Documentary Educational Resources - By Title / K / All Films

King for a Day

Wed, 12 Apr 2023 15:11:45 GMT

King for a Day immerses viewers in the past and present of the ‘Obby ‘Oss tradition, celebrated in Padstow, UK to welcome the arrival of summer. Filmed over nine years, and drawing on archival materials reaching back 150 years, the film explores the rite in the context of dramatic cultural and economic changes. The festival emerges as a form of Cornish identity and community defiance for one marginalized British community. King for a Day asks whether this will be the last generation to practice this ancient springtime rite.

King for a Day is a companion piece to Barbara Santi's written thesis. The study examines Padstow's visual past to explore transformative ways of representing Cornish culture and identity. Intangible cultural heritage provides a lens to consider if documentary film can support protection of local communities and their customs.

Selected Screenings & Awards

Doc Rowe Prize, The Folklore Society, UK 2025

Celtic Media Festival, Ireland, 2023

St. Just, Cornwall, UK, 2023

Tate Gallery, St. Ives, 2023

Heritales International Heritage Festival, Portugal, 2022

Berlin International Film Festival, Germany, 2022

Wales International Film Festival, UK, 2022

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!Kung Short Films

Wed, 5 Sep 2018 11:07:00 GMT

!Kung Short Films
Buy Now: $545.00

Between 1950 and 1958, John Marshall made four expeditions to film the Ju/'hoansi (a group of !Kung Bushmen) of the Nyae Nyae region of Namibia (then South West Africa). Marshall and his family, who together undertook an extensive multi-disciplinary study of Ju/'hoansi, spent the greatest amount of time with the people of /Gautcha, including ≠Oma, !U, Tsamko, N!ai, and /Gunda. During this time, Marshall shot over 300,000 feet of 16mm film (157 hours). He later produced a total of 23 films exclusively from this footage. 15 of those are short films that Marshall referred to as "sequence films." Each focuses on a single event, providing the viewer a brief introduction followed by an uninterrupted sequence.

Although Marshall recorded some sync sound between 1955 and 1958, sync recording in the field was difficult and cumbersome. As a compromise, Marshall made non-sync recordings at the time of filming and later joined this audio to the edited films. Soundtracks were sometimes enhanced with additional ambient sound or sound effects recorded after the fact. This method allowed Marshall a major innovation in ethnographic and documentary film - his subjects could speak for themselves, often accompanied by subtitles.

These shorts were intended as educational films, to be viewed multiple times and with the aid of a study guide. The introduction to each film might identify major characters, outline the basic plot, or offer background information about the event to follow, but then viewers are left to experience the film for themselves, to form their own impressions of what is happening and why. Of course, the films have proven to have a life well beyond the classroom. They are intimate portraits of the daily life and ritual life of ≠Oma and his band during the 1950's. Rich in ethnographic detail, the films' beauty and high emotional content are indicative of the close bond that Marshall had formed with his subjects - a bond that would last all his life.

This collection combines fourteen of Marshall's short !Kung films onto two remastered/re-authored DVDs, complete with a full-color booklet containing photos, writings, and additional information about the series.

Disc One:
A Curing Ceremony (bw) (9:00)
Group of Women (6:00)
A Joking Relationship (13:00)
N/um Tchai: The Ceremonial Dance of the !Kung Bushmen (bw) (20:00)
N!owa T'ama: The Melon Tossing Game (15:00)
The Lion Game (5:00)
An Argument About a Marriage (18:00)
Men Bathing (14:00)

Disc Two:
Playing with Scorpions (5:00)
A Rite of Passage (15:00)
Debe's Tantrum (9:00)
The Wasp Nest (13:00)
The Meat Fight (14:00)
Baobab Play (8:00)

Orthography Note
The group of people depicted in these films are the Ju/'hoansi, speakers of the Ju/'hoan language. Ju/'hoan is part of the !Kung language group; the term !Kung was previously used by the Marshall family and others to refer to Ju/'hoansi. Although the term is outdated, it has been retained here for the sake of consistency with John Marshall's previously published work. The films and their related printed materials also employ antiquated spellings of names and places. For current Ju/'hoan orthography, please see the Ju/'hoan - English Dictionary, compiled by Patrick Dickens and the Ju/'hoan Peoples Literacy Committee.

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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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!Kung Series

Wed, 5 Sep 2018 11:07:00 GMT

!Kung Series
Buy Now: $3,250.00

Over the course of his career, filmmaker John Marshall shot more than one million feet of film and video (722 hours) of the Ju/'hoansi (!Kung Bushmen) of Namibia's Kalahari Desert. This body of work is unrivalled as a long-term visual study of a single group of people. Contained in Marshall's footage are the personal histories of individuals, documents of a now non-existent way of life, and the unfolding of massive social and economic change as experienced by one group of people over a period of fifty years.

A frequent innovator in the field of ethnographic film, Marshall produced twenty-three films and videos and one multi-part series from his extensive footage archive. Marshall's approach to filmmaking evolved alongside changes in film and video technology, in the fields of anthropology and ethnographic and documentary film, and on a very personal level, in Marshall's relationship to the Ju/'hoansi. These shifts can be seen throughout the course of his career, as he moved from the almost scientific, observational style of First Film (his earliest footage), to the nuanced and self-reflexive epic, A Kalahari Family.

Films in the !Kung series

An Argument about Marriage

Baobab Play

Bitter Melons

Children Throw Toy Assegais

A Joking Relationship
A Kalahari Family

!Kung Bushmen Hunting Equipment

The !Kung San: Traditional Life

The !Kung San: Resettlement

Lion Game

The Meat Fight

Men Bathing

N!ai, The Story of a !Kung Woman

N!owa T'ama: The Melon Tossing Game

N/um Tchai: the Ceremonial Dance of the !Kung Bushmen

Playing with Scorpions

Pull Ourselves Up or Die Out

A Rite of Passage

To Hold Our Own Ground: A Field Report

Tug-Of-War (Bushmen)

The Wasp Nest

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Keep the Dance Alive

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 11:13:00 GMT

Keep the Dance Alive
Buy Now: $320.00

A unique voyage through the music, dance and spirit possession practices of the Ovahimba people of north-western Namibia and south-western Angola, Keep the Dance Alive features remarkable footage of how dance and spirit possession is integrated into everyday life from infancy to death.

The documentary presents a singular vision of the Ovahimba people, that of director Rina Sherman who filmed the lives of an Omuhimba family for seven years. She focuses on how singing, rhythm and voice work together with dance and spirit possession to compose a complete imaginary universe and a dense and complex social structure.

Keep the Dance Alive is part of The Ovahimba Years Project, a long-term multi-disciplinary ethnographic study of the Ovahimba and other Otjiherero-language-speaking peoples of northwestern Namibia and southwestern Angola.

Films in the Ovahimba Years series

Keep The Dance Alive

Shake Your Brains

When Visitors Come

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Kenya Boran

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 11:13:00 GMT

Kenya Boran
Buy Now: $495.00

In the midst of a traditional herding territory, a growing town and a new road encroach upon a once-isolated desert people. The complexities brought about by this modernization are shown as two fathers and their sons confront difficult choices between old ways and new.

The first part of the film provides the social, economic, and political background of the Boran and introduce themes developed in detail in other films. It establishes a base line for traditional lifestyles and attitudes, increasingly subject to pressures — both intentional and incidental — for change. The second part shows the complex set of educational problems facing young people and governments in a typical Third World setting. It has special relevance in courses that focus on comparative education, socialization and learning.

In its second half, the film follows the life of Peter Boru, a sixteen-year-old former herdsboy who has become a boarding school student. Peter's life is juxtaposed to a traditional herdsboy, Dokata. The question, "Education for what?" is posed when both tradition and modern forces common to developing areas make the economic outlook bleak for young people, even if they are able to complete local educational requirements.

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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Khalfan and Zanzibar

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 11:13:00 GMT

Khalfan and Zanzibar
Buy Now: $295.00

Khalfan and Zanzibar is an anthropological documentary shot on digital video — a new departure for the filmmakers, who previously worked exclusively with 16-mm film. Three separate topics are woven together in this innovative project: 1) the life and work of Khalfan Hemed Khalfan, founder of Zanzibar's Association of the Disabled; 2) scenes from the lives of Zanzibar's disabled — job skill training, a class for deaf children, a soccer scrimmage; 3) the history and culture of Zanzibar.

This video is a study of Mr. Khalfan Hamid Khalfan and the handicapped people's organization Mr. Khalfan founded and continues to run. Mr. Khalfan, a charismatic figure well known in Zanzibar, is himself wheelchair-bound and oversees the tasks of representing, training, and helping handicapped people throughout the island state. Mr. Khalfan coordinates the efforts of donor agencies, state and federal governments, politicians and development experts, but he is not paid by the government and does not belong to any political party. For many years a high school principal, he looks on his work as primarily an educational one, "raising consciousness" about the needs and potential contributions of people with handicaps.

Not a portrait film pure and simple, Khalfan and Zanzibar's differentiation is to place the protagonist in Zanzibar culture, history, ethnicity, religion and everyday life. It intersperses interviews, scenes of Mr. Khalfan's daily chores at work and at home, handicapped people at work and leisure activities, and footage of Zanzibar (with innovative use of superimposed texts discussing history, ethnicity, politics, and Islam). The challenge of the video is to integrate, through visual form and style, the diverse materials mentioned above, in a single unfolding film structure.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Certificate of Merit, INTERCOM Competitions of the Chicago International Film Festival, 2000

Best International Documentary, Brooklyn Film Festival, 2000

Academic Look International Film Festival, Lisbon, Portugal

Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival, New York, 2000

Center for Cross Cultural Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, 2000

Seagull Media Centre, Kolkata, India, 2001

Dialektus Film Festival, Budapest, Hungary, 2002

5th World Congress of Anthropological Sciences, Florence, Italy, 2003

Brunei Gallery, SOAS, London

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Kinja Iakaha, A Day in the Village

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 11:13:00 GMT

Kinja Iakaha, A Day in the Village
Buy Now: $295.00

In A Day in the Village, Waimiri and Atroari filmmakers document the day-to-day life of their relatives in the Cacau village, located in the Amazon region. We watch as women prepare the midday meal and do laundry in the river. Men hunt for alligators, paca and tapir in the forest as well as make handcrafts during a rainstorm. Children play and help with chores such as fruit-gathering and fishing, with adults showing them the right way to do things. Through intimate, interwoven images, the video gives us a vivid sense of the daily pattern in this village.

Films in the Indigenous Video Makers series

Dancing with a Dog
From the Ikpeng Children to the World
Kinja Iakaha, A Day in the Village
The Living Forest
Moyngo
Nguné Elü
One Must Be Curious
A Path to Live
The Rainy Season
Shomõtsi
Trainees for the Future
Wapté Mnhõnõ, The Xavante's Initiation
Wai'á Rini, The Power of the Dream

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Kites and Monsters

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 11:13:00 GMT

Kites and Monsters
Buy Now: $275.00

Kites and Monsters is part of the Afflictions: Culture & Mental Illness in Indonesia series of ethnographic films on severe mental illness in Indonesia, based on material drawn from 12 years of person-centered research by director and anthropologist Robert Lemelson.

The film focuses on a growing boy, Wayan Yoga, and is not so much about illness as it is an exploration of the protective aspects of culture that may guide developmental neuropsychiatric processes. At six years old, Wayan Yoga is an energetic boy who flies kites and is obsessed with the monsters of Balinese mythology. He also has various tics, which move his parents to seek treatment. At twenty, he is a young man planning his career as a chef and an expressive Balinese dancer. Ultimately, Wayan Yoga's tics are insignificant to his evolving sense of self-compared to the saturation of symbols, images, and narratives of his culture.

While Wayan must learn to negotiate the kinds of movements, interests, and goals that are culturally appropriate, the protective buffer of his family guides him successfully into normative Balinese adulthood.

Films in the Afflictions series
The Bird Dancer
Family Victim
Kites and Monsters
Memory of My Face
Ritual Burdens

Shadows & Illuminations

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K'Sai Chivit

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 11:13:00 GMT

K'Sai Chivit
Buy Now: $295.00

K'Sai Chivit: Threads of Life documents the ancient art form of Khmer silk weaving and its place in Cambodian society today. For over a thousand years, Cambodian weavers have been producing a variety of elegant silks, however current societal hardships Cambodians face have dramatically hindered this production. Organizations like UNESCO have began to take part in the revitalization of Khmer weaving, and have established training programs across the region to increase job opportunities and economic independence.

The film explores the story of Um Lao, an ordinary Cambodian girl who is seeking to improve her life and that of her family. Like many in her situation, improving her craft will lead to a greater opportunity for economic independence and an increase in self-esteem, as well as the successful preservation of this ancient heritage.

The story continues to show Um Lao and her master teacher, as they work side by side and travel from the bustling city to desolate villages, all while maintaining a sense of dignity and dedication that is necessary to revitalize this sacred art.

Suitable for all ages, and those with an interest in Asian Studies, Politics, Art, Class Status, Industry, Rural, Village & Urban Life, Gender Roles, and History.

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