Documentary Educational Resources - Indigenous Studies / Rituals & Ceremony / All Films

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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Waaki (Sanctuary)

Wed, 14 Dec 2022 16:38:58 GMT

Waaki (Sanctuary)
Buy Now: $320.00

Renowned Hopi filmmaker Victor Masayesva, Jr. explores the centrality of corn for the Hopi, Nahua, and Maya, tracing the role of corn from creation stories to today's struggles against climate change. The film presents complex interrelationships between humans, plants, food systems, animals, birds, ceremonies and the cycles of the earth, sun and moon within the universe from a Hopi, Maya, and Nahua perspective. By tracing the lineage and mysterious origins of corn, we gain a deeper understanding of the ancestry of communities that transcend borders.

Masayesva writes, "The idea of sanctuary in our time is colored by the politics of human immigration. As contemporary media consumers, we are saturated with threats and security measures originating from alerts about immigration into our neighborhood. Today state borders have restricted and closed the numerous routes blazed by migrants and only wild birds and animals move freely without visas but nonetheless restricted to wildlife refuges.

Humankind has been in constant movement since the emergence, intent on leaving an oppressive order, seeking a better life, seeking sanctuary. For our age, sanctuary cannot be only within familiar beliefs and borders but beyond in the hope we carry in our soul. Sanctuary is the best we can be at the moment, and in the future."

"Waaki presents Hopi knowledge with a self-assured visual sovereignty."
– Dorothy Christian, Simon Fraser University

"The film is a fascinating blend of genres - part ethnographic, part documentary and part animation."
– Vicky Westover, Hanson FilmTV Institute Director, U of Arizona

Selected Screenings

Native Crossroads Film Festival, 2020

ImagiNative, 2019

Cornell University

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Death of the One who Knows

Mon, 9 May 2022 15:10:55 GMT

Death of the One who Knows
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In the Toraja highlands of Sulawesi (Indonesia), Lumbaa is one of the last masters of ritual speech. After his forced conversion to Pentecostalism, he is compelled to stop all his ritual activity and oratory. Concerned by the disappearance of “those who know”, a young Catholic priest named Yans Sulo sets out in search of the society’s ancient oral genres, seeking to invent new forms that would keep them alive. The two men meet. But it is too late. By recounting the life and death of Lumbaa, the film shows how the intrusion of world religion disrupts a Southeast Asian society.

"This documentary concerns the struggle to keep Aluk Todolo and its rituals alive in the face of government efforts at erasure. There is a beauty, order and moral sophistication to Lumbaa. He gently draws our attention to painful tensions between morality, tradition, religion and daily village life. Rappoport locates his story within a narrative concerning Christianity, colonialism, globalisation and disruption... Rappoport's film documents important and threatened customary knowledge in her focus on this ritual leader and his prowess. Ethnomusicology and documentary cinema are powerful tools in understanding the complex way in which ritual change is a corollary to socio-political contestation. Its brilliance is haunting." – Tanisha Jowsey, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology

Selected Screenings & Awards

Honorable Mention, Best Documentary, International Council for Traditional Music, 2022

Honourable Mention, Werbner Award for Visual Anthropology, RAI Film Festival, 2021

AAS 2022 Film Expo, USA, 2022

Riga Pasaules Film Festival, 2021

Bayonne Film Festival Haizebegi, 2021

Maison de l'Asie (EFEO), 2021

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Children's Magical Death

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 08:16:00 GMT

Children's Magical Death
Buy Now: $545.00

A group of Yanomami boys, ages four to ten, pretend to be shamen and imitate the drug-taking and hekura-spirit-calling ceremonies of their fathers. The children, using ashes as their "drug," blow it up each others nostrils and chant and dance as if under the influence of ebene. Near the end they attempt to draw out the evil spirits in a "sick" boy and effect a shamanistic cure.

This short film of children's "play" explores how children imitate their parents and prepare for adult life. Young boys can become real shaman at the age of 16 or 17. The film, Magical Death, also part of the Yanomamö series portrays a shamanistic event in the same community.

Children's Magical Death was restored by DER with funding from the National Film Preservation Foundation.

This film is included on the Yanomamö Shorts compilation DVD. This two-disc set includes the following remastered titles on Disc One: Arrow Game, Children's Magical Death, Climbing the Peach Palm, A Father Washes His Children, A Man and His Wife Make a Hammock and Weeding the Garden. Also included on Disc One: Firewood, Tapir Distribution and Tug-of-War. Disc Two includes: Dedeheiwä Rests in His Garden, Children Roasting Meat, A Woman Spins, Children Make a Toy Hammock, Sand Play, Playing in the Rain, Mouth Wrestling, and Young Shaman.

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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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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Daritidzé, Trainee Healer

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 07:04:00 GMT

Daritidzé, Trainee Healer
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The Xavante people of Aldeia Nova ask Xavante videomaker Divino Tserewahú to film their Wai'á ceremony, after watching his film Wai'á rini, the Power of the Dream. Elders in Aldeia Nova want to preserve this tough but rewarding ritual.

Out in the hot sun all day, for three weeks the young men of the community undergo strengthening physical suffering in order to develop their curative powers. The trial culminates with the men's fainting and being revived by their families; after their initiation the trainees replace their elders as spiritual guardians. "To be a Wa'ia, you have to suffer like this," explains one man. Everyone in the village watches and takes part in the men's ceremony, proud of their sons and brothers.

Films in the Video in the Villages series

Daritidzé, Trainee Healer
The Girl's Celebration
Jungle Secrets
Pemp
The Spirit of TV
Video Cannibalism
Video in the Villages Presents Itself
Video in the Villages

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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From the Other Side of the Sky

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:53:00 GMT

From the Other Side of the Sky
Buy Now: $295.00

From the Other Side of the Sky explains the importance of religious ritual for Brazilian Indians and shows the diversity of religious practices among various groups. The Yanomami Indians, as one of their shamans explains, believe that Omami, the creator, holds up the sky. If no one practices religious rituals the sky will fall down.

Guardian of humans and nature, Omami takes care of everyone, including whites, because as the shaman says, "do you think the government will?" Pankaruru people reach their creator via "the enchanted," spirits summoned by a ritual called "the toré" that involves dancing and elaborate costumes. Maxacali society practices "hawk religion," in which animals play a symbolic role.

The video shows Maxicali people playing the Otter game, in which a man disguised as an otter spirit playfully snatches a child as the whole community watches and jokes. The creator "gave each tribe a religion. We have ours, and they have theirs," a Maxacali leader explains.

Films in the Indians in Brazil series:
A Different Story
The First Contacts
From the Other Side of the Sky
Our Languages
Our Rights
Our Territory
Who Are They?

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In Search of the Hamat'sa

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 12:45:00 GMT

In Search of the Hamat'sa
Buy Now: $295.00

The Hamat'sa (or "Cannibal Dance") is the most important-and highly represented-ceremony of the Kwakwaka'wakw (Kwakiutl) people of British Columbia. This film traces the history of anthropological depictions of the dance and, through the return of archival materials to a First Nations community, presents some of the ways in which diverse attitudes toward this history inform current performances of the Hamat'sa. With a secondary focus on the filmmaker's fieldwork experience, the film also attends specifically to the ethics of ethnographic representation and to the renegotiation of relationships between anthropologists and their research partners.

The material for this film was gathered and shot over the year between 2002 and 2003 during the course of research for Glass's dissertation in Socio-Cultural Anthropology. The research process consisted of extensive archival work - in which he traced the history of ethnographic representation of the Hamat'sa (in texts, film and photography, art gallery and museum display, and intercultural performance) - followed by an eight month period of residence in the Kwakwaka'wakw community of Alert Bay, BC. The film was edited in a documentary filmmaking course in the Program for Culture and Media at New York University. It is intended to communicate some of the complex issues involved in representing indigenous peoples and their expressive practices, especially as anthropological materials increasingly end up back in Native communities where they are used and debated as one kind of historical resource among many.

"...Glass is to be commended in his filming, as well as his writing and editing. It is provocative without being pompous, sympathetic but not romantic, and reflexive without being overly self-obsessed."
— Alexander D. King, Museum Anthropology Review

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Australian Anthropological Society Film Festival, Sydney, 2009

Taiwan International Ethnographic Film Festival, Taiwan, 2009

Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival, New York, 2008

Society for Cultural Anthropology Meeting, Long Beach, CA, 2008

8th Astra Ethnographic Film Festival, Sibiu, Romania, 2006

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In the Footsteps of Taytacha

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 12:45:00 GMT

In the Footsteps of Taytacha
Buy Now: $295.00

In the Footsteps of Taytacha follows a group of Quechua-speaking musicians and dancers as they leave their remote villages high in the Andes Mountains of Peru and join thousands of other highlanders on the annual religious pilgrimage to the sacred peaks of Qoyllur-Rití. Quollur-Rití, the largest and most important religious ritual in the southern Andes, occurs only five days out of the year and involves walking both day and night in terrain over 4400 meters in altitude.

From the point-of-view of the villagers, the festival is an elaborate ritual that retraces the escape-route of an Andean god who fled from the Catholic priests during the conquest and now lives up in the snowpeaks. For the church, however, the site of Qoyllur-Rití is important because a Christ-child appeared there in 1780. Throughout the festival, the villagers explain what the ritual means to them, both personally and collectively. By combining interviews with myths and narration, the film introduces a general audience to an image of Andean highlanders and how they position themselves in a predominantly Catholic world.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

31st Annual Robert Flaherty Film Seminar

Chicago International Film Festival, Silver Plaque, Documentaries

Festival dei Popoli, Florence, Italy

Banff Festival of Mountain Films, Alberta, Canada

American Film Festival Finalist

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In the Shadow of the Sun

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 12:45:00 GMT

In the Shadow of the Sun
Buy Now: $320.00

A film about a Dogon funeral and enthronement ritual.

In Mali, 800 kilometers northeast of the capital of Bamako, the cliffs of Bandiagara stretch about 300 kilometers and reach a height of 300 meters. It is here among the Arou, one of the four tribes of the Dogon population, that Amma, Lord and creator of the world, chose the supreme religious chief who was responsible for fertility, rain and order on earth.

The chief priest, called a hogon, resides with a few members of his family in an isolated sanctuary given the name of his cast, "Arou", a sanctuary embedded in the cliffs, sheltered from the eyes of men. In 1984, the last of the Arou hogons died. At the bequest of the elders, his son, Ogomale, accepted the offer to replace his father temporarily to avoid leaving the position vacant. Due to economic troubles and religious discord, the funeral was not set until June 7th, 1992. For three days and two nights, the men of the Arou clan and neighboring families came to pay homage to the priest. Six weeks later, the nomination and the enthronement of the successor are organized. After his enthronement the hogon will spend the rest of his life in the sanctuary of Arou, and he will not be allowed to leave under any circumstances.

The film is beautifully shot, with the intense colors of the region coming into play, adding to our aesthetic enjoyment of this film. The filmmakers have worked closely together, and with, the famous French filmmaker, Jean Rouch, since the 1970's. This film reflects their intense engagement and in-depth knowledge of the people and events they have chosen to film.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

ARTE TV Broadcast, Europe, February 1998

Cinema' du Reel, March 1998

Gottingen Ethnographic Film Festival, May 1998

ICAES Conference screening

RAI Ethnographic Film Festival, England, September 1998

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