africa. They went there just because they want to give their lives to those who had never met Christ. They want to take out their own faith to other people - 500 years after the first Portuguese missionaries arrived in Africa to save souls.
Director Kim Longinotto, Ziba Mir-Hosseini
Country/Production UK
Release 1989
Length 80 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location Iran, Tehran / Asia
Ethnic Group Iranian
Collection Kim Longinotto
Prizes/Commendations Winner RAI Film Prize 2000
Order No RAI-200.298
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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.
Director Judith MacDougall
Country/Production Australia
Release 2001
Length 55 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location India, Dehra Dun / Asia
Ethnic Group Indian
Order No RAI-200.323
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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.
Director Natasha Solomons
Country/Production USA / UK
Release 1989
Length 55 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location Bolivia / America
Ethnic Group English, Bolivian
Order No RAI-200.207
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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.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Rosie Read
Country/Production UK
Release 2000
Length 39 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Czech Republic / Europe
Ethnic Group Czechs
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 2000
Order No RAI-200.3034
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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.
Series Doon School Project
Director David MacDougall
Country/Production Australia
Release 2000
Length 140 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location India, Dehra Dun, Uttaranchal / Asia
Ethnic Group Indian
Collection MacDougall
Order No RAI-200.300
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David MacDougall's long term visual study completed. The Doon 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 Independence. 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. 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
Director Robert Boonzajer-Flaes
Country/Production The Netherlands
Length 47 mins
Format Colour / PAL / All region
Location Tibet / Asia
Ethnic Group Tibetan
Order No RAI-200.206
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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.
Director Kim Longinotto, Jano Williams
Country/Production UK
Release 1993
Length 50 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location Japan / Asia
Ethnic Group Japanese
Collection Kim Longinotto
Order No RAI-200.309
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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.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Gema Allen
Country/Production UK
Release 2001
Length 30 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Brazil, Rio de Janeiro State / 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-200.3040
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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.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director James Bolchover
Country/Production UK
Release 2002
Length 26 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location UK, Manchester/ 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-200.3048
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Kelzo grew up in Hulme and has been writing on walls, wrecked cars and other urban surfaces since 1984. But now that he is a 'graffiti artist' whose work is sold in galleries, is he still in touch with his roots?
Director Jean Lydall, Kaira Strecker
Country/Production Germany
Release 2001
Length 87 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location Ethiopia / Africa
Ethnic Group Hamar
Language Hamar & English
Prizes/Commendations Winner of the 2003 RAI Film Prize
Order No RAI-200.324
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Filmmaker and anthropologist Jean Lydall has been making films with the Hamar community of southern Ethiopia since the 1970s. In 2001 she returned with her daughter and grandson 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. This film provides an intimate and personal family portrait that captures Duka’s ambivalence at sharing her home and husband. The quiet suspense is only heightened when Duka’s mother-in-law starts stirring up trouble. 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.
Series Granada Center for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Elisa Contreras
Country/Production UK
Release 2009
Length 28 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Spain
Ethnic Group Spanish gypsies
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-200.3101
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Through their experiences, Uncle Isidro (a horse dealer) and Jeremo (a scrap collector) illustrate traditional gypsy occupations in the south of Spain, as well as the obstacles facing their community’s access to a changing labour market.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Amelia Hann
Country/Production UK
Release 1996
Length 30 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location France / Europe
Ethnic Group Breton
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
Order No RAI-200.3013
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This film is about a Breton woman and her family, their vision of life, and their clash with the French state which marked them as 'terrorists'.
Director Claire Hunt, Kim Longinotto
Country/Production UK
Release 1989
Length 60 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location Japan / Asia
Ethnic Group Japanese
Order No RAI-200.299
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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.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Rachel Robertson
Country/Production UK
Release 1997
Length 30 mins
Format Colour / DVD / 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-200.3017
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A group of eco-activists travel around Britain attending festivals and other events aimed at raising awareness of ecological issues and of new, alternative ways of living. But sometimes relationships within the group do not quite live up to their ideals.
Series Disappearing World Series
Director Brian Moser, Ariane Deluz
Country/Production UK
Release 1971
Length 52 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location Colombia, Choco region of Colombia / America
Ethnic Group Embera Indians
Order No RAI-200.12
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The way of life of the 10,000 Embera Indians who live in the Choco region of Colombia, South American, is threatened by the encroachments of Negro Libres (descendants of freed slaves) and by the expansion of the Pan-American highway which cuts through their land. The film's main concern is to show the effects of interaction between the Embera river dwellers and two groups of outsiders: the Libres with whom they trade, and the local Catholic mission which administers education, religion and civil justice. Although the Embera are exploited by the Libres (who, for example, sell them hunting dogs at very high prices) both groups are poor and largely without rights in Colombian society. In an interview, the Embera explain to the anthropologist that they want protection from the physical attacks of the Libres and legal rights over the land which they have inhabited for many years. Sequences such as this bring out the Embera's plight: they are caught between the bulldozers and the banknotes of the Libres. We are shown the material culture and way of life of the Indians (canoe building, pot making, hunting, curing rituals) but not in a romanticised way, and the polemical organisation of the film allows the ethnographic details of the life of these river Indians to be placed in a wide social and economic context. A. Deluz, 1975. `L'initiation d'un chamane Embera'. Bulletin de la Societe des Americanistes, No. 39, pp.5–11. L.C. Faron, 1962. `Marriage, Residence and Domestic Group among Panamanian Choco'. Ethnology, Vol. 1, pp. 13–38. G. Reichel-Dolmatoff, 1960. `Notas Etnograficas sobre los Indios del Choco'. Revista Colombiana de Antropologia, IX, pp.73–158. G. Stipek, Jr., 1974. `The Kindred as a Corporate Group: the Embera Example'. Presented at 73rd Annual Meeting of American Anthropological Association, Mexico.
Series The Well Being Quest in Botswana
Director Richard Werbner
Country/Production UK
Release 2008
Length 56 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Botswana / Africa
Language Tswapong, English (English sub
University University of Manchester
Comments Special price 4 for 3, when buying the whole series
Order No RAI-200.337
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Of all the faith-healing churches in Botswana, Eloyi is the most controversial. Sensational stories in newspapers and on television have made Eloyi notorious for so-called witch-busting and for exorcising demons. Known as tokoloshi, they appear like a nightmare image of an overwhelming consumer society. While attacking traditional ritual as Satan’s work, Eloyi brings back, in a Christian or even more remarkably Old Testament guise, many old Tswana practices. Rarely in the ritual of other churches is empathy for others’ and their mortal frailty so powerfully realised as in this Apostolic church during a séance.
The film shows the impact of such empathy and the demonic in the lives of a childless couple, Martha and Njebe, originally from the countryside and now settled in Botswana’s capital city.
After a long quest for healing by traditional doctors and gynaecological treatment by Western hospitals, Martha chooses to seek help from Eloyi. Her choice widens the gulf between her own faith and her husband Njebe’s scepticism. It also involves her in tensions between Eloyi’s city branch and its village headquarters, between the church’s city bishop and his father, the archbishop.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Ilinca Calugareanu
Country/Production UK
Release 2008
Length 32 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Romania / Europe
Ethnic Group Romanian
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
Order No RAI-200.3089
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The film follows a day in the life of Cluj-Napoca, a city in Transylvania, focusing on the way the lives of the three main characters - Valer, an 85 year old retired colonel, Daria, an 89 year old retired Russian language teacher and Inocentiu, a 67 year old retired driver and ardent chess player - intertwine as the day evolves from sunrise to sunset. ‘Endgames’ is an exploration of memory, the experience of time and of old age, in the post- communist context of Romania.
Director Daniela Vávrová
Country/Production Slovenia
Release 2008
Length 25 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location PNG, East Sepic / Pacific
Ethnic Group Karawari
Language Karawari, Tok Pisin (English sub)
Collection University of Vienna
Order No RAI-200.4005
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Enet Yapai was six years old when Vavrova met her for the first time in 2005 in Ambonwari village, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. Between November 2007 and April 2008 she followed Enet and her mother Alexia on their way to process sago, catch fish, or collect grass for baskets and mats. The film is an experiment of subtle, unanticipated interactions between Enet Yapai, a video camera, and an ethnographer.
Director Simon Chambers, Delwar Hussain
Country/Production UK
Release 2007
Length 63 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL or NTSC / All region
Location London/Bangladesh / Europe
Ethnic Group London Bangladeshis
Language English, Bengali (English sub)
Collection NA
Prizes/Commendations RAI Film Prize 2007
Order No RAI-209.2007.11
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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).
This film is made by a social worker, Simon Chambers, working among Bangladeshi Muslims in London’s east end, and a social worker with advanced technical, craft and creative filmmaking skills. The film is presented through his eyes and has many of his personal and highly informed comments and reactions to what happens to his characters, who have been his friends for some years.
The main character is an 18 year Bangladeshi, UK National, called Shahanara. She is a feisty tear-away modern girl who has had an arranged marriage with a “village boy” from Bangladesh. She is determined to “live her own life”, and only agreed to the marriage to “keep in touch” with her mother, having been banished by her father because of her western values, having her own boyfriend and the shame he feels she has brought on the family.
The film starts with Shahanara going to meet her new husband when he lands at Heathrow airport. The whole extended family is also there. We meet Shahanara’s younger sister, Hushnara, a devout Muslim, who is happy to go along with her arranged marriage. Slowly we get involved in their marriage plans and all personal reactions of the younger generation, and the parent’s plans for their futures.
Four months later Shahanara has rejected her Bangladeshi “village boy” husband and is going out with an older British-born divorced Bangladeshi boyfriend. The family then plans to go to Bangladesh for Hushnara’s wedding, but Hushnara refuses to marry him. We witness the most intimate and heated family scenes. Finally Hushnara agrees to the marriage and the family, including Shahanara (but on a separate ticket), set off to Bangladesh. In their native village we discover that the father has invested in land and agriculture, and that though they are poor in the East End of London, they are wealthy and respected in the Bengali countryside. The ornate arrangements for the wedding proceed, as past loves and promises of marriage are revealed, and Hushnara has her doubts and many tearful moments. The wedding goes ahead over three days and, comatose, Hushnara is taken away by her new husband. It is a very moving sequence. At the reception for Hushnara into her new family, she recovers completely, everything is smiles and seemingly joyful. However Shahanara’s mother-in-law appears and pleads for her daughter-in-law to come back to her son. We begin to understand the profound affection, emotions and desire for the best, which underlies arranged marriages. Shahanara then appears in the nearby town saying that her in-laws only want the marriage in order to take advantage of her nationality for their son. She says goodbye to her newly-wed sister and returns to England never having met her parents, her husband or her in-laws while in Bangladesh.
Back in London the film draws to a rapid close as Shahanara’s life moves on yet again. The film ends with a poignant moment of reflection by the filmmaker that mirrors the way the film began and resolves many of the inner conflicts and tensions that give this film its complex weft.
Comment: This is a very engaging, touching, emotional and intimate film, based on the extremely close and long-term relationship between the filmmaker, who largely remains behind the camera (except for one intriguing sequence when the camera is turned on him) and the main character, Shahanara. It is a complex fi
Series Strangers Abroad, Programme 2
Director André Singer, Bruce Dakowski (writer and presenter)
Country/Production UK
Release 1986
Length 52 mins
Format Colour, B&W / DVD or VHS / PAL or NTSC / All region
Location various
Comments Special price for series, 6 for 5
Order No RAI-200.276
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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.)
Director David MacDougall
Country/Production Australia
Release 1980
Length 50 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Australia, Northern Queensland / Pacific
Ethnic Group Aborigines
Collection MacDougall
University AIATSIS
Order No RAI-200.353
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Anthropologist Peter Sutton is taken by an Aboriginal family, the Naponans, to map hereditary clan country in northern Queensland where they hope to live one day. To the children it is all new; to an old man it brings back vivid memories.
Director Fiona Kerlogue
Country/Production UK
Release 1998
Length 50 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location Indonesia, Sumatra /Asia
Ethnic Group Indonesian
Comments Study guide available
Order No RAI-200.257
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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.
Series Strangers Abroad, Programme 1
Director André Singer, Bruce Dakowski (writer and presenter)
Country/Production UK
Release 1986
Length 52 mins
Format Colour, B&W / DVD or VHS / PAL or NTSC / All region
Location various
Comments Special price for series, 6 for 5
Order No RAI-200.275
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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.
Spencer represents the link between the armchair anthropologist and the modern fieldworking anthropologist. The series begins by following in the footstep of the British Scientist. It shows his work with the Australian Aborigines – who had, up until then, been regarded as step in the evolutionary ladder between Neolithic men and the 'civilised' Victorian. Spencer went to Australia in 1887 as Professor of Biology at Melbourne University. While there he was invited to join the Horn expedition, an ambitious project to explore Australia's still largely unknown interior. At Alice Springs Spencer met Frank J. Gillen, the operator of the telegraphic station and an initiated elder of the Aranda tribe. It was Gillen's special place in Aboriginal society that enabled Spencer to document the world of this ancient and complex culture through books, glass-plate photographs, wax cylinder recordings and some of the earliest cine films shot outside Europe. Spencer and Gillen made several expeditions together; the data they collected fuelled the theories of anthropologists around the world. Some of their film was used in the programme.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Alexia Coppe
Country/Production UK
Release 1998
Length 30 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location UK, South London / 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-200.3023
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An unconventional household of two women and five children in south London, attempting to leave a difficult past behind, and build a happy future.
Director Rolf Husmann, Peter Loizos, Werner Sperscheinder
Country/Production Germany, UK
Release 1993
Length 49 mins
Format Colour, B&W / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location UK, London / Europe
Ethnic Group English
Order No RAI-200.240
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In a series of interviews in his London home and the London School of Economics, Sir Raymond Firth talks about his life and some of his personal views. The film focuses thus on his Maori studies, Social Anthropology under Malinowski at the LSE, Firth's fieldwork in Tikopia and, in an interview together with his wife, Lady Rosemary, their common fieldwork in Malaya. A number of unique black-and-white photographs taken by Firth himself also are used as illustrations.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Tom Rice
Country/Production UK
Release 2001
Length 23 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Manchester, 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-200.3041
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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.
Series Netsilik Eskimo Series Group A
Director Asen Balikci
Country/Production Canada / USA
Length 60 mins
Format Colour / VHS
Location Canada, Pelly Bay Canadian Arctic / America
Ethnic Group Netsilik
Order No RAI-208.41
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.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Alistair Cook
Country/Production UK
Release 1995
Length 31 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Eritrea, North-East 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-200.3010
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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?
Director Tobias Wendl, Nancy du Plessis
Country/Production Germany
Release 1998
Length 54 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Ghana / Africa
Language English (English sub)
Order No RAI-200.348
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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.
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