Documentary Educational Resources - Indigenous Studies / Storytelling, Performance, & Music / All Films

Sama in the Forest

Wed, 21 Feb 2024 16:42:00 GMT

In a creative collaboration with local community members in Madhubani, India, this hybrid documentary highlights the tale of Sama, a young princess who wanders into the forest and befriends a young man, only to be slandered by a muckraking confidante of the king, and subsequently cursed and banished by her father, Lord Krisna.

The film combines footage of women telling different versions of the tale, the making of elaborate narrative paintings, a dramatization of the story, a yearly festival that celebrates Sama, and in-depth conversations about the morals and meanings of this and other traditional tales. The girls and women at the heart of the film are students and teachers at the Mithila Art Institute, a small school for young aspiring artists. Additional participants — community members of different genders, castes, and generations — help paint a complex picture of the social tensions evident in Mithila today.

The festival of Sama Chakeva is both unique to the Mithila region, and special in several of its qualities – notably, in its multi-caste, non-priestly, female-centric, playful and even bawdy nature. This festival is celebrated by groups of women and girls, who join together to enter the mythical world of Sama in song and ritual. They bond in teasing and torturing the muckraking character, to ensure the devotion of their brothers for years to come, and arguably to shine a critical light on some of the patriarchal aspects of their own culture.

The painters of the three paintings included in the film are all trained in the Mithila Art tradition that derives originally from a domestic, ceremonial form of expression and for which the region is renowned. Finally, another key element of the film, intricately interwoven with the others, is an enactment of the Sama story by the very same people who are also interviewed in the film. The workshopping in preparation for the enactment provided an opportunity for collaborative meaning making and personal reflection on the significance of the story in their lives today. And the filmed enactment itself enables the filmmakers to deliver these meanings to a wider audience.

Selected Screenings & Awards

Best Feature, Society for Visual Anthropology Film and Media Festival, Canada, 2023

51st Annual Conference on South Asia, Ethnographic and Documentary Film Screenings, USA, 2023

South Asian Studies Speakers Series, Pennsylvania State University, USA, 2023

Contemporary Arts of Mithila Radford University Int'l Symposium, USA 2023

Signs Film and Video Festival, India, 2023

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Sweetheart Dancers

Fri, 15 Nov 2019 07:39:28 GMT

Sweetheart Dancers
Buy Now: $275.00

Indigenous dancers Sean and Adrian challenge the rulebook of San Manuel's Native American Sweetheart Special as they attempt to compete in the annual couple's competition. Dancing not only against the other dancers, but against the drums of oppression and closed-mindedness, this two-spirit couple is determined to rewrite the rules of "one man, one woman" with their resplendent charisma, character and resilience.

Director, Ben-Alex Dupris explains the origin of the film. "This story is rooted in an incident wherethe first Two Spirit couple, Sean Snyder and Adrian Stevens, decided to enter a Sweetheart specialcompetition at one big influential powwow. This had never been attempted beforein modern tribal dance circles and they were disqualified for not adhering to therule of the "one man, one woman" competition. This led to a year of reflection, and thoughtful preparationfor the next year where they courageously returned to the same powwow and were allowedto compete. This success story of resilience, and the action of love provided atalking point that spans decades of colonization with Indigenous communities. Prior to the Catholic boarding school era, LGBTQIA were accepted and respected by Native people. This story, and the spiritual renewal of our sacred Identitiesis one that leaves the audience with a greater understanding of our triballifeways. Within our hearts we are all one."

Sweetheart Dancers was directed by Ben-Alex Dupris, an enrolled member of the Colville Confederated Tribes in Washington State, where he grew up.

"[T]he expert cinematography and editing make Adrian and Sean’s relationship and emotion immediately legible. When they’re first turned away from competition by organizers who insist that “a couple must consist of two people. One man. One woman,” you feel their devastation intimately. A year later, when they win third place at a sweetheart dance open to all partners, you feel their elation and their love just as keenly." – Washington City Paper

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Grand Jury Award, Best Short Documentary, OUT Fest, US, 2019

Grand Jury Award, Best Short Documentary, Audience Award, "Out On Film" Atlanta LQTBQ Film Fest, US, 2019

Best Short Film, Lumbee Native Film Festival, US, 2019

Competition, Best Short Film, New Orleans Film Festival, US, 2019

Competition, Best Short Film, Palm Springs International Film Festival, US, 2019

Competition, Best Short Film, American Indian Film Festival, US, 2019

Competition, Best Short Film, Mountain Film, US, 2019

Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, US, 2019

Seattle International Film Festival, US 2019

Cine Las Americas, US, 2019

Cucalorus Film Festival, US, 2019

Frameline, San Francisco International LGBTQ Film Festival, US, 2019

Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, US, 2019

AFI Docs Film Festival, US, 2019
Film Independent’s “The New Wave”, US, 2019

Hot Springs Film Festival, US, 2019
People of the Plains Visionmaker Film Festival, US, 2019
Way OUT West Film Fest, US, 2019

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Voices of the Rainforest

Wed, 29 May 2019 10:52:27 GMT

Voices of the Rainforest
Buy Now: $340.00

Voices of the Rainforest: A Day in the Life of Bosavi is a 70-minute cinema concert–an experiential documentary about the ecological and aesthetic coevolution of Papua New Guinea's Bosavi rainforest region and its inhabitants. Through sound and image, the film immerses viewers in the rainforest, and makes audible myriad connections between the everyday sounds of the rainforest biosphere and the creative practices of singing to, with, and about it by the Bosavi people. Structured around a day in the life of the rainforest and the music it inspires for the Bosavi people, the film brings to life the everyday activities of work, leisure, and ritual–heard in the full ambient setting of the rainforest–throughout the day and night.

Voices of the Rainforest was produced by Steven Feld and Dennis Leonard and Directed by Steven Feld and Jeremiah Ra Richards in collaboration with the Bona community of Bosavi, Papua New Guinea. Feld conducted anthropological and ethnomusicological fieldwork in Bosavi from 1975 to 2000. The original Voices of the Rainforest CD was produced during this time (1991) with production support from Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart. Working with acclaimed sound editor Dennis Leonard at Skywalker Sound in 2016-2017, Feld recomposed a 25th anniversary 7.1 Voices soundtrack. A 2018 return to Bosavi with filmmaker Jeremiah Ra Richards and digitization of Feld's extensive archival photographs led to the creation of the immersive film joined to the 7.1 soundtrack.

Voices of the Rainforest is the first in a series of films based on Feld's work. While Voices offers a visualization of the original audio experience, New Voices of the Rainforest, the companion film, will provide an update on the state of the forest and the problems of development in what remains a remote and underserved region of Papua New Guinea.

This Deluxe Edition includes a 150-page color photobook, 7.1 Blu-ray (with a 2.0 stereo track) and the 25th Anniversary edition audio CD.

All sales benefit the Bosavi Peoples Fund, advocating for environmental and cultural justice in a remote part of Papua New Guinea.

Selected Screenings & Awards

Honourable Mention, Documentary Film Prize, International Council for Traditional Music, 2020

Competition Category "Community and Equality," Vizantrop Film Festival, 2020

Academic Screenings

Scholarship Film Festival, U Pennsylvania, 2019

NYU Depts of Anthropology & Music, 2019

Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology UK, 2019

University of Eastern Finland, 2019

Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, 2019

Harvard University, 2019

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'Are'are Music and Shaping Bamboo

Wed, 10 Oct 2018 09:18:00 GMT

'Are'are Music and Shaping Bamboo
Buy Now: $340.00

'Are'are Music (color, 141 min, 1979)

A fascinating documentation of the traditional musical culture of the 'Are'are people of the Solomon Islands, in the South-Western Pacific. The three LP records published after a first one-year field-research in 1969-70 were a "phenomenal surprise" (Garfias) as they revealed a completely unknown music (outside of the Solomon Islands) of an exceptional beauty and complexity in its instrumental and vocal polyphonies. It seemed to the researcher an absolute necessity to document visually what had been published on sound recordings, showing in detail all the playing techniques, body movements of performers, and spatial coordination of music ensembles and dancers. The documentary consists of a comprehensive inventory of all the twenty musical genres of the 'Are'are people and is structured according to native classification, along with explanations by master musician 'Irisipau.

Shaping Bamboo (color, 33 min, 1979)

For the 'Are'are people of the Solomon Islands, the most valued music is that of the four types of panpipe ensembles. With the exception of slit drums, all musical instruments are made of bamboo; therefore the general word for instruments and the music performed with them is "bamboo" ('au). This film shows the making of panpipes, from the cutting the bamboo in the forest to the making of the final bindings. The most important part of the work consists in shaping each tube to its necessary length. Most 'Are'are panpipe makers measure the length of old instruments before they shape new tubes. Master musician 'Irisipau, surprisingly, takes the measure using his body, and adjusts the final tuning by ear. For the first time we can see here how the instruments and their artificial equiheptatonic scale—seven equidistant degrees in an octave—are practically tuned.

Both films have been previously issued as the Society for Ethnomusicology Audiovisual Series no. 1.

“The film is a splendid introduction when seen once through, but it is far more profitable to see it again and again with the aid of the printed analytic materials, of course... In sum, Musique 'Are'are is both a tour de force and a marathon.”
— Peter Crowe, Ethnomusicology, 31(2), 1987

“It is difficult to resist superlatives when considering the entire volume of Hugo Zemp's 'Are'are work over the years....('Are'are Music and Shaping Bamboo) are a model of thoroughness, imagination, and cohesiveness, and will remain valuable even beyond their considerable eminence as ethnographic documentation of this particular culture.”
— Robert Garfias, Ethnomusicology, 40(1), 1996

“[Zemp's work on the 'Are'are, including the films] is the single most detailed documentation to date of any Melanesian music world... I can think of very few projects that deserve such praise.”
— Steven Feld, Oceania, June 1997

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Klaus Wachsman Prize, Society for Ethnomusicology, 1985 for Shaping Bamboo

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6 Generations

Tue, 9 Oct 2018 15:11:00 GMT

6 Generations
Buy Now: $320.00

Ernestine De Soto is a Chumash Native American whose mother Mary Yee was the last speaker of her native Barbareño language. In 6 Generations, her family reaches back to the days the Spanish arrived in Santa Barbara and made first contact. Ernestine tells this history from the perspective of her female ancestors, making her a unique link with the past.

Famous anthropologist John Peabody Harrington, whose work focused on native peoples of California, started research with her family in 1913 and continued with three generations for nearly 50 years. This inspired Ernestine's mother to begin taking notes and, combined with mission records (which survived intact from the late 1700s), they form the heart of this story.

Because of these circumstances, her story, possible only in California, is unique in America.The impact of loss of land, language, culture and life itself is made all the more clear as this story is told in Native American voices, who describe the events as they experienced them. Ultimately, it is a story of survival and the fierce endurance of Ernestine's ancestors, particularly the women.

“This is history as autobiography, foregrounding the power of language and telling a checkered tale of cultural survival in the extreme. The time depth is simply astonishing, and the narrative is frank and true and sometimes stark. 6 Generations is a home run. I cannot recommend it highly enough.”
— David Hurst Thomas, Current Anthropology

"Using old drawings, photos, old film footage, live interviews, and dramatic readings by Ernestine of her family's story, filmmaker Paul Goldsmith has woven together an important testimony to the vibrancy of a people brought into the California missions around Santa Barbara."
— Glen Farris, Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology

“Some films do not deserve a review so much as a rhapsody, and 6 Generations is one of these special films. There are some productions that go beyond ethnography to find the heart of a people — and show how individual anthropologists can transcend the professional limitations of their discipline and really engage fellow human beings — and 6 Generations is just such an achievement… This would be a particularly effective film to use in the classroom… Suitable for college courses in cultural anthropology, anthropology of gender, anthropology of colonialism/globalization, and Native American studies, as well as general audiences.”
— Jack David Eller, Anthropology Review Database

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House in the Fields

Tue, 9 Oct 2018 15:11:00 GMT

House in the Fields
Buy Now: $320.00

House in the Fields examines the life of an isolated rural Amazigh community in the south-west region of the High Atlas Mountains. The thousand-year history of the Amazigh in Morocco has been, for the most part, recounted, preserved and transmitted by bards and storytellers in oral form among Tamazight speaking pastoral communities.

Continuing this tradition of transmission in an audiovisual form, House in the Fields attempts to faithfully document and present a portrait of a village and community that has remained unchanged for hundreds of years despite being confronted with the rapidly changing sociopolitical realities of the country at large. The film follows the lives of certain villagers, most specifically two teenage sisters, one who must give up school to prepare for her wedding, and the other who dreams of being a judge.

“Beautifully intimate and charged with the sense of inevitable change to come, this prescient production, embellished with minimal sound and a fantastic spectacle of celebration for an ending, makes House in the Fields well worth the journey.”
— Rene J. Meyer-Grimberg, Berlin Film Journal

"Hadid's film beautifully frames thesisters within their domestic setting and the wider Moroccan society, andhandles the balance between daily chores and personal dreams with grace andsincerity. A powerful documentary filmed in a section of North Africa rarelyseen in the media, this is highly recommended."
— P. Hall, Video Librarian

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

World Premiere, Berlin International Film Festival, 2017

Best Documentary, Hong Kong International Film Festival, 2017

John Marshall Award, Camden International Film Festival, USA 2017

Fiction/Non-Fiction Award for Best Film, Millennium Docs Against Gravity Film Festival, Poland, 2017

City of Milan Prize, Festival Cinema Asia Africa America Latina, Italy, 2017

Prix TV 2M, Fidadoc, Morocco, 2017

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The Drums of Winter

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 07:05:00 GMT

The Drums of Winter
Buy Now: $340.00

Digitally Remastered DVD Edition

This feature-length documentary explores the traditional dance, music and spiritual world of the Yup'ik people of Emmonak, a remote village at the mouth of the Yukon River on the Bering Sea coast. The Drums of Winter (Uksuum Cauyai) gives an intimate look at a way of life of which most of us have seen only glimpses. Dance was once at the heart of the community's spiritual and social life. It was the bridge between the ancient and the new, the living and the dead and a person's own power and the greater powers of the unseen world.

In The Drums of Winter, the people of Emmonak tell us through actualities and interviews how their history, social values and spiritual beliefs are woven around the songs and dances that have been handed down to them through the generations. We also learn that it is not just old songs that are important; new songs and dance movements are created to reflect modern life with all its complexities. Each time a person gets up to dance, he is strengthening the continuity of the ages, and insuring the survival of his culture.

The film follows the elders of Emmonak as they prepare for the coming ceremonial gathering (potlatch) with a neighboring village. In the Kashim (qasgiq or men's house), they practice their songs and painstakingly work out the motions of the dances. Each movement has meaning and plays a part in telling a story. In the days before television, radio, bingo and weekly basketball games, dance was the sole means of entertainment. Throughout the film, archival photographs and film footage accompany the words of early missionaries who brought Christianity to the area. These sequences provide a historical context for the film and give us a strong sense of the resilience of Yup'ik culture, having survived despite a century of missionary suppression.

Films in the Alaska Native Heritage Film series:

At the Time of Whaling

The Drums of Winter (Uksuum Cauyai)

From the First People

Note on Term "Eskimo":

The films in this series make use of the name "Eskimo." While once broadly applied, it is a perjorative term and considered offensive. While the inception of the word is a matter of debate, it is no longer used or applied in our film catalog. The context in which the term appears in this series is an acknowledged relic of a colonial past, presented in its original version. DER apologizes for any offense caused.

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Dances of the Kwakiutl

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 07:04:00 GMT

Dances of the Kwakiutl
Buy Now: $295.00

Dances of the Kwakiutl is composed of fragments filmed in 1950 in Fort Rupert, British Columbia. They were made during a performance by those still familiar with the tradition of 'Hamatsa' or cannibal dancing. This type of dance was brought to impressive artistic heights by the Kwakiutl people of the Northwest coast.

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Four Films by Robert Ascher

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:53:00 GMT

Four Films by Robert Ascher
Buy Now: $295.00

This collection contains four animated films by writer, educator and anthropologist, Robert Ascher. These films were created using a technique called "direct animation" — drawing with pen and ink directly on 35mm film. Films in this compilation have been included in the permanent collection of Museum of Modern Art, the New Zealand National Art Gallery, the Jewish Museum, NYC, and the Israel Film Archive.

Cycle (5 min, 1986)

Cycle is an animated film based on a non-sacred myth of the Wulamba, a native people of northeastern Australia. The sound track of Cycle is in Wulamba. The narrator assumes familiarity with the myths of his people. He does not tell a myth; rather he indirectly recalls central figures in Wulamba mythology by utilizing poetic devices, particularly the repetition of key words: lotus, evening star, moon, and the name of a clay-pan where past and future events are played out in the present. The images complement but do not illustrate the narration. On the clay-pan, people collect lotus, the roots of which become an evening star. It is here, too, on the pan, that a being, rejecting mortality, changes himself to moon. The horn of light visible at the close of moon's period drops into the sea where it becomes a nautilus shell. The process is a never ending cycle relating people, the spiritual world, and the natural environment.

Bar Yohai (6 min, 1987)

Shimon Bar Yohai was a second century visionary who, according to popular belief, wrote the Zohar, the main Kabbalah text of the Jewish mystical tradition. The film's images — tree, mirror, candelabra and the ten dots with which each is constructed — are Kaballah figures for how the world got started and keeps going. Once every year there is a celebration honoring Bar Yohai at his tomb in Meron, Israel. The last scene is composed from photographs taken on the roof of the tomb during the celebration. The soundtrack, a song praising Bar Yohai, was also recorded during the celebration in a town (Safed) a few miles from the tomb. Support for the film's production came from a fellowship Award in Film, New York Foundation for the Arts; funds for participation in the celebration were from a Humanities Faculty Grant, Cornell University.

Blue, A Tlingit Odyssey (6 min, 1991)

In just about every known culture, there is a myth in which a hero ventures forth, discovers something of great value, and then returns home with his gift. The details may vary from culture to culture, but everywhere the broad outline is maintained. Blue is a visual rendering of the Tlingit hero myth. The Tlingit are Native Americans who live in southeast Alaska. In their version of the myth, the heroes are four brothers who go in search of blue. The film starts with a necessary preface. The world is dark. Raven, the trickster, releases the sun from its box, the world is illuminated, and the odyssey begins. In part one, The Search, the brothers set out on a sea journey encountering marvelous creatures along the way. Action in the second part — The Find — takes place mostly within a cave where the brothers find blue. The brothers find and take something so valuable that they are pursued and a storm develops. One of the brothers dies in the storm; the others, with their gift of blue, complete the trip home.

The Golem (4 min, 1995)

Take some soil, knead it with water, and, together with a companion, chant certain combinations of the Hebrew alphabet. This formula, written down in the 3rd or 4th century, is essential for the creation of a golem — an artificial person. For ten centuries golems thus created lived in the imaginations of their creators. After that they became corporeal presences that anyone could see. Still later golems could pose real dangers and had to be destroyed by their creators. The notion of the golem is persistent and still evolving. Today golems may be found in science, technology and art. They are often associated with robots, computers, and new organisms created through biotechnology. In several 20th century paintings, short stories, plays and novels, golems are central figures. There is a golem opera, a golem poem, a golem ballet and a golem orchestral suite. And in more than a half dozen live action movies, a golem is the main character. The Golem, an animated film, was created by drawing directly on clear film stock one frame at a time. There are over 6,000 individual drawings. The film's soundtrack is derived from the earliest manual for golem making; the brevity of the film allows concentration on the essentials of the story. Although every film is, in some sense, an interpretation, The Golem leaves ample room for viewers to find their own meaning.

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Horses of Life and Death

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 13:27:00 GMT

Horses of Life and Death
Buy Now: $295.00

The Pasola, a traditional jousting battle with hundreds of horses and riders, is the Sumbanese New Year celebration, and also a ritual that anticipates the rice harvest. It is staged to welcome the annual swarming of sea worms on the western beaches, since the worms are seen as representing the spirit of the rice crop. The spirit of the fertility of the seas and the land comes from the body of a sacrificed girl, and her return each year is celebrated with a dramatic display of masculine virility, courage, and horsemanship.

The first part of the story is narrated by a boastful young rider, describing preparations for the event, and ways in which a rider's identity and name are tied to his favorite horse. After reciting ritual taunts to his opponents, the rider crosses the Pasola field with a bamboo lance and tries to knock others off their horses, as the sea worm priest watches to make sure that no rules are broken. The fierceness and violence of these hyper-masculine confrontations underscore the contrast with traditions that fertility and life ultimately come from female spirits.

The second part of the story is narrated by the widow of a man who died shortly after these festivities, and whose funeral involves his horse as the leader of the procession to the stone tomb. The widow explains that only women can mourn the dead, since only they can remove the pollution of death from the house and restore the balance between life and death. For four days, her husband's spirit is fed at every meal, and he does not realize that he is dead until a final ritual to determine the cause of his death and send his spirit away. The contrast in narrators shows a gendered perspective on calendar rituals in Sumba, and also the close emotional ties between members of a family and the horses that they raise, which share the same destiny as their riders.

A more complete analysis of the ritual jousting and funeral depicted in this film can be found in Chapters 5 and 9 of The Play of Time: Kodi Perspectives on Calendars, History and Exchange (University of California Press, 1994) and in the American Ethnologist article "Predatory Voyeurs: Tourists and 'Tribal Violence' in Remote Indonesia" 2002 29(4) pp. 603-630.

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