Documentary Educational Resources - Subject / Music, Dance & Theater / Musical Traditions / All Films

Ballad on the Shore

Wed, 2 Oct 2024 17:47:26 GMT

Ballad on the Shore
Buy Now: $320.00

Ma Chi Hang’s ethnomusicological film records a centuries-old oral tradition of fishermen and fisherwomen who identify as People on Water (水上人 ). Living in fishing communities on Grass Island and in Aberdeen, Hong Kong, they sing ballads about life on and in connection with the sea. The ballads, sung in what the practitioners call ''fisherman language'' are melodic and the lyrics poetic and rich.

The lyrics of these ballads tell the stories of the trials and tribulations of the life of the fisherman. They tell of a past way of life on the water and reflect a strong attachment to and knowledge of their maritime environment–where to anchor safely, where to avoid big waves or windy and cold conditions, and where fish are plentiful. “Anchor large boats at the tip of To Nin, a sampan sends the lover to Sai See Island.....” Ballads have been traditionally passed down from one generation to the next, but with the boat people's way of life disappearing and the songs reaching fewer and fewer listeners today, will the ballads continue to be sung?

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Taiwan International Documentary Festival, Taiwan 2023

Sinophone Musics Film Festival, Taiwan 2022

RAI Film Festival, UK 2019

MOViE MOViE Life Is Art Festival, Hong Kong 2018

Chiayi Int'l Art Doc Film Festival, Taiwan 2018

Visit Musical Traditions to see additional products in this category.

Two Poets and a River

Thu, 9 Mar 2023 13:37:42 GMT

Two Poets and a River
Buy Now: $320.00

Using the Oxus river as a topos, this film explores themes of love and loss through the lives and musical poetry of the two most prominent and innovative Wakhi musicians in Central and South Asia, Qurbonsho in Tajikistan and Daulatsho in Afghanistan. In the 19th century their Wakhan homeland became a buffer zone between Czarist Russia and the British Empire and the river Oxus became a border. The condition of being separated by a river grounds the poets’ discussions of love and loss in their own lives as well as in their musical arts. Richard Wolf shot the film over 2.5 years (2012-2020).

The Deluxe Edition 2-disc set includes a Blu-ray featuring the 75-min festival cut and 124-min director’s cut, a CD soundtrack of music in Wakhi, Tajik, Persian, and Dari languages, and an accompanying booklet with songtexts and translations.

Selected Screenings & Awards

Martello Award, Cinque Ports International Film Festival, France and England, 2023

Middle Eastern Studies Association Film Festival, Montreal, 2023

Association for Asian Studies Film Expo, USA, 2023

RAI Film Festival, Bristol, UK, 2023

ICTM Prize for Best Documentary Film or Video, Int'l Council for Traditional Music, Portugal, 2022

Society for Visual Anthropology Film and Media Festival, USA, 2022

Manchester Lift-Off Film Festival, UK, 2022

Madrid International Film Festival, Spain, 2022

International Multicultural Film Festival, Australia, 2022

Middle East and Central Asia Music Forum, University of London, UK, 2022

Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, USA, 2022

Department of Film and Television, National College of Arts, Pakistan, 2022

Visit Musical Traditions to see additional products in this category.

Voices of the Rainforest

Wed, 29 May 2019 10:52:27 GMT

Voices of the Rainforest
Buy Now: $340.00

Voices of the Rainforest: A Day in the Life of Bosavi is a 70-minute cinema concert–an experiential documentary about the ecological and aesthetic coevolution of Papua New Guinea's Bosavi rainforest region and its inhabitants. Through sound and image, the film immerses viewers in the rainforest, and makes audible myriad connections between the everyday sounds of the rainforest biosphere and the creative practices of singing to, with, and about it by the Bosavi people. Structured around a day in the life of the rainforest and the music it inspires for the Bosavi people, the film brings to life the everyday activities of work, leisure, and ritual–heard in the full ambient setting of the rainforest–throughout the day and night.

Voices of the Rainforest was produced by Steven Feld and Dennis Leonard and Directed by Steven Feld and Jeremiah Ra Richards in collaboration with the Bona community of Bosavi, Papua New Guinea. Feld conducted anthropological and ethnomusicological fieldwork in Bosavi from 1975 to 2000. The original Voices of the Rainforest CD was produced during this time (1991) with production support from Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart. Working with acclaimed sound editor Dennis Leonard at Skywalker Sound in 2016-2017, Feld recomposed a 25th anniversary 7.1 Voices soundtrack. A 2018 return to Bosavi with filmmaker Jeremiah Ra Richards and digitization of Feld's extensive archival photographs led to the creation of the immersive film joined to the 7.1 soundtrack.

Voices of the Rainforest is the first in a series of films based on Feld's work. While Voices offers a visualization of the original audio experience, New Voices of the Rainforest, the companion film, will provide an update on the state of the forest and the problems of development in what remains a remote and underserved region of Papua New Guinea.

This Deluxe Edition includes a 150-page color photobook, 7.1 Blu-ray (with a 2.0 stereo track) and the 25th Anniversary edition audio CD.

All sales benefit the Bosavi Peoples Fund, advocating for environmental and cultural justice in a remote part of Papua New Guinea.

Selected Screenings & Awards

Honourable Mention, Documentary Film Prize, International Council for Traditional Music, 2020

Competition Category "Community and Equality," Vizantrop Film Festival, 2020

Academic Screenings

Scholarship Film Festival, U Pennsylvania, 2019

NYU Depts of Anthropology & Music, 2019

Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology UK, 2019

University of Eastern Finland, 2019

Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, 2019

Harvard University, 2019

Visit Musical Traditions to see additional products in this category.

A Por Por Funeral for Ashirifie

Tue, 9 Oct 2018 15:11:00 GMT

A Por Por Funeral for Ashirifie
Buy Now: $320.00

Por Por music (pronounced “paw paw”) is named for the honking sound of antique squeeze-bulb car horns, ubiquitous on the wooden lorries of Ghana's early transport history. After electric horns arrived in West Africa a union of bus and truck drivers in the Accra township of La kept the por por horn and invented a jazzy honking. The La drivers only perform Por Por at funerals of their fellow union transport workers.

In March 2008 the La Drivers Union Por Por Group lost one of its key members, Nelson Ashirifie Mensah. This film documents the funeral performed in his memory and discusses Por Por's relation to the New Orleans jazz funeral.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Prix Bartok, Jean Rouch Film Festival, 2010

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)

Visit Musical Traditions to see additional products in this category.

Deep Hearts

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 07:04:00 GMT

Deep Hearts
Buy Now: $320.00

Deep Hearts is a film about the Bororo Fulani, a nomadic society located in the central portion of the Niger Republic of Africa. The title is a reference to an important aspect of these people's thought and demeanor. The Bororo are immensely beautiful. They are also extremely envious of each other's looks. This envy accounts for their truly suspicious nature; one which leads quickly to feelings of fear. They are particularly fearful of being 'devoured' by both the eyes and mouths of those around them with whom they compete as beautiful creatures. The concept of a deep heart is useful because it accommodates their fears by providing a metaphysical space in which to hide their true feelings.

Deep Hearts describes the Gerewol, an occasion during the rainy season when two different and competing lineages come together at a designated watering place to choose the most 'perfect' Bororo male. It is close to being a physical and moral beauty contest in which the winner, selected by a maiden of the opposing lineage, is acclaimed the 'bull.' The film is also an attempt to let this ceremony of the Bororo be a way of speaking to the larger question of choice itself, something which confronts all human beings at all times.

Visit Musical Traditions to see additional products in this category.

Jathilan

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 11:12:00 GMT

Jathilan
Buy Now: $295.00

Practiced in Java for centuries, Jathilan is a folk dance that uses the power of music and dance to channel powerful and sometimes terrifying forces. Led by a spiritual guide and a whip-bearing ringleader, a group of dancers ride woven horses in rhythmic unison until they are entered by spirits. Once possessed they engage in a range of self-mortification behaviors until safely emerging from their altered state, left with no memory of the event and no lingering ill effects.

The film combines footage of a number of Jathilan performances with interviews with dancers, spiritual leaders, anthropologists, and enthusiasts. This extraordinary practice becomes more than just spectacle as Jathilan is contextualized within broader processes of Indonesian historical, political and social change and the viewer is provided a window into the subjective experiences of those who participate. Multiple interpretations of Jathilan's significance ultimately emerge, from an empirical proof of spiritual presence, to a strategy of community building, to a resistant expression of folk identity.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Sunscreen Film Festival, St. Petersburg, Florida, 2013

SVA Ethnographic Film Festival 2012, USA, 2012

Pärnu International Documentary and Anthropology Film Festival, Estonia, 2012

Days of Ethnographic Cinema, Russia, 2012

Visit Musical Traditions to see additional products in this category.

Tarahumara

Mon, 27 Aug 2018 08:57:00 GMT

Tarahumara
Buy Now: $295.00

Shot in 1976, but never released, this film is a rare visual document of the Tarahumara - one of the most remote and isolated tribes of the North American continent. Filmed during a gathering at the mission village of Norogachic of northwest Mexico, the nomadic Tarahumara are observed celebrating their special interpretation of the Easter Festival. The week-long gathering uniquely explores both Christian and pre-Christian expressions of honoring the Easter Moon, the time when traditionally the Tarahumara dance, plant corn and drink Tesvino, the corn wine that blesses nearly every Tarahumara occasion from birth to death.

Coming from caves and rocky rancheros that range from the tropics to the northern Sierre Madre, the celebrants arrive on foot with giant tambours, flutes and the violins that the Spaniards introduced centuries ago, violins that the Tarahumara still carve from their native pine. Clay painted and dressed in flamboyantly colorful garments, the Tarahumaras make the celebration an epic of dance which concludes by preparing the shamans for the final dance in which the effigies of Judas and Judas's son are destroyed.

Visit Musical Traditions to see additional products in this category.

When Visitors Come

Fri, 24 Aug 2018 12:26:00 GMT

When Visitors Come
Buy Now: $295.00

A film about the relationship between anthropologist Rina Sherman and an Omuhimba family with whom she lived for seven years, filming and photographing aspects of their everyday and ritual lives. Halfway through her tenure in the field, Sherman presented a multi-media exhibition, entitled The Ovahimba Years: Work in Progress in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia. A group of young people from the community of Etanga traveled to Windhoek to participate in the exhibition.

The film explores the evolution of this relationship that lead to the exhibition, shows the group of young people discovering the presentation of their cultural heritage at the exhibition, holding performances as part of the programme presented, and shows the resulting discussions and consequences of the exhibition, once everyone is back in Ovahimba country. When Visitors Come is a film about an anthropologist in situ, and evokes several notions central to fieldwork, such as the nature of the bond between the observer and the observed, the observed observer, participant-anthropology and emotion as possible vector or hindrance in fieldwork.

Films in the Ovahimba Years series

Keep The Dance Alive

Shake Your Brains

When Visitors Come

Visit Musical Traditions to see additional products in this category.

Whose Is This Song?

Fri, 24 Aug 2018 12:26:00 GMT

Whose Is This Song?
Buy Now: $320.00

In her search for the true origins of a haunting melody, Bulgarian filmmaker Adela Peeva travels to Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia, Serbia and Bulgaria. The trip is filled with humor, suspense, tragedy, and surprise as each country's citizens passionately claim the song to be their own and can even furnish elaborate histories for its origins.

The tune emerges again and again in different forms: as a love song, a religious hymn, a revolutionary anthem, and even a military march. The powerful emotions and stubborn nationalism raised by one song seem at times comical and othertimes, eerily telling. In a region besieged by ethnic hatred and war, what begins as a light-hearted investigation ends as a sociological and historical exploration of the deep misunderstandings between the people of the Balkans.

SELECTED AWARDS & SCREENINGS

Golden Rython Award, Golden Chest Award, Sofia International Film Festival, Bulgaria, 2003
Prix ARTE Nominee, European Film Academy Documentary, 2003

United Nations Film Festival, California, 2003

Prix Bartok, 23rd Bilan du Film Ethnographique, Paris, 2004

Tribeca Film Festival, New York, 2004

Award of Commendation, Society for Visual Anthropology/AAA Conference, San Jose, California, 2006

Visit Musical Traditions to see additional products in this category.

Bitter Melons

Thu, 26 Jul 2018 09:36:00 GMT

Bitter Melons
Buy Now: $320.00

Shot in 1955, this film focuses on a small band of /Gwi San living in the arid landscape of the central Kalahari Desert in present-day Botswana. The hardships of their everyday survival are woven into the songs of a blind musician, Ukxone, who composes music on a hunting bow. His songs evoke the /Gwi landscape and its diverse wildlife; they depict the routine of their daily lives: gathering food, collecting water, hunting for animals, and sharing as a community.

"Bitter Melons," his favorite song, is about a woman who learned from her Bantu neighbors to plant melon seeds despite the agriculturalists protesting that wild melons taste bitter. Song, dance, landscape, and life are not so separated for the /Gwi San; their margins are fluid.

This film is part of the !Kung Series.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

CINE Golden Eagle

Blue Ribbon, American Film Festival

Flaherty Award

Festival dei Popoli

Salerno International Festival of Small-Sized Films

Athens International Film Festival

Philadelphia International Festival of Short Films

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.

Visit Musical Traditions to see additional products in this category.