Documentary Educational Resources - Indigenous Studies / Wellness & Health / All Films

Waaki (Sanctuary)

Wed, 14 Dec 2022 16:38:58 GMT

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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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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Forsaken Fragments

Thu, 14 Feb 2019 12:58:00 GMT

Forsaken Fragments
Buy Now: $340.00

This collection of short films and “uncompleted” fragments made by renowned filmmaker Robert Gardner spans his life and career, and reflects his interests, from ethnography to the art world. Though presented as a set, the pieces stand on their own as riveting cinematic experiences, offering insight into Gardner’s personality and curiosity.

Among the works on the DVD are finished pieces broadcast on local television, such as Gardner’s “non-commercials,” focusing on ordinary life and created as a challenge to broadcast audiences. Other works are unfinished fragments, cherished by Gardner for capturing a tone or a moment. Yet other pieces are constructed from footage gathered while working on other films. These include Supplicating Women and Life Keeps On Passing, which were filmed in Benares while making Forest of Bliss, and The Old Lady, which was filmed while working with the Marshall family in Namibia.

The DVD comes packaged with a full-color 28-page booklet and extra features including selectable director's commentary tracks and an audio recording from Gardner's in-person appearance when an earlier incarnation of Forsaken Fragments screened at the Harvard Film Archive in Cambridge MA in October, 2010.

“Because of Gardner's wide range of fascinations, the sequence of 'fragments' creates considerable cinematic surprise. Several reveal dimensions of Gardner's filmmaking that even some familiar with his career might not be aware of; others reference Gardner's better-known films or offer additional insight into earlier work. Altogether, this is an engaging compilation that exceeds the implications of its title; each film is less a fragment than a cine-haiku; and if these pieces were 'forsaken' during the busy-ness of Gardner's production career and his years of teaching at Harvard, they are not forsaken now."

– Scott MacDonald, Hamilton University

Includes the following films:

The Old Lady, aka A Human Document (4 min, 1958)
In 1957, Gardner visited the Kalahari with John Marshall to help film The Hunters. This short, observing an elderly !Kung woman, was made by Gardner alone while there.

Tide (6 min, 1966)
In the late 1960’s, Gardner visited the tidal flats of Nova Scotia where he filmed this short piece. The film follows an elderly farmer as he directs his horse and carriage across the beach, eventually stopping to fish a weir.

The Photographer (3 min, 1966/2007)
While traveling in Nova Scotia in 1966, Gardner and still photographer Len Gittleman found an old view camera which proved the inspiration for this short homage to the silent film era.

Salt (3 min, 1966)
While traveling northeastern Ethiopia in 1968, Gardner rode with a caravan of Afar camel herders plying the salt trade between the highlands and the salt flats of the Dallol Depression, which he called a “wondrous environment of unbearable heat and intense color.”

Creatures of Pain (5 min, 1968)
Gardner visited Nigeria in 1968, hoping to make a film about sheepherders. Civil war intervened, and he was only able to film this short piece about the “sharo” ritual in a small village near Kano.

Three Non-commercials: Policeman, Lobsterman, Farmer (4 min, 1973)
In the 1970’s, Gardner was involved in the programming of WCVB, an ABC affiliate TV station in Boston. He took this opportunity to make what he called “non-commercials” – short vignettes of people in their ordinary lives – to be shown between programs.

Anthem (2 min, 1973)
In the days of Gardner’s involvement with Boston Broadcasters, Inc and Channel 5, TV stations stopped transmitting for the night – sometime in the early morning. Traditionally stations “signed off” with a clip of the American flag waving as the national anthem played. Bob asked filmmaker Richard Rogers to make a more interesting variation on this theme. Channel 5 declined to use it.

Healing (9 min, 1978)
This film arose from a trip to Ladakh, India, as Gardner searched for a shaman. There, he encountered this tradition of Buddhist healing, which involved trance and music.

Supplicating Women (3 min, 1985)
While shooting in Benares for Forest of Bliss, Gardner stumbled upon a temple frequently visited by women who suffered from ailments including love sickness and familial problems. This fragment details their pleading for healing.

Life Keeps on Passing (4 min, 1985)
Also filmed while on location for Forest of Bliss, this short was Gardner’s attempt to see and hear what local poets had to say about their surroundings. This beautiful short recounts some of their thoughts.

Hauling Sharks (10 min, 1988)
Upon returning to Ethiopia in 1988, Gardner visited the coastal Danakil. There he filmed communities who had developed an environmentally suitable way of netting sharks far out at sea, which they exported to southern Arabian states.

It Could Be Good, It Could Be Bad (6 min, 1997)
In 1997, Gardner joined his friend Robert Fulton to shoot aerial photography in the Southern Chilean Andes. Microphones were rigged to record their conversations as they flew among these extraordinary formations.

Deus Ex Boltanski (11 min, 2010)
In 2010, Gardner and photographer Michael Hutcherson travelled to Paris to make a film about French artist Christian Boltanski as he installed a piece entitled PERSONNES within the immense confines of the Grand Palais.

Still Journey On (20 min, 2010)
In his last years, Gardner worked at intervals constructing a film intended to weave together threads of thought and meaning that ran through his life and films. He took the title from “Keep Right On Till the End of the Road” a song by the Scottish singer, Harry Lauder – a favorite song of Robert’s father, who would play it on the record player every year as the family left the island in Maine where they spent much of the summer. Still Journey On remains a fragment.

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The Last Bonesetter

Fri, 16 Nov 2018 14:21:00 GMT

The Last Bonesetter
Buy Now: $295.00

In some remote areas of the Peruvian Andes, such as the highland hamlet of Chugurpampa, traditional healers have all but disappeared. This is due largely to an unstable subsistence economy brought on by climate change, forcing frequent trips and even permanent outmigration to the coast, with the result that young people are not able to devote the time to learn the healing arts. Yet, due to the rigors of peasant life, there is still a high demand for the musculoskeletal healing tradition of bonesetting.

The Last Bonesetter: An Encounter with Don Felipe traces the career of one of the last "hueseros, " or bonesetters, in the area - 80-year-old Don Felipe. Medical anthropologist Kathryn Oths has long been concerned with the survival of indigenous healing. She first got to know and work with Don Felipe in the 1980s when she carried out 18 months of fieldwork in Chugurpampa. At that time, dozens of healers offered their services to the sick and injured. While she kept up with Don Felipe in the intervening years, she was stunned to discover upon her return 25 years later that he was the sole provider of traditional health care for the large hamlet. Besides being a well-known bonesetter and herbalist, over time he also took on the roles of midwife and a curer of illnesses that are unique to the Andes such as susto (soul loss from fright). While there is a modern medical health post in the hamlet where he lives, it is seldom staffed by doctors and has few medicines to prescribe, Don Felipe is the only reliable source of health care who people trust for miles around.

Hoping to demonstrate the value of bonesetting and inspire younger generations to continue his legacy of traditional healing, Oths and her research team facilitated a conference at a regional hospital to showcase Don Felipe’s techniques and prowess on local patients for academics, doctors, and healers from around Peru. The ethnographic portrait of Don Felipe, set against a backdrop of breathtaking mountain landscapes, embeds him in his local culture and the everyday routines of life. This is a story of the mission to save the knowledge of one of the last remaining healers of his kind in the northern Peruvian Andes before it’s too late, including current efforts to find him an apprentice.

Also included on the DVD

Así Sobrevivimos (How We Survive): Getting By in a Changing Climate (7 min, 2018)

In Chugurpampa, high in the northern Peruvian Andes, a changing climate is putting pressure on a peasant agricultural community already living close to the margins. While the highlanders have historically subsisted on what they raise—which includes a wide array of vegetables, grains, tubers, and livestock—in recent years, disease, drought, and hail have destroyed harvests. Many families, unable to cope with these calamities, have abandoned their lands for opportunities on the coast. Whereas 25 years ago traditional healers were abundant, few now enter healing roles as a result of the instability. The only remaining traditional provider is Don Felipe Llaro, an 80-year-old bonesetter and herbalist. The future of an ancient medical tradition is in peril.

Selected Screenings and Awards

Honorable Mention, Jury for Music, Archaeology Channel International Film Festival, 2020

Ethnografilm Festival, France, 2016

Society for Visual Anthropology Film Festival (AAA), 2016

First Medical Anthropology Symposium in Peru, 2016

Society for Applied Anthropology, Vancouver, BC, CA, 2016

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Crying Earth Rise Up

Fri, 12 Oct 2018 14:04:00 GMT

Crying Earth Rise Up
Buy Now: $320.00

Crying Earth Rise Up tells the story of Debra White Plume and Elisha Yellow Thunder’s parallel search for answers to the question: Why are there high levels of radiation in our drinking water and how can we protect our families and community against this threat?

White Plume, a Lakota elder, views nearby uranium mining operations as one source of water contamination and as an encroachment on the water rights of the Lakota Nation. She takes action as the lead plaintiff in a case challenging uranium mining on tribal land, and as an organizer working to motivate her community to protect treaty territory from exploitation of their natural resources by corporate interests.

Yellow Thunder seeks answers in the earth itself. During her pregnancy, she unknowingly drank contaminated water and her daughter, Laila, was born with severe medical anomalies. Laila and family await a kidney transplant. When Yellow Thunder can take time away from caring for Laila, she maps ore outcroppings on the Pine Ridge Reservation in search of uranium and the origins of the contamination.

Meanwhile, community members from the mining town of Crawford, NE, Lakota health and environmental agencies, an organic rancher and project manager of a proposed uranium mine, lawyers involved in White Plume’s case, natural resources officials, a nuclear energy expert, farmers and ranchers, all grapple with the prospect of license renewal at the Crow Butte mine in Nebraska and the proposed expansion of mining operations to three additional mines in northwest Nebraska and western South Dakota.

Observational footage, ruggedly beautiful Great Plains vistas, sit-down interviews, illustrations, and animated graphics combine to address the controversy surrounding the existing and proposed uranium mining operations over the High Plains/Ogallala aquifer. Native actress Tantoo Cardinal narrates the film, supporting its structure, ensuring clarity and acting as a reliable guide for the audience through the story.

The film addresses the direct relationship between water and life itself, and the tragic irony that what is sacred may also be poisoning, even as nuclear power companies insist on the environmental safety of their industry’s practices and townspeople point to the mine’s essential role in fueling the local economy. Through characters who oppose and support the expansion of uranium mining over the High Plains/Ogallala aquifer (the largest fresh water underground source in North America), audiences engage with the important and timely issue of preserving and protecting the land and water.

Native communities are commonly involved in debates about land use and environmental stewardship, particularly in the west, because of the historical exploitation of natural resources found on treaty land, Native religious beliefs that bind the people to nature, the Native philosophy of “seven generations” that mirrors the concept of sustainable ecological practices, etc. Crying Earth Rise Up acknowledges the centrality of Native involvement in opposing the particular practice of uranium mining and suggests Native communities’ wider spread contribution to a variety of other conversations related to environmental protection (although not always noted by mainstream media, e.g. the recent blocking of the TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline).

SELECTED AWRDS AND SCREENINGS

Winner, John Michaels Award, Big Muddy Film Festival, 2015

Athens International Film Festival, 2015

Society for Visual Anthropology Film Festival, 2015

Portland Oregon Women's Film Festival, 2016

One Earth Film Festival, 2017

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Maasai Migrants Series

Wed, 5 Sep 2018 11:07:00 GMT

Maasai Migrants Series
Buy Now: $320.00

The seven videos contained in this DVD were made in Tanzania between 2008 and 2010 by participants in the Maasai Migrants Field School, directed by Peter Biella of San Francisco State University's Program in Visual Anthropology. The primary purpose of the videos in the series is to educate urban and rural Maasai about the consequences of migration, especially its relationship to poverty and the spread of HIV. The films have been produced through a continuing collaboration with Maasai-led and other NGOs, and they are being screened and discussed in Maasai regions throughout Tanzania. Their purpose is to trigger emotional reactions that prompt viewers to engage in important — though otherwise rare and uncomfortable — conversations, about poverty, migration, and sexual practices. The series also constitutes a self-critical history of a project in applied anthropology and gives an example for applied practitioners who may wish to use video in their work.

About the films:

Maasai Migrants (Dir. Peter Biella, 22 min, 2008)

This is the first film completed in the Maasai Migrants Series, the multi-year collaborative exploration of applied anthropological videos contained in this DVD. Planned in close collaboration with Maasai organizers and local migrants, the film depicts the appalling conditions experienced by migrants in Dar es Salaam - the dangerous and underpaid work of night watchmen, and the tenuous existence of Maasai woman who, without male protection, are always at risk of exploitation. The video is divided into seven 3-minute vignettes, each giving a different facet of the Maasai community displaced by migration. Rich with data, the vignettes trigger audience discussions about the challenges of poverty and the push and pull of city life. A film about the scripting, shooting and screening of Maasai Migrants is recorded in Subject to Change, a video contained in this DVD. There, emphasis is placed on how the video has been understood by urban and rural Maasai viewers.

Subject to Change (Dir. Shamia Sandles, 21 min, 2009)

Subtitled A Freirean Case Study in Applied Visual Anthropology, this film presents the theoretical assumptions and screening strategy of films in the Maasai Migrants Series. It does so through a history of the Series' first season, the scripting, shooting and screening of Maasai Migrants (also contained on this DVD). Included in Subject to Change is documentary footage of meetings with production collaborators — an American professor and his student who made this film, Maasai night watchmen, homeless Maasai women, Maasai intellectuals and members of a Maasai-led NGO. These meetings reveal the development of the themes and documentary script of the film, and how they are designed to promote discussion among urban and prospective migrants living in rural homesteads. Subject to Change also provides an understanding of errors made by project members in choosing the wrong venues for screening and in failing to prepare post-screening facilitators for their task of promoting audience discussion after the showings. Finally, Subject to Change presents footage of four post-screening events in different locations — a church, an urban market, a school and a rural homestead. The analysis of Maasai Migrants' goals and strategy, supplemented by Maasai viewers' subtle comments on the film, reveal a great potential for an applied visual anthropology.

Maasai Speak Out on HIV and AIDS (Dir. Biella; research & footage by Thomas Sengale, 13 min, 2009)

Ilmurran is the most-frequently screened trigger film in the Maasai Migrants repertoire. Like the others, its goal is to provide critical education to displaced Maasai throughout Tanzania. When the film is screened with a skilled discussion facilitator, it allows an unprecedented opportunity for Maasai audiences to reflect on the realities and dangers of migration. Longido Waterhole and Longido Homestead, both included on this DVD, record Maasai viewers as they watch and discuss this film. Ilmurran: Young Warriors and the City provides discussion material concerning increased exposure to HIV, and the attraction of migration as a means of survival in the face of encroaching poverty. Following a strategy of collaborative, applied visual anthropology, the filmmakers worked with university educated Maasai to document the day-to-day lives of three young Maasai brothers (ilmurran, "warriors"). The young men all live at the same homestead in central Tanzania. Using interviews and vérité footage, the film invites the brothers to discuss discrimination, homelessness, and disease in the cities. It also highlights how their different ages influence their attitudes toward traditional Maasai values. Before he became ill, the eldest advocated migration as an expression of independence and courage; the youngest sees no purpose in "wandering" and advocates farming, a means of subsistence rejected by most Maasai. Ilmurran illustrates how poverty and migration have reshaped Maasai identity.

Ilmurran: Young Warriors and the City (Dir. Michael Crammond and Kellen Prandini, 22 min, 2010)

Excerpts from Changa Revisited (Dir. Peter Biella and Leonard Kamerling, 17 min, 2012)

Composed of selections from a feature-length documentary, Excerpts from Changa Revisited depicts the shocking clarity with which three Ilparakuyo Maasai women understand the dissolution of their Ilparakuyo community. They describe their homestead as torn by human and livestock diseases, widespread alcoholism among men, and the increase of poverty, disrespect, migration and violence. Changa Revisited was filmed in a community that is very close to Dar es Salaam: for that reason, the community is experiencing the full destructive impact of migration and access to city life. Changa Revisited is therefore a cautionary tale to other, more isolated, Maasai communities that are currently less impacted by the crises of migration and HIV depicted in the film. Another video contained in this DVD, Longido Homestead, records women in a relatively isolated Kisongo Maasai community who watch Changa Revisited and discuss the fate of their less fortunate Maasai sisters to the south. The story of Changa represents to them — and to others in very isolated Maasai communities — what the future may bring.

Longido Waterhole (Dir. Peter Biella and Leonard Kamerling, 8 min, 2010)

All of the films in the Maasai Migrants DVD explore a technique of applied anthropology in which films are used to trigger often passionate post-screening discussions among Maasai audiences. Longido Waterhole, like its companion, Longido Homestead, documents such a discussion. As the film opens, a dozen Kisongo Maasai men have just viewed Ilmurran: Young Warriors and the City, one of the Series' trigger films about social change. The viewers, who live more than two hundred miles north of the community where the Ilmurran video was shot, launch into a discussion about the profound changes faced by their own community. They do not concern themselves with the principle theme of the Ilmurran film, i.e., the crisis of young Maasai migrating to the city. Instead, the film triggers a discussion of their own related crisis — the city migrating to them. Rapid regional development with new highways, foreign workers and permanent dwellings are all encroaching on their once isolated desert grazing land. Comments divide along age lines: senior warriors criticize their "fathers" for facilitating the arrival of outsiders and for their adherence to "outmoded" Maasai traditions. Elders reply that traditions are the only value that Maasai should preserve. The discussion at the Longido Waterhole gives insight into the ideological rifts concerning modernization among different age groups of Maasai. It also shows how using a film that focuses on one facet of modernization may trigger discussions of others that are more pertinent locally.

Longido Homestead (Dir. Peter Biella and Leonard Kamerling, 8 min, 2010)

Like its companion piece, Longido Waterhole and other videos on this DVD, Longido Homestead is part of the Maasai Migrants Series, a multi-year exploration of the use of applied anthropological media in facilitating social change through the screening and discussion of trigger films. Longido Homestead's women viewers are asked to discuss a video clip from Ilmurran: Young Warriors and the City, and a segment of Changa Revisited (both contained on this DVD). Unlike their male counterparts recorded in Longido Waterhole, these women viewers stay focused on the themes of the films they viewed. Like the men, however, the women understand the film topic in ways that differ according to their age. Older women declare that traditional Maasai medicines are an effective cure of AIDS. Their daughters, adult women who have visited clinics and have some formal education, know differently. Longido Homestead shows how the screening of trigger films can create an unprecedented opportunity for open discussion between age grades, opportunities in which younger women may contradict and educate their elders. The film also reveals an important strategy in the use of trigger films among communities that are as thoroughly sex-segregated as the Maasai. The women are only able to speak frankly with one another when the filmmakers persuade their husbands to leave.

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A Curing Ceremony

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 08:16:00 GMT

A Curing Ceremony
Buy Now: $545.00

Sha//ge, a very young woman about to have her first child, falls ill, probably with malaria. /Ti!kay, a relative and healer, enters a mild trance, without the stimulus of dancing, in an attempt to cure her. Sha//ge lives but the baby is stillborn. Part of the !Kung Series.

This film is available as part of the !Kung ShortFilms set. This collection combines fourteen of Marshall's short !Kung films onto two remastered/re-authored DVDs, complete with a full-color booklet containing photos, writings, and additional information about the series.

DiscOne:
A Curing Ceremony (bw) (9:00)
Group of Women (6:00)
A Joking Relationship (13:00)
N/um Tchai: The Ceremonial Dance of the !Kung Bushmen (bw)(20:00)
N!owa T'ama: The Melon Tossing Game (15:00)
The Lion Game (5:00)
An Argument About a Marriage (18:00)
Men Bathing (14:00)

DiscTwo:
Playing with Scorpions (5:00)
A Rite of Passage (15:00)
Debe's Tantrum (9:00)
The Wasp Nest (13:00)
The Meat Fight (14:00)
Baobab Play (8:00)

Orthography Note
The group of people depicted in these films are the Ju/'hoansi, speakers of the Ju/'hoan language. Ju/'hoan is part of the !Kung language group; the term !Kung was previously used by the Marshall family and others to refer to Ju/'hoansi. Although the term is outdated, it has been retained here for the sake of consistency with John Marshall's previously published work. The films and their related printed materials also employ antiquated spellings of names and places. For current Ju/'hoan orthography, please see the Ju/'hoan - English Dictionary, compiled by Patrick Dickens and the Ju/'hoan Peoples Literacy Committee.

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Children of the Land

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 08:16:00 GMT

Children of the Land
Buy Now: $295.00

Nature gives us everything for free, says a Yanomami chief - "all that nature asks in return is that we protect it." In Children of the Land, Brazilian Indian leaders discuss their careful and sustainable use of the land. The forest provides indigenous people with food, medicine and supplies, and they know that they have to preserve these for future generations. This is reflected in their sustainable lifestyle; the Ashaninka calendar, for example, measures seasons by the reproductive cycles of plants and animals so as to keep these populations healthy. The Baniwa make woven baskets for sale in department stores, and the Ashaninka harvest Mumuru, a plant product used in the cosmetics industry, for sale. However, both groups make sure not to abuse their resources for these ventures, and use them as a vehicle for promoting their culture.

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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Duka's Dilemma

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 07:05:00 GMT

Duka's Dilemma
Buy Now: $320.00

Duka is a married woman and mother of five young children, living in Hamar, Southern Ethiopia. Ever since her husband married a beautiful, young, second wife, Duka has been in a state of emotional turmoil. Among the Hamar, who live with herds and cultivate small fields of sorghum in their remote, bush-covered country, men are allowed to marry more than one wife, but only a few men ever do so. Duka wonders why her husband married again; did he find her too old, or was he turned off because of her chronic malaria? Also, she doesn't know what to make of the new wife who is silent and never expresses her feelings except in rage? And on top of this, her mother-in-law keeps making trouble and is angry with her son for marrying a second wife behind her back. Personal and intimate, the film follows the drama of this family in crisis, the high points of which are the birth of the new wife's child, and nine months later, a heated dispute between the mother-in-law and her son, which leads to the building of a new house. Duka, her husband, her mother-in-law and the second wife voice their different points of view as events proceed and the crisis finally gets resolved. The language of the film is Hamar, and is translated by subtitles. There is no need for extra commentary from the filmmakers, whose presence and close relationship to the people are always evident.

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For Our Street Family

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:53:00 GMT

For Our Street Family
Buy Now: $295.00

Revolving around a teen drop-in center called Planet Youth, the film explores the pain of stereotypes, the importance of peer support, and the ambivalence towards identity experience by a group of First Nations teens in Prince Rupert, British Columbia.

Begun as a participatory photography group self-portrait, the film expands to capture the youths' difficult challenges with racism, abuse, and foster care, while exploring the teens' resilient playfulness and why they are a "street family." For Our Street Family provides the opportunity to finally listen to a group parented by bureaucracy and ignored by the public.

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