Documentary Educational Resources - By Title / H / All Films

Help Me Help You

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 12:54:40 GMT

Help Me Help You is about young people motivated to help in Nyae Nyae, a remote place in Namibia’s Kalahari Desert that has been attracting much outsider help for many decades. Armed with cameras and Participatory Video training given by an overseas NGO, a group of young Ju/’hoansi become activists: “It’s not good to sit without doing something”. As they are making a film on the roots of educational marginalisation, the film they are in weaves together joint challenges and contrasts good intentions with power dynamics. While the young Ju/’hoansi turn the camera on school children, the filmmaker turns the camera on them, and herself. Through a camera lens and microphone, they are opening up a space to speak across generations and continents in their quest to help. But what does help mean?

“Help Me Help You is a compelling and thoughtful documentary that challengesconventional notions of aid and assistance. Through its intricate examination of the dynamics between helpers and those they aim to help, Stéphanie Sassen offers a critical look at the complexities of intervention and the true meaning of making a difference.” – C L I M A X Festival Internacional de Cinema Independiente

Selected Screenings & Awards

ORION IFF Int'l Film Festival, Australia 2026

German Int'l Ethnographic Film Festival, Göttingen 2026

Best Social Awareness Short Film, Athvikvaruni Int'l Film Festival, India 2024

Best Documentary Short Film, Santa Cruz Int'l Film Festival, Argentina 2024

Best Ethnographic Film, New York Int'l Film Awards, USA 2024

C L I M A X Festival Internacional de Cinema Independiente, Spain 2024

Toronto International Women Film Festival, Canada 2024

Septimius Awards, Amsterdam, Netherlands 2024

Official Selection, Africa Human Rights Film Festival, South Africa 2024

Best Documentary, Milan FFI, Italy 2024

Phare Int'l Film Festival, Mauritius 2024

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The Healer and the Psychiatrist

Tue, 29 Sep 2020 11:44:58 GMT

The Healer and the Psychiatrist
Buy Now: $320.00

On the South Pacific Island group of Vava’u, the traditional healer Emeline Lolohea treats people affected by spirits. One day away by ferry, the only Tongan Psychiatrist Dr Mapa Puloka has established a public psychiatry well known across the region. Although the two healers have never met in person, this film creates a dialogue between them on the nature of mental illness and spiritual affliction - and the shared obstacles they face in providing their services to the people in need. Their commitment and transformative communication offers challenges and opportunities to help address the growing global mental health crisis.

For two years, film director Mike Poltorak used a video camera as anintegral part of his medical anthropological research on traditionalhealing and mental illness in Tonga. After many more years of researchand filming, he learned just how important the relationship between filmmaker and subject is in creating a filmrespectful of Tongan values and of utility for the global Tongancommunity. Through this relationship, his film presents possibilitiesfor improvement in health communication and outcomes for the Kingdom of Tonga, the development of a public psychiatry moresensitive to traditional healing, as well as to encourage culturallyvalued talanoa between traditional and biomedical practitioners.

"The film offers close-ups into the intimate life of therapeutic rituals and allows the viewer to experience the sounds, colors, and affects that compose and make possible healing practices at the thresholds of different cosmologies." — Samuele Collu, McGill University

"This is going to be a valuable resource for mental health here in New Zealand and in Tonga. The reason being the Government has finally agreed that healing ought to happen, or the system, closer to the community. What really touched someone from the front line perspective, is how you had culture, community and clinical knowledge come together and connected up but also the story itself reminded me when the system fails it costs lives. This is something for us to be mindful of." – Pauline Taufa, Clinical Psychologist, Auckland

"The Healer and the Psychiatrist is a very moving and intense documentary that speaks to the value of ethnographic research over a long period of time. It explores the value and limitations of Tongan indigenous and Western medicine. The traditional healer, Emeline Lolohea, may have access to nature’s abundance and the richness of spiritual knowledge but her husband Tevita’s tragic illness speaks to the need for better access to biomedicine. Dr Mapa Puloka combines psychiatry and what is valued in Tongan culture, but how much does the continuity of his novel practice and healing depend on his individual efforts? This insightful and sensitive ethnographic documentary asks us to consider how the treatment of illness and wellness can be ‘decolonised’ even in a country that was never colonised." – Jacquie Leckie, Associate Professor, Victoria University of Wellington, NZ & University of Newcastle, Australia. Author of Colonizing Madness

SELECTED SCREENINGS AND AWARDS

Best Feature Film, Society for Visual Anthropology Film & Media Festival, USA, 2020
Commendation, Richard Werbner Award for Visual Anthropology, RAI Film Festival, UK 2020
Best Cinematography, Collected Voices Film Festival, Chicago, USA 2020

Ethnokino-Award of Life Time Recognition, Bern, Switzerland 2021

Ethnofest, Athens, Greece 2021
Mental Filmness, Chicago, USA, 2021
Ethnokino Film Festival, Bern, Switzerland 2021
RAI Film Festival, UK, 2021
FIFO (Festival Internationale du Documentaire Oceanien) Tahiti, 2021
Eyes & Lenses Ethnographic Film Festival, Poland, 2020
Trier Ethnographic Film Festival, Germany, 2021
Hawaii International Film Festival, USA, 2020
Collected Voices Film Festival, USA, 2020
Macquarie University International Ethnographic Film Festival, Australia, 2020
Garifuna International Indigenous Film Festival, USA, 2020
Riga Pasaules Film Festival, Latvia, 2020
German International Ethnographic Film Festival, Germany, 2020
LIDF (London International Documentary Film Festival), UK, 2019

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Hallelujah

Tue, 9 Oct 2018 15:11:00 GMT

Hallelujah
Buy Now: $320.00

This film presents an African talking drums version of Georg Friedrich Händel's Hallelujah chorus, as staged and performed by legendary drummer Ghanaba together with the Winneba Youth Choir. Ghanaba's unique approach to Händel mixes elements of African, Christian, and Islamic ritual with formal European concert performance, Ghanaian ceremony, and improvisation. The performance is followed by a conversation with Ghanaba about jazz, European, and “world” music.

Films in the Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra series:

Hallelujah! (60 min, 2009)

Accra Trane Station: The Music and Art of Nii Noi Nortey (60 min, 2009)

Includes the short film From Accra to Santa Fe (18 min, 2009)

A Por Por Funeral for Ashirifie (60 min, 2009)

The Story of Por-Por (60 min, 2013)

Includes the short film M.V. Labadi (20 min, 2013)

J.C. Abbey, Ghana's Puppeteer (55 min, 2016)

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House in the Fields

Tue, 9 Oct 2018 15:11:00 GMT

House in the Fields
Buy Now: $320.00

House in the Fields examines the life of an isolated rural Amazigh community in the south-west region of the High Atlas Mountains. The thousand-year history of the Amazigh in Morocco has been, for the most part, recounted, preserved and transmitted by bards and storytellers in oral form among Tamazight speaking pastoral communities.

Continuing this tradition of transmission in an audiovisual form, House in the Fields attempts to faithfully document and present a portrait of a village and community that has remained unchanged for hundreds of years despite being confronted with the rapidly changing sociopolitical realities of the country at large. The film follows the lives of certain villagers, most specifically two teenage sisters, one who must give up school to prepare for her wedding, and the other who dreams of being a judge.

“Beautifully intimate and charged with the sense of inevitable change to come, this prescient production, embellished with minimal sound and a fantastic spectacle of celebration for an ending, makes House in the Fields well worth the journey.”
— Rene J. Meyer-Grimberg, Berlin Film Journal

"Hadid's film beautifully frames thesisters within their domestic setting and the wider Moroccan society, andhandles the balance between daily chores and personal dreams with grace andsincerity. A powerful documentary filmed in a section of North Africa rarelyseen in the media, this is highly recommended."
— P. Hall, Video Librarian

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

World Premiere, Berlin International Film Festival, 2017

Best Documentary, Hong Kong International Film Festival, 2017

John Marshall Award, Camden International Film Festival, USA 2017

Fiction/Non-Fiction Award for Best Film, Millennium Docs Against Gravity Film Festival, Poland, 2017

City of Milan Prize, Festival Cinema Asia Africa America Latina, Italy, 2017

Prix TV 2M, Fidadoc, Morocco, 2017

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Headhunt Revisited

Tue, 9 Oct 2018 13:29:00 GMT

Headhunt Revisited
Buy Now: $320.00

Headhunt Revisited: With Brush, Canvas, and Camera is a timely story of an exceptional woman, a talented artist, and a respectful ally of indigenous peoples whose work continues to inspire artists in her native America and in her beloved Melanesia.

In the 1920s, society woman Caroline Mytinger graced the cover of Ladies' Home Journal. A talented portrait painter, she eschewed a predictable path, charting a course instead for the "headhunters" of Melanesia and establishing herself as one of the most fascinating yet unknown talents in American history.

Headhunt Revisited retraces the journey of Caroline and her friend Margaret Warner, who crossed the Pacific on a quest to find and paint portraits of the indigenous people of Melanesia. From 1926–1930 they traveled throughout the region, carrying with them a growing collection of portraits, supplies for new works of art, and just enough money to ship their bodies home if needed.

As an artist, an explorer, and a woman, Caroline was ahead of her time. Existing on the margins of the local colonial establishment, Caroline worked against the then dominant views of Melanesian indigenous society as uncivilized and backward. She painted her subjects on their own terms, with pride and dignity, and her work is one of the first color interpretations of Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islanders during the 20th century.

After four years, having braved numerous environmental threats including nearly losing the portraits during a volcanic eruption, Caroline returned with a wealth of documentation, including 25 oil paintings, more than 40 sketches, and journal entries that became the notes for two books on her travels. Upon returning to New York, the works were exhibited by Margaret Mead at the American Museum of Natural History, and continued on a national tour before being accessioned by Berkeley's Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology.

Eighty years later, Caroline's adventure inspired two contemporary artists. In 2005, photographer and film director Michele Westmorland set out to retrace Caroline's journey, and reconnect with the descendants of the individuals portrayed in Caroline's paintings.

During her Journey Michele also introduced Caroline's work to Jeffry Feeger, a renowned contemporary Papua New Guinean portrait artist. He embraced Caroline's work for its uniquely humanistic view and produced a series of his own paintings in dialogue with Caroline's artwork that capture "what it means to be a modern-day Papua New Guinean." His artwork and voice brings the legacy and story of Caroline Mytinger full circle.

Headhunt Revisited combines footage of Michele's visits with contemporary Melanesians, interviews with Jeffry and other contemporary artists, and archival footage to present a compelling story about art, identity and cultural memory.

"The film is at its best in the segments where descendantsconfront the portraits of ancestors - such as the famous governmentinterpreter Ahuia Ova, or sorceress Kori Tabora - succeeding at bothhistoricizing and bringing them to life. The portrait of Ahuia, resplendent inhis feather headdress, inspires Westmorland to commission a copy by craftsman SiakaHeni, of Hanuabada, which she then deposits in the National Museum. Anotherinnovative intervention is the introduction of Papua New Guinean artist JeffryFeeger, who is invited to respond to the Mytinger canvases with his ownartworks, which cleverly play off and reprise the themes of the originals withmore contemporary subjects and concerns."
–– Chris Ballard, The Journal of Pacific History

"Touching on a wide range of subjects––inclueding art, anthropology, 20th-century women's history, and Pacific Island culture––this is highly recommended."
–– P. Hall, Video Librarian

SELECTED SCREENINGS

Winner, Best Foreign Documentary, LA Femme International Film Festival, California

Friday Harbor Film Festival, Washington

Festival International du Film documentaire Oceanian, Tahiti

Hawaii International Film Festival

Cascadia International Women’s Film Festival

Melanesian Arts and Cultural Festival

Rochefort Pacfique in France

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The Highlands Trilogy

Wed, 5 Sep 2018 11:07:00 GMT

The Highlands Trilogy
Buy Now: $850.00

From two of Australia's most distinguished filmmakers, Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson (Rats in the Ranks, Facing the Music), comes The Highlands Trilogy: The Complete Collection DVD Box Set, featuring three stunning, critically acclaimed documentaries.

Set in the Papua New Guinea Highlands and shot over ten years, First Contact (1983), followed by Joe Leahy's Neighbors (1989) and Black Harvest (1992) have won 30 national and international awards, including an Academy Award nomination for First Contact. All three won the Grand Prix at France's prestigious Festival Cinema du Reel, and AFI awards for Best Documentary.

The complete trilogy is available through DER on DVD - for the first time ever in the United States. This special edition DVD set contains the individual films plus filmmaker interviews and ABC broadcast reviews of each film.

Films in the Highlands Trilogy

First Contact
Joe Leahy's Neighbors
Black Harvest

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Harambee

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 13:27:00 GMT

Harambee
Buy Now: $495.00

Harambee is a traditional Swahili chant meaning heave-ho or pull together the slogan for a united Kenya. Harambee Day or Independence Day is celebrated in this small town in North Kenya with political speeches and an auction at the native school. The film shows how North Kenya- isolated for years- tries to adapt to the new concept of nationhood. Government officials from South Kenya are appointed as ambassadors to spread the idea of national unity to a people unaccustomed to it.

Films in the Kenya series

Boran Herdsmen

Boran Women
Harambee: Pull Together
Kenya Boran

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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Hello Photo

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 13:27:00 GMT

Hello Photo
Buy Now: $320.00

In her startling, exquisitely shot Hello Photo, documentarist Nina Davenport turns the conventions of the travelogue inside out. She takes us to India and abandons us there, leaving us to believe what we see through her eyes. Her movie replicates the experience of being a traveller and thus a voyeur, of taking in sights without necessarily understanding their meaning.

Davenport seems less interested in cracking the enigma of India than in savoring it …Her hunger makes her unashamed, like the eager children who find the eye of her camera the next best thing to sweets.

"Hello Photo takes its title from their greetings, and its method from her persistent visibility. It's a film about seeing and being seen. It's about making a spectacle of yourself — as a Western woman armed with a movie camera — and being part of a spectacle; in the theater of the street, under a circus tent, on a movie set.

Davenport uses images of Bombay filmmakers at work and the comments of two film stars who philosophize about the nature of fame, to frame her own enterprise, and to comment on it both directly and ironically. In a country intoxicated with cinema, Davenport is just one more moviemaker. Yet she's undeniably an outsider, subject to the scrutiny that brings her. And what she's after is something quite different from her Indian counterparts; popular Indian cinema is spangled, artificial, and gleefully dramatic, a true manifestation of myth.

In contrast, Davenport's vision is poetic and free form, attuned to the beauty and strangeness of real life. Instead of being staged, her drama is found in the details of a broken stone wall and a sky full of bats that are really kites. More than just found, it is aggressively pursued - seized in the faces of people carried on a wave of madness or religious ecstasy, in the look of a blind boy whose expression is as remote and mysterious as the moon."

(notes by Linda Dubler, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston)

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Henry Is Drunk

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 13:27:00 GMT

Henry Is Drunk
Buy Now: $340.00

Pittsburgh police observe a man's questionable driving pattern and request him to leave his car and take a cab. This film is included on the Pittsburgh Police 11 Shorts DVD collection.

This film is included on the Pittsburgh Police Short Films DVD collection.

Films in the Pittsburgh Police series

901/904

After the Game

A Forty Dollar Misunderstanding

The 4th and 5th and the Exclusionary Rule

Henry is Drunk

The Informant

Inside/Outside Station Nine

Investigation of a Hit and Run w/ Legal Discussion

Manifold Controversy

Nothing Hurt But My Pride

Three Domestics

Twenty One Dollars or Twenty One Days

Youth and the Man of Property

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Her Name Came on Arrows

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 13:27:00 GMT

Her Name Came on Arrows
Buy Now: $295.00

In the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, French anthropologist Maurice Godelier invites five of his Baruya friends and informants to his house to discuss Baruya kinship and rules of marriage. As Godelier poses questions, the kinship rules that provide the cohesive fabric of Baruya culture are brought to life. Abstract terms are given practical meanings as Godelier investigates Baruya customs of stealing wives, exchanging sisters for wives, stealing names and exchanging 'food for blood.'

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