Documentary Educational Resources - Indigenous Studies / Tradition & Modernity / All Films

Ujirei (Regeneration)

Wed, 10 May 2023 10:21:02 GMT

Ujirei (Regeneration)
Buy Now: $320.00

For Ayoreo peoples in the Gran Chaco of northern Paraguay, the future remains unclear. In this radical experimental film, Ayoreo leader Mateo Sobode Chiqueno visually explores the terms of present-day life on an evangelical mission. The filmmaker creates a visionary cinematic reflection on what it means to affirm Ayoreo life in the aftermath of colonial violence and social upheaval.

The filmmaker Sobode writes, “Ujirei refers to many things. We Ayoreo know that some plants can grow new versions of themselves after they have been damaged. A whole new tree can emerge from a severed stump or even a piece of wood. Ujirei is the word in our language for that kind of new growth. But it can also refer to something that emerges from a prior version. Everything in this film is a sort of ujirei. Maybe even the film itself is an ujirei too.

I made this film so that people in other countries can learn about my people. I want them to know about what happened to us Ayoreo in the past. I want them to think about what kind of futures we are creating from the present. I want people to watch this film and know that we should be respected as human beings.

Those who watch this film may have questions. They may ask: how does the film show the idea of ujirei? How do outsiders treat Ayoreo people in Paraguay? Why do outsiders not respect Ayoreo people? Why did the missionaries take Ayoreo people out of the forest? How are Ayoreo people creating new possibilities and what are they?”

“Ujirei is a further illustration of how the collaborative production of Indigenous cinema remains an effective technique for enacting a decolonizing, anti-essentialist, and anti-extractive anthropological praxis.”- Lucas Bessire & Bernard Belisario, Tipití –Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

"One of the most radical films of emerging Indigenous cinema.” - Vincent Carelli, founder of Video in the Villages

Selected Screenings & Awards

Merit in Film Award, Latin American Studies Association, Colombia, 2024

University of Zurich Ethnographic Museum, Switzerland, 2021

Cine Kurumun - Festival Internacional de Cinema Indígena, Brazil, 2021

Festival Internacional de Cine y las Artes Indígena de Wallmapu (FICWALLMAPU), Chile, 2018

Premio Internacional Anaconda, Paraguay, 2018

Festival Int'l de Cine y Comunicación de los Pueblos Indígenas y Originarios, Guatemala, 2018

Anaconda Prize Indigenous Film Festival, Paraguay, 2018

Forumdoc Festival, Brazil, 2017

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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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The Healer and the Psychiatrist

Tue, 29 Sep 2020 11:44:58 GMT

The Healer and the Psychiatrist
Buy Now: $320.00

On the South Pacific Island group of Vava’u, the traditional healer Emeline Lolohea treats people affected by spirits. One day away by ferry, the only Tongan Psychiatrist Dr Mapa Puloka has established a public psychiatry well known across the region. Although the two healers have never met in person, this film creates a dialogue between them on the nature of mental illness and spiritual affliction - and the shared obstacles they face in providing their services to the people in need. Their commitment and transformative communication offers challenges and opportunities to help address the growing global mental health crisis.

For two years, film director Mike Poltorak used a video camera as anintegral part of his medical anthropological research on traditionalhealing and mental illness in Tonga. After many more years of researchand filming, he learned just how important the relationship between filmmaker and subject is in creating a filmrespectful of Tongan values and of utility for the global Tongancommunity. Through this relationship, his film presents possibilitiesfor improvement in health communication and outcomes for the Kingdom of Tonga, the development of a public psychiatry moresensitive to traditional healing, as well as to encourage culturallyvalued talanoa between traditional and biomedical practitioners.

"The film offers close-ups into the intimate life of therapeutic rituals and allows the viewer to experience the sounds, colors, and affects that compose and make possible healing practices at the thresholds of different cosmologies." — Samuele Collu, McGill University

"This is going to be a valuable resource for mental health here in New Zealand and in Tonga. The reason being the Government has finally agreed that healing ought to happen, or the system, closer to the community. What really touched someone from the front line perspective, is how you had culture, community and clinical knowledge come together and connected up but also the story itself reminded me when the system fails it costs lives. This is something for us to be mindful of." – Pauline Taufa, Clinical Psychologist, Auckland

"The Healer and the Psychiatrist is a very moving and intense documentary that speaks to the value of ethnographic research over a long period of time. It explores the value and limitations of Tongan indigenous and Western medicine. The traditional healer, Emeline Lolohea, may have access to nature’s abundance and the richness of spiritual knowledge but her husband Tevita’s tragic illness speaks to the need for better access to biomedicine. Dr Mapa Puloka combines psychiatry and what is valued in Tongan culture, but how much does the continuity of his novel practice and healing depend on his individual efforts? This insightful and sensitive ethnographic documentary asks us to consider how the treatment of illness and wellness can be ‘decolonised’ even in a country that was never colonised." – Jacquie Leckie, Associate Professor, Victoria University of Wellington, NZ & University of Newcastle, Australia. Author of Colonizing Madness

SELECTED SCREENINGS AND AWARDS

Best Feature Film, Society for Visual Anthropology Film & Media Festival, USA, 2020
Commendation, Richard Werbner Award for Visual Anthropology, RAI Film Festival, UK 2020
Best Cinematography, Collected Voices Film Festival, Chicago, USA 2020

Ethnokino-Award of Life Time Recognition, Bern, Switzerland 2021

Ethnofest, Athens, Greece 2021
Mental Filmness, Chicago, USA, 2021
Ethnokino Film Festival, Bern, Switzerland 2021
RAI Film Festival, UK, 2021
FIFO (Festival Internationale du Documentaire Oceanien) Tahiti, 2021
Eyes & Lenses Ethnographic Film Festival, Poland, 2020
Trier Ethnographic Film Festival, Germany, 2021
Hawaii International Film Festival, USA, 2020
Collected Voices Film Festival, USA, 2020
Macquarie University International Ethnographic Film Festival, Australia, 2020
Garifuna International Indigenous Film Festival, USA, 2020
Riga Pasaules Film Festival, Latvia, 2020
German International Ethnographic Film Festival, Germany, 2020
LIDF (London International Documentary Film Festival), UK, 2019

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Entretejido

Fri, 16 Nov 2018 09:02:00 GMT

Entretejido
Buy Now: $295.00

Peruvian alpaca wool has held an important place in the rich textile traditions of Andean highland communities for generations. Among today's cosmopolitan elite, the wool has attained the status of luxury item, enhanced by its manufacture at the hands of indigenous artisans and herders. From remote villages to the capital's fashion runways, the wool bridges Peru's rural, indigenous poor and the urban and global fashion world. This supply chain has become a site of development efforts to alleviate poverty and foster social inclusion within Peru’s high-fashion worlds.

Entretejido is an observational-ethnographic film that weaves together the different sites and communities involved in making alpaca wool fashions. Varying representations of indigeneity emerge out of these encounters, which both challenge and reproduce historically-rooted racism.

The film offers an immersive experience of the textures that constitute this supply chain from animal to runway. More than just a sensory experience, however, viewers are confronted with the ways in which everyday items such as clothing are entangled in the racial politics and contested histories of the nation.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Golden Remi Award, Best Culture and Ethnicity Short Documentary, Houston International Film Festival, 2017

Honorable Mention – Best Graduate Student Film, Society for Visual Anthropology Film Festival, 2016

Taiwan International Ethnographic Film Festival, 2017

La Paz International Film Festival, La Paz, Bolivia, 2017

Ethnografilm Festival, Paris, 2017

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From the Inside Out

Wed, 10 Oct 2018 09:18:00 GMT

From the Inside Out
Buy Now: $295.00

In the Navajo language there is neither a word for religion nor art. The only word that could be used to describe both is "hozho" – beauty, balance, order and harmony.

Navajo history is turbulent, and in order to survive the Navajo had to adapt. Baskets are a part of this history, changing throughout time and adapting with the people. They contribute to the balance, harmony, and beauty of Navajo life. Inititally purely functional pieces, baskets gradually became integrated into various ceremonies, elevating them to sacred and symbolic levels.

Oppression, trade, and technology eventually led to dwindling numbers of basket weavers, but beginning in the 1970s Navajo basketry experienced a renaissance led by a group of families in the Douglas Mesa region of the Utah reservation.Secularized basketry is now a thriving part of Navajo trade and traditional baskets continue to be an important part of Navajo ceremonial life.

In intimate detail, From the Inside Out depicts both the new and old roles baskets play in the lives of contemporary basket-weavers.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Durango Film Festival, Colorado, 2005

First Place - Educational Films, Broadcast Education Association Faculty Contest, 2005

Contemporary Native America Screening, Lesley University, MA, 2005

Northeastern Anthropological Association Ethnographic Film & Video Festival, NY, 2005

Heard Museum Film Festival, Arizona, 2005

19th Pärnu International Film Festival, Estonia, 2005

SVA/AAA Conference, Washington DC, 2005

Cine Las Americas International Film Festival, TX, 2006

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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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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Dead Birds Re-encountered

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 07:04:00 GMT

Dead Birds Re-encountered
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In 1961, Robert Gardner organized an expedition to the Highlands of New Guinea to film the Hubula [known as Dani* outside of the community]. He stayed for six months to create an essay on the themes of violence and death most dramatically witnessed within the intense ritual warfare between rival Hubula villages, and ultimately on the role of violence in human life and culture. The end result was his seminal film, Dead Birds.

Twenty-eight years later, Gardner returned to the Hubula villages to see what had become of the people he had met and to show them the film. Dead Birds Re-encountered is a captivating, reflexive epilogue. The film observes the changes nearly three decades have brought to Hubula life and culture, raising questions about modernization, tourism, cross-cultural relations, and the meaning of friendship.

"I have been told by people who know better that it is a risky business returning to a place where you have enjoyed some remarkable experience. But I will say that going back to the Highlands of Western New Guinea (aka West Papua) was enormously engaging. I saw people I cared for deeply and who became part of my life wherever I lived. Making a film about all this was not at all difficult." — Robert Gardner

*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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From the First People

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:53:00 GMT

From the First People
Buy Now: $320.00

This is a film about change and contemporary life in Shungnak, a village on the Kobuk River in northwestern Alaska, 75 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Life in this inland community is dominated by the seasons and the river.

In October, when the film begins, the Kobuk becomes filled with ice, which slowly thickens until freeze-up is complete. Traditional subsistence activities still continue: women net fish under the ice, and a man and his wife construct a cottonwood mudshark trap that is carefully placed in the river ice. The combination of old and new technology is pervasive. Some people hitch their teams of huskies to a sled, others travel by snowmobile. Old people reflect upon these changes. "In the old days," George Cleveland laughs, "you knew your good dogs would get you home. Today, if your snowmachine breaks down, you have to walk! On the other hand," he says, "most things these days are easier than in the past, when people had to be tough in order to survive. Today, you just plug in the bubbling coffee pot, pull the string for light, and turn the stove's knob when you are cold." Indeed, popcorn is cooking on the stove as children don masks for Halloween trick-or-treating.

The film reveals that life along the Kobuk River is still inextricably linked to the harsh and starkly beautiful land, where the December sun rises at 11 a.m. and sets three hours later. An old man shares his feelings about the changes he has seen: "Long ago, forest fires put themselves out. Today, even when men fight them, they burn. I think our earth is getting old, and when things get old and dry they burn. Our earth is the same way," he adds. "It's ready to burn. I think it's coming close to the time when we will have a new one."

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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Funeral Season

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:53:00 GMT

Funeral Season
Buy Now: $320.00

“We pray to our ancestors but we do not worship them. You, you need an intermediary, the priest. But for us, our intermediary is the ancestor who is sitting next to God,” says Poundé, the old Cameroonian ethnologist, to the young Jewish director from Canada. And with this conclusive statement, everything becomes clear: the funerals in memory of “the dead who are not dead” organized several days or even years following the burial, the chants, brass bands and traditional dancers who accompany and punctuate the village rituals. The ancestral rites struggle to survive in a continuously westernized society of consumption by parading wealth and excess for all to see — even the dead. Funeral Season takes the viewer through the red dust of Cameroon's laterite slopes and into the heart of the Bamileke country, where one funeral flows into the next. These death celebrations provide an opportunity to see elaborate costumes and masks, festive songs and dances, and lavish feasts, while illuminating the communal links which bind the Bamileke as an ethnic group and society. Along the way, the director befriends his guides and becomes increasingly haunted by memories of his own ancestors. At times, the dialogues alienate him from the locals; at other times they bring the two closer together. Like the dead and the living, they belong to two different worlds often mirroring each other. There is a lightness to be found in this subjective ethnographic film which imaginatively and symbolically turns the gazes of two different worlds upon each other.

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In Pursuit of the Siberian Shaman

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 12:44:00 GMT

In Pursuit of the Siberian Shaman
Buy Now: $320.00

Long suppressed by missionaries and then by Soviet anti-religious campaigns, Siberian shamanism has experienced an unprecedented revival following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the number of shamans continues to rise. But who are these new shamans? Are they tricksters, magicians, businessmen, or cultural activists? This film takes a behind-the-scenes look at a Buryat shaman living on an island in the Lake Baikal as he moves between intimate shamanic rituals performed for local clientele and shows performed at various resorts for Western tourists in search of "primitive" cultures.

The film captures cross-cultural miscommunication as the shaman and tourists misunderstand one another, usually comically, sometimes disturbingly, made all the more poignant by the conflict between the dominant Russian Orthodox Church and the local shamanic tradition. Juxtaposing 1920s archival footage of a shamanic performance with its contemporary counterparts, the film grapples with the long-standing tension between the "indigenous" and the "cosmopolitan" in a rapidly transnational world.

“This is an excellent film for the classroom, appropriate to many different subjects, including anthropology, religion, Asian studies, globalization, tourism, and economic development. I fully intend to use it in my anthropology of religion class.”
—Patty A. Gray, Department of Anthropology, University of Alaska Fairbanks

“...In Pursuit of the Siberian Shaman is recommended for collections that concentrate in anthropology or in Asian, European and/or multicultural studies. ”
— Dan DiLandro, Educational Media Reviews Online (EMRO)

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Second Prize & Audience Award, Eyes & Lenses IV, Competition of Ethnographic & Anthropologic Films, Poland, 2007

16th World Congress of IUAES, Kunming, China, 2009

Delhi International Ethnographic Film Festival, India, 2008

Dialektus Film Festival, Budapest, Hungary, 2008

International Society for Shamanistic Research Conference, Budapest, Hungary, 2007

Globians Film Festival, Germany, 2007

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