Documentary Educational Resources - Geography / Africa / Ethiopia / All Films

Duka's Dilemma

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 07:05:00 GMT

Duka is a married woman and mother of five young children, living in Hamar, Southern Ethiopia. Ever since her husband married a beautiful, young, second wife, Duka has been in a state of emotional turmoil. Among the Hamar, who live with herds and cultivate small fields of sorghum in their remote, bush-covered country, men are allowed to marry more than one wife, but only a few men ever do so. Duka wonders why her husband married again; did he find her too old, or was he turned off because of her chronic malaria? Also, she doesn't know what to make of the new wife who is silent and never expresses her feelings except in rage? And on top of this, her mother-in-law keeps making trouble and is angry with her son for marrying a second wife behind her back. Personal and intimate, the film follows the drama of this family in crisis, the high points of which are the birth of the new wife's child, and nine months later, a heated dispute between the mother-in-law and her son, which leads to the building of a new house. Duka, her husband, her mother-in-law and the second wife voice their different points of view as events proceed and the crisis finally gets resolved. The language of the film is Hamar, and is translated by subtitles. There is no need for extra commentary from the filmmakers, whose presence and close relationship to the people are always evident.

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Framing the Other

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:53:00 GMT

Framing the Other
Buy Now: $295.00

The Mursi tribe resides in the basin of the Omo River, in the east African state of Ethiopia. Mursi women are known for placing large plates in their lower lips and wearing enormous, richly decorated earrings, which has become a subject of tourist attraction in recent years. Each year, hundreds of Western tourists come to see the unusually adorned natives; posing for camera-toting visitors has become the main source of income for the Mursi. To make more money, they embellish their “costumes” and finery to appear more exotic to the outsiders. However, by exaggerating their habits and lifestyle in such a manner they are beginning to cause their original, authentic culture to disintegrate.

Framing the Other portrays the complex relationship between tourism and indigenous communities by revealing the intimate and intriguing thoughts of a Mursi woman from Southern Ethiopia and a Dutch tourist as they prepare to meet each other. This humorous, yet simultaneously chilling film shows the destructive impact tourism has on traditional communities.

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The Nuer

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 14:11:00 GMT

The Nuer
Buy Now: $340.00

The Nuer call themselves Naath. Only their immediate neighbors, the Dinka, Shilluk and Arabs, call them Nuer. Most foreigners, which includes those with whom the Nuer neither fought nor traded, are called Bar which means 'almost entirely cattleless'. Those foreigners who live even more remotely and include Europeans are called Jur which means 'entirely cattleless', a most unthinkable state indeed.

The people of Ciengach, where the film was made, are the Eastern Jikany, one of about a sixteen district tribes of Nuer. In 1945, E.E. Evans Pritchard estimated the total population of Nuer to be around a quarter of a million. Since then the number has undoubtedly dwindled considerably due to warfare, civil strife, sickness, drought and the general abandonment of traditional life-ways.

However, those who still called themselves Naath did so with an extraordinarily vivid image of themselves as superior people living a superior life. Furthermore, it was impossible not to see that their lives were inextricably tied to their herds. Ciengach is a perfected plan for co-posperity of cows and humans.

It cannot be said that filming the Nuer was an easy task, but visually it was always absorbing. They were seldom resentful as was the rule with the Islamicized Afar in the Danakil Desert to the Northeast. On the contrary, the Nuer had a real, even exaggerated, sense of their importance. They considered themselves handsome and displayed their elegance with pride.

Nuer existence has, consistent with life led on a flood plain, an almost tidal rhythm due largely to the movement of cattle into and out of the villages. At almost precisely 10:30 in the morning cows and bulls began to groan, stand up and in other ways indicate that the time had come for them to be released and on their way to graze. Within moments the entire herd was sounding a unified complaint. Men and boys then slipped the tethers from their necks and the flow of cattle began. Five more minutes and the village was virtually silent. The herd had receded toward the river and to whatever grass the younger men could find. So the days passed into twilights of returning herds and men and the nights were filled with stars and an almost intoxicating 'bucolia.'

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Rivers of Sand

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 08:59:00 GMT

Rivers of Sand
Buy Now: $340.00

The people portrayed in this film are called Hamar. They dwell in the thorny scrubland of southwestern Ethiopia. They are isolated by some distant choice that now limits their movement and defines their condition. In their isolation, they seemed to have refined this not uncommon principle of social organization to a remarkably pure state. At least until recently, it has resulted in their retaining a highly traditional way of life.

Part of that tradition was the open, even flamboyant, acknowledgement of male supremacy. Hamar men are masters and their women are slaves. The film is an attempt to disclose not only the activities of the Hamar, but also the effect on mood and behavior, of a life governed by sexual inequality.

This Digitally Remastered DVD Edition includes:

The film optimally remastered for sound and image from a new 35mm blow up
Audio commentary track by Robert Gardner and Robert Fenz
Photo gallery featuring still images and journal entries read by Robert Gardner

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Sweet Sorghum

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 07:47:00 GMT

Sweet Sorghum
Buy Now: $295.00

In Sweet Sorghum we are introduced to the filmmaker's daughter, Rosie, (now in her early twenties) as she reflects on her childhood spent among the Hamar herdsmen, an isolated people of southwestern Ethiopia. The film reveals the intimacy of shared family life and childhood relationships between the Hamar, Rosie and her brother. We learn about the important role sorghum plays in the Hamar diet, how the sorghum is harvested and the different ways it can be prepared. The practicality of the design of cooking utensils is shown. Ivo Strecker and Jean Lydall, Rosie's parents, are well known ethnographic filmmakers who have lived with and filmed the Hamar for over twenty years. The films of Jean Lydall form a trilogy most recently seen on the BBC. The Women Who Smile, Two Girls Go Hunting and Our Way Of Loving, depict Hamar life from the perspective of the women. Ivo Strecker has also produced his own trilogy, The Father Of The Goats, Song Of The Hamar Herdsmen and the most recently released Worry And Hope In The Face Of Drought. In this body of work we find a rare opportunity to examine both the male and female perspective of a shared ethnographic experience. This film collaboration between a father and his daughter goes a long way towards helping us all to understand our common humanity no matter where and under what conditions we were born and raised.

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Bury The Spear!

Thu, 26 Jul 2018 09:36:00 GMT

Bury The Spear!
Buy Now: $320.00

Is peace possible? When we look at the history of mankind, questions arise about the inevitability of war and the impossibility of peace. These issues have never been more important to our future than they are in now in our globally-conscious, post-911 world. Made by the anthropologist/filmmaking team of Ivo Strecker and Alula Pankhurst, Bury the Spear! focuses on the 1993 peace-making efforts of the Abore, Borana, Konso, Tsamai, Hamar and Dasanach to end decades of ethnic war in the southern Ethiopian Rift Valley. The title of the film comes from the climactic scenes of elders uttering curses as they use stones to blunt the blades of their spears. The weapons are then carried to a termite mound, broken and placed on the mound for the ants to devour. Then the spears are replaced by tools of peace, like hoes for gardening and whips and sticks for herding. Formerly plagued by endless war, the groups of elders now chant for good fortune to ensure the peace between themselves lasts.
Pankhurst's footage was never made public until last year when he participated in a project organised by Germany's Mainz University. "Initially we were skeptical and wondered what this story would have to tell, because we did not want to come out and say, 'Look these people know how to make peace and others don't know!'," recalled Pankhurst. All of that changed when Strecker, a professor at the university who was also at the 1993 ceremony, decided to visit Arbore again in late 2002 to get a deeper meaning of the peace-making that Pankhurst had filmed. He sought out the articulate and ambitious Grazmach Surra, an elder who had been the main initiator of the peace process. Surra had a premonition of Strecker's visit and was waiting for him. He said, "German son, people are all the same, only the colour is different. The foreigner is white, people like me are black. Being human, how can they spill each other's blood? This disturbs me. Therefore I now want to reach the whole world." Dedicated to alternatives to war and steps to realistically create peace, the film is meant to serve more than the ideal or theory of peace. In fact, the film is currently being used to help break the deadlock in the peace process between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Already captivating audiences internationally, Bury the Spear! documents a remarkable moment in the history of Africa and now sets off on its peaceful mission "to reach the whole world."

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