Documentary Educational Resources - Filmmaker / Sherman, Rina / All Films

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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Keep the Dance Alive

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 11:13:00 GMT

Keep the Dance Alive
Buy Now: $320.00

A unique voyage through the music, dance and spirit possession practices of the Ovahimba people of north-western Namibia and south-western Angola, Keep the Dance Alive features remarkable footage of how dance and spirit possession is integrated into everyday life from infancy to death.

The documentary presents a singular vision of the Ovahimba people, that of director Rina Sherman who filmed the lives of an Omuhimba family for seven years. She focuses on how singing, rhythm and voice work together with dance and spirit possession to compose a complete imaginary universe and a dense and complex social structure.

Keep the Dance Alive is part of The Ovahimba Years Project, a long-term multi-disciplinary ethnographic study of the Ovahimba and other Otjiherero-language-speaking peoples of northwestern Namibia and southwestern Angola.

Films in the Ovahimba Years series

Keep The Dance Alive

Shake Your Brains

When Visitors Come

Visit Sherman, Rina to see additional products in this category.

Shake Your Brains

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 07:46:00 GMT

Shake Your Brains
Buy Now: $320.00

Shake Your Brains is a film about alcohol abuse in the Kunene North Region of Namibia. It was made to alert the youth of the detrimental effects of alcohol abuse.

The film provides an overview of alcohol abuse amongst the Ovahimba and Ovadhimba communities of Kaokoland. A number of members of these communities provide moving and sometimes amusing witnesses of the devastating and often tragic effects of alcohol abuse. Whilst alcohol abuse is a problem in the Kunene Region of Namibia, with not only permanent commercial and traditional selling points in the larger and smaller urban areas but also itinerant traders selling or exchanging alcohol throughout the region, it is still limited for the most part to only a part of the population and takes place as an occasional rather than an ongoing occurrence.

The film served as an educational tool in a variety of educational and guidance applications and as such was targeted at the youth both on a regional and national level. The making of this film was an opportunity for The Ovahimba Years Project to share its resources, equipment and expertise with members of the community and other partners working in the Region.

Films in the Ovahimba Years series

Keep The Dance Alive

Shake Your Brains

When Visitors Come

Visit Sherman, Rina 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 Sherman, Rina to see additional products in this category.

Art Films by Rina Sherman

Wed, 18 Jul 2018 13:31:00 GMT

Art Films by Rina Sherman
Buy Now: $295.00

Rina Sherman, a classical musician by training, turned to performance art and filmmaking in 1983, a year before she was exiled from South Africa and settled in France. She was a founding member of the performance art group, Possession Arts, in Johannesburg in 1983. Her early films show a strong performance art influence and her musical background has continued to be present in her work.

In Chicken Movie. Cluck! she included reality and elements of everyday life in her work for the first time. In a way, the film pre-empts her meeting with Jean Rouch upon her arrival in France; she made the film after happening on the following idea by Rouch: "It is more interesting to film reality as evoked by my presence (and the camera) than to pretend to be able to film it as is." The idea that there is no objective reality but only POV, motivated Rina to meet Jean Rouch, and some months later, he showed the film at the Cinémathèque saying: "This is a fresh voice; this is the kind of film we should be making today." Rina took his comment as carte blanche and subsequently invited Jean Rouch to act in two of her films, An Egg With No Shell and M. M. les locataires (Ladies and Gentlemen, the Boarders), a film about life in the Paris suburb of Noisy-le-Sec.

This DVD includes three short films:

Antics of the Artists (1983)

In and around the pool, an array of creatures move about. A scene of the famous novel "Seven Days at the Silbersteins" by Etienne Leroux to the music of Peter Klatzow, "Still-life with Moonbeams".

Chicken Movie. Cluck! (1984)An urban poem, in which a chauffeur drives his Madam about in downtown Johannesburg; visits to friends, townships, wastelands. The trip ends with a nuptial-funeral ball where the men dance to the cock's crow and the rhythm of Zulu music. The film captures a certain Zeitgeist of the city of Johannesburg during the period of state of emergency in South Africa.

An Egg With No Shell (1992)A male diva sings in a countertenor voice while massacring chickens brought to him by his butler, Jean Rouch, until a slave provides proof of his love for the chicken, which he has tucked under his arm. A film-opera based on a poem and musical theme by Rina Sherman.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Rina Sherman Retrospective, Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, 2011

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