Documentary Educational Resources - Subject / Food Ways & Subsistence / Farming & Agriculture / All Films

Return to the Brouck

Wed, 24 Oct 2018 13:44:00 GMT

Return to the Brouck
Buy Now: $320.00

Forty years after the production of The Fenland (Le Brouck) comes a follow up about the Audomarois Fenland.

Return to the Brouck (Retour au Brouck) (55 min, 2011)

Set in the natural environment of northern France, criss-crossed with water ways, market gardening as well as breeding remain the only productive activities. Nevertheless, the number of fenlanders has seriously diminished from 200 farms in the 1970 to 40 in 2010. Other elements are now intervening such as ecology, preservation and development like the Natural Regional Park and the Romelaere Natural Reserve, or leisure activities like waterfowl hunting, fishing and tourism.

Through images and words Return to the Brouck expresses this new reality, confronting the actors of the past - young fenlanders of the 70s - with the present. Juxtaposing the images of the past with those of 2010. The core of the film still remains, as in the 70s, the vivid problem of the present and the future of the Audomarois Fenland and its inhabitants.

Included on the DVD is the original feature:

The Fenland (Le Brouck) (black & white, 38 min, 1972)

Devised and shot in close collaboration with a group of eight local fenlanders, young men and women who lived and worked as market gardeners in the area of Saint Omer, northern France, the film bears witness to a particular moment in time - a moment of recognition when these young agriculturalists, who belong to a relatively closed specific socio-economic group, asked themselves some hard practical questions about the social and economic problems facing their kind of agriculture.

The film aims to be sociological to the extent that it reveals and fixes a moment of social change. But it takes care not to freeze this in an ideological or political analysis; it does not try to smooth over the positions they take, which are often contradictory yet all the more illuminating for that.

It was the young fenlanders themselves who chose the sequences to film and the themes to bring up in the discussions. These young people offered their views on the future of the Fenland, on aspects of trade unionism in agriculture and the possible options open to them. More than the commentary, which serves merely as introduction or to make a link, it is the discussions between the young people that really weave the film together.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

The Fenland

Festival dei Popoli, Florence, 1972

Festival of Ethnographical & Sociological Film, Venice, 1972

Festival of Visual Culture, Finland, 2010

Return to the Brouck

Days of Ethnographic Cinema, Russia, 2012

SVA Ethnographic Film Festival, USA, 2012

Camera in the Fields, France, 2011

31st Nordic Anthropological Film Association, Scotland, 2011

30th International Ethnographic Film Festival Jean Rouch, Paris, 2011

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Faces of Change: Bolivia

Fri, 7 Sep 2018 09:20:00 GMT

Faces of Change: Bolivia
Buy Now: $495.00

Faces of Change: Bolivia includes a series of six short films about Andean peasant life. Film in 1973, the Bolivian expedition took an educational film crew into remote Muñecas Province east of Lake Titicaca, some 10 road hours from La Paz. The area is populated by Aymara and Quechua speaking Indians and people of mixed Spanish-Indian descent.At an altitude of over 12,000 feet, people survive on a mixed economy of potato farming, other high altitude vegetables, and small animal husbandry. Conflicts over land ownership, age-old control by rich "mestizos"(still referred to as "conquistadors"), poor health facilities, and a struggling education system makes this prize winning collection invaluable to teachers and those interested in Latin America.

The filmmaker Hubert Smith has returned to the area on two occasions to help build a better school system, which in the 1990s was recognized as a national school of excellence by the Bolivian government.

"The Bolvian Aymara series (comprising six films, rather than five like the others) is one of the most thorough-going documentations of Andean peasant life yet made or available. One can think of a number of topics not overtly dealt with but the knowledgeable observer can quickly find other themes interwoven with the main topic. Each film follows the lives of the peasants of the highland communities of Ayata and Virochocha, Bolivia, in a direct, cinema verité fashion. The AUFS team has achieved a degree of sophistication with the technique that invariably draws the student ever deeper into the culture.

The sound picks up the Aymara dialogue effectively and the English subtitles are very well done, providing a direct and forceful translation which is easily followed. Through the camera eye the viewer can become the ethnographer or indeed, with the sound, the linguist as well. Students can use the films as field study documents and take notes from them as observers."
— Paul Doughty, University of Florida, American Anthropologist, 1977

Films in the Bolivia series

Andean Women
The Children Know
Magic and Catholicism
Potato Planters
The Spirit Possession of AlejandroMamani
Viracocha

About the Faces of Change Collection

Faces of Change is comprised of 25 films that examine five cultures selected for their distinct geographic locations: starting with the China Coast at sea level and moving up to Taiwan, then to Afghanistan, Kenya and finally to the mountains of Bolivia. Each location is examined through five themes: Rural Society, Education, Rural Economy, Women, and Beliefs.

This innovative collection of 16mm films and videos was funded by the National Science Foundation, produced by Norman Miller and directed by some of the finest ethnographic filmmakers of its time.

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Faces of Change: Kenya

Fri, 7 Sep 2018 09:20:00 GMT

Faces of Change: Kenya
Buy Now: $495.00

The Boran are desert pastoralists in Kenya and Ethiopia who traditionally followed the rains in search for grass and water. Since the 1960s many Boran have elected to settle in a few market towns, such as Marsabit, the district capital in northern Kenya. Those who settle are in contrast to those who pursue the traditional lifestyle, particularly in terms of work, education, and social interaction with the outside world. Since 2015, the region has been on the western fringe of the on-going conflict between Kenya and the Al Shaba movement in Somalia. The films provide a backdrop to the harsh realities of this region of Kenya and the lifestyles of the residents.

"The core of this series is Kenya Boran 1 and 2, each designed to stand alone, but which together complement one another in a most useful and informative fashion. Their common subject matter is the development problems posed for rural Boran herdsmen and their families by the encroachment upon their once-isolated grazing lands of a growing town (Marsabit) and a major road (the new Nairobi-Addis Ababa Highway). These are shown in Kenya Boran 1, as two fathers and their sons discuss difficult choices between old and new ways of responding to the complexity of changes occurring around them, each emphasizing different aspects of the problem and different strategies for confronting them which, in turn, promote view speculation as to the appropriateness and the outcome of their divergent ways of dealing with change.Kenya Boran 2 expands upon these themes by focusing on the life of Peter Boru, a 16 year old former herdsboy who has gone to the government boarding school in the town; his expression of his hopes, fears and aspirations is adroitly contrasted both with those of his unschooled neighbors in the rural cattle camps and with the bleak employment opportunities facing him in the modern sector, in the course of which some of the difficulties of existing national educational practices in promoting development are isolated and explored.The hallmark of both films is their earnest commitment to permitting the Boran to define the issues that confront them in their own vernacular terms, expertly subtitled without the imposition of directed interpretative commentary… The overall result is a series of remarkably intimate and realistic scenes, attractively films with an absence of conspicuous staging or obvious show-biz; indeed, they move with a natural rhythm and pace that engenders an authentic sense of the problems, and of the sorts of ideas and feelings that individual Boran bring to bear in deciding on appropriate response to change.The prevailing tone of both films is their seriousness and deliberate instructional intent to provoke analytic responses from viewers. Their principal value lies in presenting the evidence in such a fashion as to force viewers to arrive at their own conslusions about the course of action that seems most appropriate based on the film/essay evidence." — Alan Jacobs, Western Michigan University, American Anthropologist, 1977

Films in the Kenya series

Boran Herdsmen

Boran Women
Harambee: Pull Together
Kenya Boran

About the Faces of Change Collection

This innovative collection of 16mm films and videos was funded by the National Science Foundation, produced by Norman Miller and directed by some of the finest ethnographic filmmakers of its time.

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Faces of Change: Taiwan

Fri, 7 Sep 2018 09:20:00 GMT

Faces of Change: Taiwan
Buy Now: $340.00

Shot in 1973, these five films present a portrait of life in Taiwan by following the daily economic and social exchanges in Tsao Tun (also known as Tsaotun, or Caotun) Township, an area inhabited by farmers, in Nantou County 130 miles southwest of Taipei. This agricultural community depend primarily on wet rice and other mixed vegetable farming. Pigs and poultry, too, are important farm products. These films offer a window into Taiwan during a time of economic and social change, and serve as a record of the culture and life ways of its rural people as they stand on the cusp of tradition and modernization.

Films in the Taiwan series

A Chinese Farm Wife
People are Many, Fields are Small
The Rural Cooperative
They Call Him "Ah Kung"
Wet Culture Rice

About the Faces of Change Collection

This innovative collection of 16mm films and videos was funded by the National Science Foundation, produced by Norman Miller and directed by some of the finest ethnographic filmmakers of its time.

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A Kalahari Family

Wed, 5 Sep 2018 11:07:00 GMT

A Kalahari Family
Buy Now: $1,200.00

A Kalahari Family is a five-part, six-hour series documenting 50 years in the lives of the Ju/'hoansi of southern Africa, from 1951 to 2000. These once independent hunter-gatherers experience dispossession, confinement to a homeland, and the chaos of war. Then as hope for Namibian independence and the end of apartheid grows, Ju/'hoansi fight to establish farming communities and reclaim their traditional lands. Through depiction of their efforts of the Ju/hoansi to participate as farmers in the contemporary economy and advocate for their rights to do so, the series challenges stereotypes of primitive and unchanging "bushmen."

"There are two kinds of films. Films that show us in skins are lies. Films that show the truth show us with cattle, with farms, with our own water, making our own plans." —Oma Tsamkxao

"The old life was too thin. We wanted foods that made us strong. We wanted clothes like other people... A new life called us to Tjum!kui." —Oma Tsamkxao

"We heard stories about whites killing Ju/'hoansi. We were traveling to find bush foods when /Ui Legs told us white people had come. He said you would return to look for us and stay a long time. We were afraid you would capture or kill us. I'm glad you whites were different." —Oma Tsamkxao

John Marshall's documentary shows the objective story of one Namibian family and testifies to the challenges and the effects of changing times on the entire nation. This not only supports the constructive political revelations preached by our first president but is a touching testimony seen from within and without our society how it changes without reflection to its past history sacrificing part of its capacity to the demands put to them by the fast changing environment making it impossible to keep up and adjust. There is no progress possible if any help from the outside does not generate capacity building from within. This documentary shows that listening to the local voices and capacity building is the only answer to sustainable development. Such help is this documentary, so that each Namibian irrespective of any rank should be obliged to see it several times and keep it for generations to come. This is part of our invisible history innocently captured to testify in vision what has so far been invisible to the naked eye.

We owe enormous gratitude to the Marshall family for this valuable contribution to the History and welfare of our nation.
— Levi Namaseb, Namibian Visiting Scholar, University of Toronto

Films in the A Kalahari Family series:

Part One: A Far Country
Part Two: End Of the Road
Part Three: Real Water
Part Four: Standing Tall
Part Five: Death By Myth

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Best Environmental TV Series, FICA - International Festival of Environmental Film & Video, Brazil, 2003

Special Prize: Homage to the Films of John Marshall; Bilan du Film Ethnographique, Paris, 2003

Grand Jury Award (Best in World Cinema), DC Independent Film Festival, Washington DC, 2003

Basil Wright Film Prize, RAI Ethnographic Film Festival, England, 2003

Beeld Voor Beeld, Ethnographic Film Festival, Amsterdam, 2003

Jury Award, Athens Film Festival, 2003

Best Film - Jury Award, XII International Festival of Ethnographical Films, Nuoro, Italy, 2004

Planet In Focus Film Festival, Toronto, 2003

Margaret Mead International Film Festival, NYC, 2002

Sithengi International Film Festival, Capetown, 2002

African Film Festival, Seattle, 2003

Boston Premiere, Museum of Fine Arts, 2003

Archaeology Channel Film Festival, Oregon, 2003

Beeld Voor Beeld, Ethnographic Film Festival, Amsterdam, 2003

Harvard Film Archive, Cambridge, MA, 2004

Göttingen International Film Festival, Germany, 2004

Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival, Greece, 2005

Ecocinema Festival, Athens, Greece, 2005

This film is part of the !Kung Series.

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Maasai Migrants Series

Wed, 5 Sep 2018 11:07:00 GMT

Maasai Migrants Series
Buy Now: $320.00

The seven videos contained in this DVD were made in Tanzania between 2008 and 2010 by participants in the Maasai Migrants Field School, directed by Peter Biella of San Francisco State University's Program in Visual Anthropology. The primary purpose of the videos in the series is to educate urban and rural Maasai about the consequences of migration, especially its relationship to poverty and the spread of HIV. The films have been produced through a continuing collaboration with Maasai-led and other NGOs, and they are being screened and discussed in Maasai regions throughout Tanzania. Their purpose is to trigger emotional reactions that prompt viewers to engage in important — though otherwise rare and uncomfortable — conversations, about poverty, migration, and sexual practices. The series also constitutes a self-critical history of a project in applied anthropology and gives an example for applied practitioners who may wish to use video in their work.

About the films:

Maasai Migrants (Dir. Peter Biella, 22 min, 2008)

This is the first film completed in the Maasai Migrants Series, the multi-year collaborative exploration of applied anthropological videos contained in this DVD. Planned in close collaboration with Maasai organizers and local migrants, the film depicts the appalling conditions experienced by migrants in Dar es Salaam - the dangerous and underpaid work of night watchmen, and the tenuous existence of Maasai woman who, without male protection, are always at risk of exploitation. The video is divided into seven 3-minute vignettes, each giving a different facet of the Maasai community displaced by migration. Rich with data, the vignettes trigger audience discussions about the challenges of poverty and the push and pull of city life. A film about the scripting, shooting and screening of Maasai Migrants is recorded in Subject to Change, a video contained in this DVD. There, emphasis is placed on how the video has been understood by urban and rural Maasai viewers.

Subject to Change (Dir. Shamia Sandles, 21 min, 2009)

Subtitled A Freirean Case Study in Applied Visual Anthropology, this film presents the theoretical assumptions and screening strategy of films in the Maasai Migrants Series. It does so through a history of the Series' first season, the scripting, shooting and screening of Maasai Migrants (also contained on this DVD). Included in Subject to Change is documentary footage of meetings with production collaborators — an American professor and his student who made this film, Maasai night watchmen, homeless Maasai women, Maasai intellectuals and members of a Maasai-led NGO. These meetings reveal the development of the themes and documentary script of the film, and how they are designed to promote discussion among urban and prospective migrants living in rural homesteads. Subject to Change also provides an understanding of errors made by project members in choosing the wrong venues for screening and in failing to prepare post-screening facilitators for their task of promoting audience discussion after the showings. Finally, Subject to Change presents footage of four post-screening events in different locations — a church, an urban market, a school and a rural homestead. The analysis of Maasai Migrants' goals and strategy, supplemented by Maasai viewers' subtle comments on the film, reveal a great potential for an applied visual anthropology.

Maasai Speak Out on HIV and AIDS (Dir. Biella; research & footage by Thomas Sengale, 13 min, 2009)

Ilmurran is the most-frequently screened trigger film in the Maasai Migrants repertoire. Like the others, its goal is to provide critical education to displaced Maasai throughout Tanzania. When the film is screened with a skilled discussion facilitator, it allows an unprecedented opportunity for Maasai audiences to reflect on the realities and dangers of migration. Longido Waterhole and Longido Homestead, both included on this DVD, record Maasai viewers as they watch and discuss this film. Ilmurran: Young Warriors and the City provides discussion material concerning increased exposure to HIV, and the attraction of migration as a means of survival in the face of encroaching poverty. Following a strategy of collaborative, applied visual anthropology, the filmmakers worked with university educated Maasai to document the day-to-day lives of three young Maasai brothers (ilmurran, "warriors"). The young men all live at the same homestead in central Tanzania. Using interviews and vérité footage, the film invites the brothers to discuss discrimination, homelessness, and disease in the cities. It also highlights how their different ages influence their attitudes toward traditional Maasai values. Before he became ill, the eldest advocated migration as an expression of independence and courage; the youngest sees no purpose in "wandering" and advocates farming, a means of subsistence rejected by most Maasai. Ilmurran illustrates how poverty and migration have reshaped Maasai identity.

Ilmurran: Young Warriors and the City (Dir. Michael Crammond and Kellen Prandini, 22 min, 2010)

Excerpts from Changa Revisited (Dir. Peter Biella and Leonard Kamerling, 17 min, 2012)

Composed of selections from a feature-length documentary, Excerpts from Changa Revisited depicts the shocking clarity with which three Ilparakuyo Maasai women understand the dissolution of their Ilparakuyo community. They describe their homestead as torn by human and livestock diseases, widespread alcoholism among men, and the increase of poverty, disrespect, migration and violence. Changa Revisited was filmed in a community that is very close to Dar es Salaam: for that reason, the community is experiencing the full destructive impact of migration and access to city life. Changa Revisited is therefore a cautionary tale to other, more isolated, Maasai communities that are currently less impacted by the crises of migration and HIV depicted in the film. Another video contained in this DVD, Longido Homestead, records women in a relatively isolated Kisongo Maasai community who watch Changa Revisited and discuss the fate of their less fortunate Maasai sisters to the south. The story of Changa represents to them — and to others in very isolated Maasai communities — what the future may bring.

Longido Waterhole (Dir. Peter Biella and Leonard Kamerling, 8 min, 2010)

All of the films in the Maasai Migrants DVD explore a technique of applied anthropology in which films are used to trigger often passionate post-screening discussions among Maasai audiences. Longido Waterhole, like its companion, Longido Homestead, documents such a discussion. As the film opens, a dozen Kisongo Maasai men have just viewed Ilmurran: Young Warriors and the City, one of the Series' trigger films about social change. The viewers, who live more than two hundred miles north of the community where the Ilmurran video was shot, launch into a discussion about the profound changes faced by their own community. They do not concern themselves with the principle theme of the Ilmurran film, i.e., the crisis of young Maasai migrating to the city. Instead, the film triggers a discussion of their own related crisis — the city migrating to them. Rapid regional development with new highways, foreign workers and permanent dwellings are all encroaching on their once isolated desert grazing land. Comments divide along age lines: senior warriors criticize their "fathers" for facilitating the arrival of outsiders and for their adherence to "outmoded" Maasai traditions. Elders reply that traditions are the only value that Maasai should preserve. The discussion at the Longido Waterhole gives insight into the ideological rifts concerning modernization among different age groups of Maasai. It also shows how using a film that focuses on one facet of modernization may trigger discussions of others that are more pertinent locally.

Longido Homestead (Dir. Peter Biella and Leonard Kamerling, 8 min, 2010)

Like its companion piece, Longido Waterhole and other videos on this DVD, Longido Homestead is part of the Maasai Migrants Series, a multi-year exploration of the use of applied anthropological media in facilitating social change through the screening and discussion of trigger films. Longido Homestead's women viewers are asked to discuss a video clip from Ilmurran: Young Warriors and the City, and a segment of Changa Revisited (both contained on this DVD). Unlike their male counterparts recorded in Longido Waterhole, these women viewers stay focused on the themes of the films they viewed. Like the men, however, the women understand the film topic in ways that differ according to their age. Older women declare that traditional Maasai medicines are an effective cure of AIDS. Their daughters, adult women who have visited clinics and have some formal education, know differently. Longido Homestead shows how the screening of trigger films can create an unprecedented opportunity for open discussion between age grades, opportunities in which younger women may contradict and educate their elders. The film also reveals an important strategy in the use of trigger films among communities that are as thoroughly sex-segregated as the Maasai. The women are only able to speak frankly with one another when the filmmakers persuade their husbands to leave.

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Close Encounters of No Kind

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 08:16:00 GMT

Close Encounters of No Kind
Buy Now: $320.00

Close Encounters of No Kind follows the Rabari, camel and sheep herders of Saurastra, India. Their nomadic lifestyle requires them to move herds of sheep and camels across the Saurastrian landscape to seek grazing and water. This practice has been going on for hundreds of years and during that time the Rabari have developed close working relationships with many groups and deeply adverse relations with other groups.

Traveling with the Rabari through the region of Jhalavad for a period of two months as they drift eastwards on their out migration, the film consists of a series of conversations with different caste groups about the Rabari way of life and their relations with the Rabari. It is a culture of tension and distrust; all of the interdependent caste groups are wary of the Rabari and of each other. While there are no actual encounters between the groups in the film, they accuse each other of inappropriate conduct and irresponsible character in their conversations with the filmmaker. He is not spared either; they accuse him of profiteering from this filmic exploration.

This film is then a traverse of two landscapes: the physical arid region of Jhalavad and the internal and imagined world of Rabari intercaste relations with Hindu and Muslims castes who are their partners in life. The film addresses issues related to social relations, pastoralism, ecology and land resource management. It would be useful for ethnographic and documentary film classes where the approach for conversational engagement as a tool for understanding social dynamics is prioritized and where new presentation of subtitling to differentiate different voices in group conversations is presented.

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Cotton Road

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 08:16:00 GMT

Cotton Road
Buy Now: $320.00

What does a rural town in South Carolina have to do with China?

Americans consume nearly twenty billion new items of clothing each year, and at least one billion of them are made in China. Cotton Road uncovers the transnational movement of cotton and tells the stories of workers lives in a conventional cotton supply chain. From rural farms in South Carolina to factory cities in China, we span the globe to encounter the industrial processes behind our rapacious consumption of cheap clothing and textile products.

Are we connected to one another through the things we consume? Cotton Road explores a contemporary landscape of globalized labor through human stories and provides an opportunity to reflect on the ways our consumption impacts others and drives a global economy.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Honorable Mention, Feature Length Film, Society for Visual Anthropology, 2015

Top Grit, Jury Prize (Best of Festival), Indie Grits Film Festival, 2015

Fork in the Road Award, Jury Prize (Best of Festival), Greentopia Film Festival, 2015

Best Documentary, Documentary Category, Beaufort International Film Festival, 2015

Jury's Choice Award, First Place, Black Maria Film Festival, various locations, 2015

Best Documentary Feature, Documentary Category, Santa Monica Int'l Film Festival, 2014

Honorable Mention, Rural Route Film Festival, locations various, 2014

Honorable Mention, University Film and Video Association, 2014

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Duka's Dilemma

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 07:05:00 GMT

Duka's Dilemma
Buy Now: $320.00

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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El Field

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 07:05:00 GMT

El Field
Buy Now: $320.00

International border crossing as a daily constant is an unusual life habit. Especially when Mexican urban dwellers do so to work as agricultural field laborers in the United States. In a time when immigration has taken the political center stage across the globe, El Field contributes to the discussion by providing a compelling portrait in motion of the life, work and industry of a forgotten section of the largest, busiest land transit border in the world. Shot in the Imperial Valley, California, and the Mexicali Valley, Mexico; El Field presents visual historic information that induces the audience to form their own impressions on migrant labor and the industry that employs them.

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