Documentary Educational Resources - Indigenous Studies / Peace & Conflict / All Films

Ophir

Fri, 6 May 2022 14:37:33 GMT

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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A Celebration of Origins

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 08:15:00 GMT

A Celebration of Origins
Buy Now: $320.00

The people of the Tana 'Ai region of Flores, Indonesia live in seven ceremonial domains, of which Wai Brama is the largest and the oldest. The people of Wai Brama are shifting cultivators, hunters and gatherers who, unlike their neighbors, have maintained their traditional ceremonial and social system.

A Celebration of Origins, filmed in 1980, depicts the first celebration of these rituals since 1960. The rituals, which require the participation of the entire community, had been delayed by poor harvests and epidemics. The film focuses on a small group of ritual leaders who struggle to hold the celebration in the absence of the Source of the Domain, the ritual leader of the community, who died after initiating the rituals. Evoking the contested nature of ritual, the film demonstrates how ritual performance implicates delicate political relationships based on pragmatic alliances, festering antipathies or developing jealousies.

Conflict is the thread that weaves together the disparate themes of the film. It is a finely crafted, sensually striking film with a compelling story that focuses on one of the central themes in contemporary anthropological debate: the contested nature of social - and ritual - life.

This film complements E. Douglas Lewis' published work on Tana 'Ai, including People of the Source: The Social and Ceremonial Order of Tana Wai Brama on Flores, in addition to the films Timothy and Patsy Asch made in collaboration with anthropologists James J. Fox and Linda Connor on the islands of Roti and Bali.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS
Society For Visual Anthropology commendation 1993
Award for Excellence, Society for Visual Anthropology Film & Video Festival, 1993
34th Festival dei Popoli, Florence, Italy, 1993
1st Prize, Bilan du Film Ethnographique, Paris, 1994
Margaret Mead Film Festival, New York, California 1993, 1994

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Dead Birds

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 07:04:00 GMT

Dead Birds
Buy Now: $34.95

Robert Gardner's seminal 1964 film Dead Birds is a portrait of the lives, beliefs, practices and ritual warfare of the Hubula people of the remote Baliem Valley in western New Guinea, now part of Indonesia. In 1963 Dead Birds won the prestigious Robert Flaherty Award and in 1998 was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. Dead Birds is considered a pivotal work in the history of the discipline of visual anthropology and continues to be used frequently in university lectures and seminars to engage students in wider questions and debates.

Filmmaker Robert Gardner, in describing the experience making the film, comments, “Dead Birds is a film about the Dani*, a people dwelling in the Grand Valley of the Baliem high in the mountains of West Irian. When I shot the film in 1961, the Dani had an almost classic Neolithic culture. They were exceptional in the way they focussed their energies and based their values on an elaborate system of intertribal warfare and revenge. Neighboring groups of Dani clans, separated by uncultivated strips of no man's land, engaged in frequent formal battles.

When a warrior was killed in battle or died from a wound and even when a woman or a child lost their life in an enemy raid, the victors celebrated and the victims mourned. Because each death had to be avenged, the balance was continually being adjusted with the spirits of the aggrieved lifted and the ghosts of slain comrades satisfied as soon as a compensating enemy life was taken. There was no thought in the Dani world of wars ever ending, unless it rained or became dark. Without war there would be no way to satisfy the ghosts. Wars were also the best way they knew to keep a terrible harmony in a life which would be, without the strife they invented, mostly hard and dull.

Dead Birds has a meaning which is both immediate and allegorical. In the Dani language it refers to the weapons and ornaments recovered in battle. Its other more poetic meaning comes from the Dani belief that people, because they are like birds, must die. In making Dead Birds certain kinds of behavior were followed, never directed. It was an attempt to see people from within and to wonder, when the selected fragments of that life were assembled, if they might speak not only of the Dani but also of ourselves.”

Digitally Remastered 2-DVD Set

The special edition 2-disc DVD of Dead Birds includes the remastered film and the following extra features:

6 sequences of edited scenes cut from the first answer print of Dead Birds with original narration and a commentary by Robert Gardner and Lucien Taylor
An audio track of commentary by Robert Gardner and Ross McElwee
A French language track narrated by Jean Rouch
A gallery of photographs shot during the making of Dead Birds and accompanied by excerpts read by Robert Gardner from his field journals
An excerpt from a television interview featuring a conversation about Dead Birds between Octavio Paz, William Alfred and Robert Gardner
2 sequences from a black and white print of Dead Birds made at the timeof the film 's release. These are accompanied by a conversation byRobert Gardner and Lucien Taylor
Previously unreleased outtakes from the archive of footage shot for Dead Birds

“A cinematographic interpretation of the life of a group of Grand Valley Dani, who are mountain Papuans in West New Guinea (Irian Barat, Indonesia), studied by the Harvard-Peabody Expedition (1961-1963). This film was made by Gardner in 1961, before the area was pacified by the Dutch government. The film focuses on Weyak, the farmer and warrior, and on Pua, the young swineherd, following them through the events of Dani life: sweet potato horticulture, pig keeping, salt winning, battles, raids and ceremonies.” —Karl G. Heider

*Note on term “Dani”

The preferred name for the community in this film is Hubula. The name "Dani" as used in this film is an exonym used by Moni, a neighboring group of people living west of the Baliem Valley. The name has been reproduced in many colonial and postcolonial texts, even until today.

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Diary of a Maasai Village, Part 2

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 07:04:00 GMT

Diary of a Maasai Village, Part 2
Buy Now: $320.00

In this episode of Diary of a Maasai Village, the film follows the story of the young men of the village. Young men are ritually prohibited from eating grain. Several of them steal one of the Laibon's goats and then must make reparations.

About the Diary of a Maasai Village series

This series of five films by Melissa Llewelyn-Davies looks at daily life among the Maasai. The films are presented as a diary of a 7-week visit to a single village. The structure is episodic and the content dependent on various events or stories, some of which are developed through more than one film. The tapes can be used independently or together, to give an in-depth sense of Maasai life. The series includes the following five films:

Part 1: The Prophet's Village

Part 2: Two Ways Of Justice

Part 3: Two Mothers

Part 4: Two Journeys

Part 5: Nine Cows And An Ox

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Free-For-All In Sararé

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:53:00 GMT

Free-For-All In Sararé
Buy Now: $295.00

More than six thousand gold and mineral prospectors have invaded the Nambiquara reserve of Sararé, Brazil, while loggers raid the area's mahogany rich forests. Only pressure from the World Bank, with whom the government of Mato Grosso is negotiating a loan, promises to bring an end to the gross environmental degradation. The government gives the prospectors 60 days to leave the area; the situation becomes increasingly tense as the state police are brought in to evacuate. Poor and desperate for a livelihood, the prospectors don't believe in the Indians' right to have a reservation, asking, "What are they going to do with all that land?"

Films in the Conflicts in the Amazon series

Free-For-All In Sararé

It's Now or Never!

Disclaimer on Naming:

Please be aware that this documentary may include outdated or potentially offensive language. Such terms are not endorsed by DER but are presented in their original context to promote awareness, education, and discussion. Learn more about DER’s efforts to use reparative language and honor the preferred names of Indigenous communities by clicking here.

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The Feast

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:53:00 GMT

The Feast
Buy Now: $320.00

Yanomamö feasts are ceremonial, social, economic, and political events. They are occasions for men to adorn their bodies with paint and feathers, to display their strength in dance and ritualized aggression; for trading partnerships to be established or affirmed; and for the creation or testing of alliances.

In this feast, filmed in 1968, the Patanowa-teri had invited the Mahekodo-teri to their village. The two groups had been allies until a few years before this event, when they had fought over the abduction of a woman. They now hoped to renew their broken alliance, which they did successfully. Soon after the filmed feast, the two villages together raided a common enemy.

A detailed discussion of this feast, and of the significance of feasting among the Yanomamö, is found in chapter 4 of Chagnon's Yanomamö: The Fierce People. The film's graphic representation of reciprocity and exchange may enrich (and be enriched by) a reading of Marcel Mauss' The Gift.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

CINE Golden Eagle

Blue Ribbon, American Film Festival

Flaherty Award

Festival dei Popoli, Florence Italy

Grand Prize, Venice International Art Film Festival International Folklore & Tourism Festival

Exceptional Merit, Philadelphia International Festival of Short Films

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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The Feast in Dream Village

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:53:00 GMT

The Feast in Dream Village
Buy Now: $295.00

The eastern Indonesian island of Sumba is the last island in the Malay archipelago where the majority of the people still follow their ancestral religion, called marapu. This film, shot in 1986, focuses on a challenge to the authority of the spirits and ancestors in a village ritual to restore fertility after a fire and famine. Narrated by the priests who communicate with the spirits in prayers and sacrifices, it documents a week of offerings, dancing and oratory in "Dream Village" in the western Kodi district. The name comes from a dream of prosperity the village founder once had, and dreams are also the ways in which priests are called to serve the spirits.

In the film, the head priest - a charismatic but fiery older man - leads the prayers and directs the order of the ceremony, but his authority is challenged when the sponsor and singer agree to delay certain stages to wait for the arrival of guests (some of them part of the Christian minority, who will come to the feast after they have attended church services). The head priest explodes and threatens to leave the ceremony if his authority is not respected, arguing that the invisible audience of spirits is more important than the visible one of human beings. He is finally pacified and paid with his share of meat, but he boycotts the final stages of the ceremony, when the souls of the buffalo sacrificed are guided out of the village and led along a pathway traced by buffalo horns to the "heavenly corral" of the upper world.

The focus on a point of conflict about ritual protocol sheds light in the transformations of Sumbanese society in the 1980s, which would eventually lead to an increased number of conversions to Christianity by the dawn of the 21st century. This small-scale drama shows a pagan community feeling pressure from government efforts to restrict sacrifices (through a slaughter tax) and inter-generational tensions about ritual authority. A younger priest, training to replace his father and assume a leadership role in the traditional religion, offers the most complete explanations and commentaries.

A more complete analysis of the feast depicted in this film can be found in Chapter 8 of The Play of Time: Kodi Perspectives on Calendars, History and Exchange (University of California Press 1994), and in the 1993 American Ethnologist article "Violence, Sacrifice and Divination: Giving and Taking Life in Eastern Indonesia" 20 (1): 159-178.

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The First Contacts

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:53:00 GMT

The First Contacts
Buy Now: $295.00

With the colonization of Brazil's mid-West in the 1950s and the construction of the Transamazônica and other highways in the 1970s, whites began to make large-scale contact with Indians, with disastrous results. Epidemics decimated populations of groups such as the Cinta-Larga, with the deaths amounting in some cases to veritable genocide. Groups of Indians were separated from relatives, their land parceled out to settlers under the auspices a colonial mythology that advocated "progress" over the rights of indigenous people. Archive footage shows the "pacification" of the Xavantes People, the Cinta Larga People in Rondônia, and the Parakanas in the south of Pará, and how this catastrophic contact decimated these populations. Even into the year 2000, a FUNAI crew works to find small, still-isolated groups that might be under threat from farmers and prospectors. In this video, the last survivor of an annihilated people refuses to make contact.

Disclaimer on Naming:
Please be aware that this documentary may include outdated or potentially offensive language. Such terms are not endorsed by DER but are presented in their original context to promote awareness, education, and discussion. Learn more about DER’s efforts to use reparative language and honor the preferred names of Indigenous communities by clicking here.

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It's Now or Never!

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 12:45:00 GMT

It's Now or Never!
Buy Now: $295.00

In April 1997, the Makuxi Indians of North Roraima commemorate their struggle to have their land holdings recognized by the Brazilian government. Through testimonials, skits and animation, they re-create a history of forced labor and exploitation at the hands of whites.

Miners brought alcohol and disease to the indigenous community, but the Makuxi fought back. Through brave demonstrations and other tactics, they eventually regained their rights and land. Visitors and journalists witness this history lesson, and so do a new generation of Makuxi children, who are learning how vital it is to protect their cultural heritage.

Films in the Conflicts in the Amazon series

Free-For-All In Sararé

It's Now or Never!

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In God's Places

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 12:44:00 GMT

In God's Places
Buy Now: $320.00

Iindawo Zikathixo – In God's Places traces the cultural legacy of the indigenous San (Bushmen) people in south-eastern Africa as it was shaped by the migration and interaction with Bantu and European peoples. Filmed in the Drakensburg Mountains in the Transkei, as well as in Lesotho and the northeastern Cape, the film features the indigenous rock art as a background against which the story of the Bushmen unfolds.

Bushmen hunter-gatherers were the first people to inhabit the southern African landscape. For thousands of years, they migrated over the Drakensberg foothills, following the wild animals they hunted and painted. Iindawo Zikathixo explores the cultural interaction that developed between the Bushmen, Xhosa and Sotho-speaking peoples, and exposes the merciless force with which European settlers dispossessed the Bushmen of their hunting and gathering grounds. Some aspects of Bushmen culture survived the genocide, and Iindawo Zikathixo investigates these through music, dance, oral history and traditional rituals in remote communities and those that intermarried with San and absorbed their cultural practices.

A central location of the film is the Inxu River Valley in the former Transkei, where the last known Bushman rock artist, Lindiso, lived, painted and made rain for the Xhosa-speaking Mpondomise until about 1930. The filmmakers visit Lindiso's painted shelter with his grandson, Maqulana and with Sipani Togu, an Mpondomise diviner of Bushman descent. Mr. Togu conducts rainmaking and other rituals he associates with the Bushmen in the painted rockshelters of the Inxu Valley.

Iindawo Zikathixo offers a snapshot of the persistence of Bushmen expressive forms and practices and will be of interest to all those concerned with southern African cultural heritage.

[Note: although some people featured in this film are shown touching rock art, this occurs in the traditional or ritual contexts and is not usually acceptable because touching damages the paintings. In the interests of conserving rock art, visitors to painted shelters are advised not to touch the rock art under any circumstances.]

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