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On Behalf of the Living

Wed, 24 Apr 2024 09:47:44 GMT

On Behalf of the Living
Buy Now: $320.00

On Behalf of the Living unfolds on two levels: an exploration of humanity’s preoccupation with life after death and the story of one anthropologist’s experiment—taking his lifelong “participatory” research on a Papua New Guinea island to its logical, if counter-intuitive, conclusion.

The film is composed of three strands. The first includes footage that Ton Otto filmed with his parents in the Netherlands, where discussions of faith, God, and eternity are argued out ‘en famille’. The second strand takes place on Baluan Island, where Christian Suhr documents Ton’s reunion with his adoptive family. Before long, the two find themselves entangled in complex disputes —both spiritual and personal. The third strand, in a different register altogether, consists of a series of dialogues between Ton and Christian, one-on-one. Through alternating first-person perspectives, they interrogate and challenge each other with rare directness, questioning the very viability of their experiment—and even the anthropological project as a whole. This strand functions as a Greek Chorus, providing a check on the ideas and insights emerging from the main storyline. While probing the realm of the ancestors, the film’s primary source and frame of reference remain the lived experiences of the people—mostly family—that it embraces with its lens.

Writing about his motivation for making the film, Ton writes that he was interested in confronting “one of the great mysteries of human life: its ending. What happens after our biological demise? What kinds of afterlife are imaginable? How do we continue to relate to our dead loved ones? Being an anthropologist by profession I was driven to immerse myself in different cultural worlds, not only to discover alternative beliefs and practices but also to challenge my own ideas about the continuities and discontinuities between the living and the dead.”

"On Behalf of the Living is a stunning film. It is about Papua New Guinea, and the Netherlands and Denmark, but even more, it is about the nature of human life and death. Terrence Malick-like in its scope, it is also the best film of any kind about religion I have seen in a long time…It is a major piece of work."
— Prof. Joel Robbins, Cambridge University, UK

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Ethnografilm, France, 2024

NAFA Int'l Ethnographic Film Festival, Denmark, 2023

Int'l Festival of Ethnological Film, Macedonia, 2023

Ethnofest - Athens Ethnographic Film Festival. Greece, 2023

European Society for Oceanists, France, 2022

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Ophir

Fri, 6 May 2022 14:37:33 GMT

Ophir
Buy Now: $320.00

Ophir tells the story of an extraordinary Indigenous revolution for life, land and culture: a poetic and dramatic ode to the thirst for freedom, culture and sovereignty. The film sheds light on the biggest conflict of the Pacific since WWII, revealing the visible and invisible chains of colonisation and its enduring cycles of physical and psychological warfare.

Voiced entirely by the Indigenous people of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea, the film deconstructs the mechanisms of exploitation through the colonisation of land and its people, who at the end of the 1980s were left with no choice but to revolt for their right to exist. A small group of islanders first armed with bows and arrows fought helicopters and guns. They defiantly defended the core principles that formed the basis of their society, in the face of absolute destruction of their mental, physical, and spiritual conception of what it means to be human.

It was a decade-long civil war which killed around 20,000 Bougainvilleans, wiping out approximately 10% of the island's population.

The people of Bougainville ultimately won in their fight against the colonial powers, in a bid to secede from their motherland Papua New Guinea, despite the government's support from Australia and one of the biggest of the mining giants, Rio Tinto.

“(5 out of 5 stars)...may be the best environmental documentary I have ever seen. It is rare to see an indigenous lead revolution succeed, and rarer still to hear about such success. This documentary gives the viewer a chance to hear the residents of Bougainville speak for themselves in their own words. They speak of colonialism and all of its faces. Beautiful poetry is used to drive this documentary from segment to segment, connecting the thoughts and ideas spoken by this film’s subjects to one another through cultural expression." – J. Zimmerman, Video Librarian

“Edifying... A remarkable reflection on the aftermath of an anti-colonial struggle.” – Christine Chaumeau, Télérama TTT

“It's just really an incredible film. It plays out like a Greek tragedy.” – Gabrielle Kelly, Guam IFF 2020 Jury Member

“The things that the filmmakers managed to see and film are quite exceptional.” – Eric Barbier, FIFO 2020 Jury President

Selected Screenings & Awards

Society for Visual Anthropology Film and Media Festival, Toronto, 2023

Grand Prix, FIFO Int'l Documentary Film Festival of Oceania, Tahiti, 2020

Grand Prix ‘Sol de Oro’, Suncine Environmental Film Festival, Barcelona, Spain, 2020

Grand Jury Prize, Feature Documentary Competition, Guam Int'l Film Festival, USA, 2020

Grand Prix Rigoberta Menchú, Montréal First Peoples Festival, Canada, 2020

Audience Award, Noma Int'l Human Rights Film Festival, Portugal, 2021

Best Feature Film, All Living Things Environmental Film Festival, Panchgani, India, 2021

Best Foreign Film Award, AegeanDocs Int'l Film Festival, Greece, 2021

Film of the Year, FICA Festival Internacional de Cine Ambiental, Goias, Brazil, 2021

RAI Film Prize & Basil Wright Prize Nominee, RAI Film Festival, 2021

Silver Award, Millenium Int'l Documentary Film Festival, Brussels, Belgium, 2021
Grand Prix Best Feature Film, Cinema e Ambiente Avezzano, Italy, 2021
Special Jury Prize ‘Coup de Coeur du Jury’, Martinique Int'l Doc FF, Martinique, 2021
Special Jury Mention, Noma Int'l Human Rights Film Festival, Portugal, 2021
1st Special Jury Prize, Ecology of the Soul, Green Montenegro Int'l Film Festival, Montenegro, 2021
Best International Feature Film, PukaÑawi Int'l Human Rights Film Festival of Sucre, Bolivia, 2021
2nd Jury Prize, International Documentaries, Int'l Nature Film Festival Gödöllő, Hungary, 2021
Best Feature Film, Festiver Festival de Cine Verde de Barichara, Colombia, 2021
Benedetto Senni Award, Terra di Tutti Film Festival, Italy, 2021
Best Feature Film, Youth Jury, Serra de Estrela Int’l Environmental Film Festival, Portugal, 2021
Best Documentary Feature Film, Dili Int'l Film Festival, Timor-Leste, 2021
Best Environmental Film, Bogocine Bogota Int'l Film Festival, Colombia, 2021
Best Feature Film, Mallku Features, Arica Nativa Festival, Chile, 2021
Best Script, Filmambiente Festival, Brazil, 2021
Best Feature Film, Greenfest Belgrade, Serbia, 2021

Environmental Justice Award, Eugene Environmental Film Festival, USA, 2022
Best International Feature Film, Ecozine Film Festival, Spain, 2022

Best Feature Documentary Award, Gibara Int'l Film Festival, Cuba, 2022
Best Film, Best Feature Documentary, Int'l Documentary Film Festival of Ierapetra, Greece, 2022
Invited in Competition, Asia Pacific Screen Awards, 2022

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Oak Park Stories

Thu, 23 Jan 2020 13:04:44 GMT

Oak Park Stories
Buy Now: $395.00

Oak Park Stories is a series of experimental, reflexive and digital ethnographies that attempts to explore a forty-year-old social experiment in Oak Park, a Chicago suburb.

Three Stories are family portraits and one is an institutional portrait. The family portraits allow reader/viewers the chance to understand aspects of life in the U.S. that are too often ignored by social scientists and journalists - an economically successful intact African American family, a lesbian family living a very traditional middle class life and a WASP family who is at once very traditional and accepting of blacks and gays. The Stories are designed to be used both alone or as a series. They are experimental in that the traditional method of producing a book or a film has not been followed but instead they are interactive and nonlinear works that contain text, still photographs and video life histories. They are reflexive in that the subject of the research is the author's hometown. Rather than hide this fact, Ruby tries to make the reader/viewer aware of how his identity has influenced the study. The Stories utilize a digital technology - on a CD using Quicktime movies and html documents. They are nonlinear, that is, unlike a book or a film, there is no defined beginning, middle or end. Viewers/readers are free to begin anywhere. They can ignore anything that doesn't interest them. Links are provided to materials that will allow anyone interested to pursue a topic in more depth.

Here is a brief description of the four Oak Park Stories. The community is internationally renown for his attempts to promote ethnic diversity and integration. One story is an exploration of how this community devised a way to maintain its desired diversity. The subject of this institutional portrait is the Oak Park Regional Housing Center, a non-profit organization designed to prevent resegregation by affirmatively marketing apartments in such a manner as to distribute whites and blacks throughout the community and to avoid having any apartment building contain a predominance of one ethnic group. Approximately half of all residential units are apartments. The Housing Center is part of a complex of village ordinances, other nonprofit and governmental agencies striving to keep the housing market healthy and integrated. The Housing Center is the keystone to a unique and successful social experiment.

In addition the Housing Center portrait, there are three Oak Park Stories which are family portraits designed to take a look at how this experiment works itself out in the lives of its citizens. Through these families some of Oak Park's core values are examined as well as how the transformation of the community impacts on the people who live there is revealed. Each family exemplifies different aspects of the community. The Taylor family portrait is about a solidly middle-class African American family who moved to Oak Park a few years ago because they wanted their children to attend good schools and be in a neighborhood where they could ride their bikes in the streets. In addition, they wanted them exposed to children of different ethnicities from different economic strata. They are able to realize their goals because of decades of work to make Oak Park a welcoming place. Through their lives the historical and contemporary roles of African Americans in Oak Park as well as the values of a middle-class black family are explored.

In addition to Oak Park's reputation for ethnic integration, it is highly regarded as being openly gay friendly. The next Oak Park Story concerns a lesbian family, Rebecca Levin and Sophie Kaluziak and their children Ariel and Ben. Rebecca is a long-term Oak Park resident, community activist, and instrumental in the formation of the local gay and lesbian organization. Their engagement with the schools and other aspects of the community illuminates a number of important issues concerning the integration of gay people in Oak Park - a community with a lesbian village president, a gay village trustee and a gay man on the school board. As the openly gay population ages, the character of the community changes with it. Gays and lesbians are becoming more and more middle class and suburban and less likely to live in a gay-identified neighborhood. Many are home owners with children. Increasingly these gay suburban families are indistinguishable from their heterosexual neighbors. It is this ordinariness that is often overlooked in favor of the more sensational aspects of single gay life. It is the "ordinariness" of this family that is explored and viewed as a consequence of Oak Park's reinvention of itself.

The final Oak Park Story is about Helena and some members of her family. Helena Gervais McCullough is the matriarch of a family who has lived in Oak Park for four generations. She is at once a part of the old WASP aristocracy and an active participant in the New Oak Park. Helena is in her nineties and displays all of the most traditional Oak Park values. And yet she is able to accept a bisexual son-in-law who is a retired public school teacher active in the local politically powerful gay and lesbian organization and local politics, and an African American daughter-in-law. Exploring her world provides us with a guide through this remarkable part of the community's history.

With these three stories, reader/viewers will come to understand how some middle-class Oak Parkers cope with living in the most interesting social experiment in the U.S.

Read an article about this project: download the PDF

Dear Old Oak Parkers is an Oak Park Story CD-ROM that portrays a middle-class African American family who appear to exemplify values and aspirations that make possible the success of the village's long term hope that Oak Park will continue to be a welcoming place for everyone.

Oak Park Regional Housing Center is an ethnographic portrait of a unique organization that has, for over thirty years, aided in the village's quest to achieve and maintain a geographically integrated place. It is the cornerstone of Oak Park's plan for diversity.

Rebekah and Sophie - A Lesbian Family is an Oak Park Story CD-ROM that portrays people living in one of the most "gay-friendly" suburbs in the U.S. The family lived through the gay civil rights battles of the 1980s and 1990s and have settled into raising a family and being part of the middle-class life of the village. Like the Taylors they present another aspect of Oak Park's desire to accommodate and accept difference.

Val is a DVD about Val's Halla, an independent record store that is a cultural institution in Oak Park. For thirty plus years Val has offered her customers an incredible array of recorded music from classical to rap, both new and used. In addition, the collective knowledge of Val and her staff makes it possible to carry on an informed conversation about music and recordings. In this film, Val talks about the changing role of the record store and muses about what Oak Park looks like from the vantage point of its counterculture.

Walking the Line: The Taylor Family is an Oak Park Story CD-ROM that portrays a middle-class African American family who appear to exemplify values and aspirations that make possible the success of the village's long term hope that Oak Park will continue to be a welcoming place for everyone.

General introduction

Description of the Community

Oak Park is a small Chicago suburb (4.7 square miles and a population of around 50,000). Founded in the late 1800s, it grew rapidly. Fifty percent of its housing stock was built prior to World War II. It is highly regarded for its architecture. Frank Lloyd Wright lived and worked here, building over 36 homes and the Unity Temple. The place claims an unusually large number of illustrious residents - novelists Ernest Hemingway and Carol Shields, dancer Doris Humphrey, chemist Percy Julian, drummer Dave Tough and MacDonald's founder, Ray Kroc to name a few. The look and feel of the place is more urban than suburban. Sixty percent of the village is contained within three national historic districts with large houses and mature trees forming a canopy over its wide streets. From its inception in the nineteenth century until the 1970s, Oak Park was a bastion of Republican white Protestant conservatism tempered slightly by primarily progressive women involved in the reform movement and social welfare.

Beginning in the late 1960s, the Chicago pattern of "block by block" resegregation reached Austin - the Chicago community that is on Oak Park's western border. It seemed inevitable that the tide of rapid and destructive ethnic change would engulf Oak Park and transform it into a predominately black community that would devolve into a crime-ridden slum. It did not. Through a long and complex process of government and non-government agencies and village ordinances, Oak Park created a strategy that made it one of the most stably integrated communities in the U.S. The Utne Reader describes Oak Park as "everything you'd want in a suburb: racially integrated, walkable, prosperous, a vital downtown, good transit, and a character all its own." and labeled it as being one of America's 60 best public places (Jan/Feb 2002 issue). It is this transformation to a liberal, heterogeneous place with a highly visible and politically powerful gay population that is the focus of the study.

“Ruby's Oak Park Stories series is both an inspiring example of innovative methodological practice in visual ethnography and an excellent resource of ideas and materials for scholars interested in cultural diversity in small places as well as in middle-class activism. It offers fascinating insights into the biographies, motivations, socialities, and practices of place-based middle-class activists… This is a key body of work for any ethnographer working with digital media.” — Sarah Pink, American Anthropologist 111(1):105- 108 (non-AAA members can access the article here.)

“Ruby is therefore to be commended for providing an exemplar for how multimedia, nonlinear ethnographic studies may be produced in rigorous scholarly ways, which still capitalize on information technologies to more meaningfully integrate anthropology with visual communication.” — Steve Lyon, Visual Anthropology Review, vol. 25, No. 1: page 86

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Oyate

Mon, 20 May 2019 09:47:00 GMT

Oyate
Buy Now: $320.00

Oyate is a time capsule of moments, gestures, and events that took place on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota during the summer of 2015. The narrative, pieced together mainly from the day-to-day activities of two Lakota families, anchors the viewer among the rhythms and sounds of everyday life.

While not an outwardly politicized film, Oyate is an unmistakably political one; a film that keenly and quietly positions a collection of seemingly commonplace events (a conversation in the back of a truck, a group of young girls lighting off fireworks, a birth, a wedding reception) as deeply felt occurrences of purpose, faith, and love in an often difficult world.

"This tightly packed and intimate documentary gives a rare glimpse into a forgotten world we only hear about in passing. One of the most important DOCS of the year."

-Devin Negrete, Film Note Magazine

“Unlike so many other documentaries about Pine Ridge that focus on the poverty and deprivation of Lakota residents, this film interrupts that narrative to celebrate families and the intimacy of their day to day lives." - Danette Pachtner, Librarian for Film, Video & Digital Media and Women's Studies, Duke University

SELECTED AWARDS & SCREENINGS

Artistic Vision Award, Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, US, 2017
Regard Neuf Finalist, Visions du Réel, Switzerland, 2017

EthnoKino, Switzerland, 2018

Duluth Superior Film Festival Indigenous Screening Series, US, 2018

Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival, US, 2017
Independent Film Festival Boston, US, 2017

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One Man's Journey series

Wed, 5 Sep 2018 11:07:00 GMT

One Man's Journey series
Buy Now: $705.00

One Man's Journey is a three-part series featuring naturalist/explorer/filmmaker Robert Perkins paddling his canoe through his personal and geographic journeys. All three films were broadcast on WGBH in the winter of 2005.

“One Man's Journey... is an adventure story, but not the kind with bravado or derring-do. Instead, it's the contemplative, solitary kind... Much of the film consists of radiant nature shots narrated by Mr. Perkins as he reflects on the meaning of life... the movie is also unexpectedly stirring, informed by Mr. Perkins's considerable, if dark, charm, and the beauty of the remote landscapes he is drawn to. (The film's) meditative style becomes hypnotic...”
— New York Times

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The Ovahimba Years: A Multidisciplinary Ethnographic Study

Wed, 5 Sep 2018 11:07:00 GMT

The Ovahimba Years: A Multidisciplinary Ethnographic Study
Buy Now: $795.00

From 1997 to 2004, Rina Sherman lived with the Tjambiru family at their homestead located on oHere hill in the outskirts of Etanga, a village in the north-western Kunene region of Namibia.

During her stay in the field, she documented the lives of the members of the family, their relatives and friends. Over a period of seven years, she established an extensive record of their everyday and ritual lives in text, sound, video and photography.

In 2003, Rina Sherman extended her research to the south-western provinces of Cunene and Namibe in Angola where she documented the lives of the Otjiherero speaking peoples, the Ovahakaona, Ovadhimba, Ovagambwe, Ovakuvale, Ovatwa, and more.

Films in the Ovahimba Years series

Keep The Dance Alive

Shake Your Brains

When Visitors Come

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Ocamo is My Town

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 13:51:00 GMT

Ocamo is My Town
Buy Now: $320.00

This film describes the work of an extraordinary Salesian priest, Padre Cocco, who has headed a mission on the Ocamo River since 1957. The mission's goal, he explains, is to soften the inevitable impact of "civilization" on the Yanomamö of this area.

Baptism and monogamy can wait, the priest says; what is crucial is that the Indians are no longer seen as museum pieces, but as significant human beings and citizens in the larger Venezuelan society. At the same time, indigenous Yanomamö culture must be respected. Hallucinogenic drugs, for example, are the basis for communication with hekura spirits, and through spirit manipulation many diseases can be cured. Therefore, asserts Padre Cocco, the use of these drugs should neither be forbidden nor discouraged.On the other hand, change is a reality at Padre Cocco's mission.

The film shows some of the changes that the mission has already brought: cattle and chicken raising, manioc flour, new fishing techniques, new medicines. What are the ramifications of these changes; what are the short and long-term effects of the mission's projects on nutrition, health, settlement patterns, ecological adaptation, social and cultural life?

Films in the Yanomamö series:

Arrow Game *†

The Ax Fight †

Bride Service

Children's Magical Death *†

Climbing the Peach Palm *†

A Father Washes His Children *†

The Feast

Firewood *

Jaguar, a Yanomamö Twin Cycle Myth

Magical Death †

A Man and His Wife Make a Hammock *†

A Man Called Bee: Studying the Yanomamö †

Moonblood: A Yanomamö Creation Myth †

Myth of Naro, as told by Dedeheiwä

Myth of Naro, as told by Kaobawä

New Tribes Mission

Ocamo is My Town

Tapir Distribution *

Tug-of-War, Yanomamö *

Weeding the Garden *†

Yanomamö: A Multidisciplinary Study

Yanomamö of the Orinoco

* included on the Yanomamö Shorts compilation
† included in the Yanomamö Films: Remastered, Vol. 1 set

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Of Bards and Beggers

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 13:51:00 GMT

Of Bards and Beggers
Buy Now: $295.00

Of Bards and Beggars documents in detail a musical ritual called Pabuji Jaagran, an all night epic recitation by Indian Rajasthani folk musicians. This story centers around a folk deity called Pabujib, a protector of livestock. The Pabuji legend is widely popular in Western Rajasthan among a shepherd community from the Rebari (Raika) caste. An oral tradition passed from generation to generation by word of mouth, the entire Pabuji epic would take 36 hours to recite. In the theatrical version, a performer known as the Bhopa performs a duet with his wife, the Bhopi. The oral recital consists of multiple stanzas which are also illustrated on a giant painting behind the performers. Along with singing the stanzas, the Bhopa plays a stringed instrument, the Ravanhatha. The performance starts at dusk and lasts for twelve hours. At dawn, the Bhopi and the Bhopa sing the final prayer.

The film not only captures the first documentation on video of an authentic, unstaged Pabujib jaagran in its natural setting, but it also seeks to examine the issues of commodification of folk culture and the resulting loss of meaning for the traditional followers of Pabuji. A poor community no longer held in great esteem, the Pabuji musicians now perform in the new milieu of India's hospitality and tourism industry. Signaling their rapidly-vanishing folk culture, they must play to an audience largely ignorant of the meaning or origins of the entertainment.

This is the first documentation on video of an authentic, unstaged, Pabujib jaagran in its natural setting.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference, San Diego, California, 2004

UCLA Vitas Film and Folklore Festival, 2004

Society for Visual Anthropology/American Anthropological Association Conference, San Francisco, 2004

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Of Men And Gods

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 13:51:00 GMT

Of Men And Gods
Buy Now: $320.00

A frank look at a largely unexplored area, Of Men And Gods examines the daily existence of several Haitian men who are openly gay.

Prevalent, yet still taboo, homosexuality and gay culture are allowed to flourish within the context of Haiti's Vodou religion. As "children of the gods," the men find an explanation for homosexuality as well as divine protection. They also find an outlet for theatrical expression through exhilarating performances in which they embody the gods.

Meanwhile, the AIDS epidemic looms as a continual threat and adds a disquieting degree of nihilism to their relatively optimistic attitudes toward life and happiness in Port-au-Prince.

The filmmaker, Anne Lescot, is an anthropologist who has studied Haitian Vodou for 10 years. Laurence Magloire has been working in the field of television for 10 years.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Parfums Vodou, Forum for Visual Anthropology, Switzerland, 2008

Isidore Award, Collectif HomoEdu & Festival Influences Caraïbes, Paris, 2007

Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, Greece, 2005

5th Czech Gay and Lesbian Film Festival MEZIPATRA 2004

Jakarta Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, Indonesia, 2004

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Oh, What A Blow That Phantom Gave Me!

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 13:51:00 GMT

Oh, What A Blow That Phantom Gave Me!
Buy Now: $320.00

This film takes its title from a book written by filmmaker Edmund Carpenter in 1972 about his engagement with media in Papua New Guinea. In the film, several filmmakers discuss the introduction of media, and film in particular, to native cultures. Media has the ability to help native peoples document their own cultures, but it also has the power to encroach upon those cultures and irreversibly alter them.

This film relates the ways in which native peoples engage with media, from the Biami who proudly developed the "Big Wink" to learn how to properly focus a camera, to the Kandagan people who changed the rules of a thousand year old male initiation ceremony to allow a woman camera operator to document the ceremony.

At issue is the way in which media "swallows cultures" and the benefits and dangers of introducing preliterate societies to Western modes of communication and expression.

Screening History

John Culkin Award for Outstanding Praxis in the Field of Media Ecology. Media Ecology Association, 2004

IWF International Festival of Ethnographic Film, Germany, 2004

8th Royal Anthropological InstituteÕs International Festival of Ethnographic Film, England, 2003

Northeastern Anthropological Association, Burlington, Vermont, 2003

14th Beeld voor Beeld Ethnographic Film Festival, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2003

4th Media Ecology Association Annual Conference, 2003

American Anthropological Association, Chicago, 2003

7th Documentary and Ethnographic Film Festival of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 2003

Taiwan Ethnographic Film Festival, 2003

Documentary & Ethnographic Film Festival of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 2003

Göttingen International Film Festival, Germany, 2004

Interuniversity Ethnographic Film Festival of Montreal, 2005

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