Pots of Millet, Faces of Gold: Transformation is the first in a series of experimental ethnographic films that draw from Richard K. Wolf’s research with the Kota people of South India over the past 35 years. The series title alludes to the dual orientation in Kota ritual and everyday life toward death and divinity: dried millet plays a central role in multi-day secondary mortuary ceremonies, while gold offerings are pasted in the shape of a face on the ancient pillars of Kota temples. As an indigenous community with a population of fewer than 2,500, the Kotas have, in their own telling, weathered periods of enormous loss—death through disease, the trauma of forced migration, and disruptions in transmission of traditional knowledge. The Kotas recognize their own long, fragile history. Indeed, the roots of the Kota language predate the separation of the Tamil and Malayalam languages more than 2,000 years ago. Today, as modern Indians, the Kotas are largely a village-based, peasant society, though their members also include professionals and workers in major Indian cities.