Director Dorothea Gazidis , Kimona Landseer (Kim Longinotto) Country/Production UK Release 1976 Length 59 mins Format B&W / DVD / PAL / All region Location UK, Buckinghamshire / Europe
A rarely seen classic, PRIDE OF PLACE was made as a first project while Longinotto was a student at England’s National School of Television and Film. As a teenager, the filmmaker had been condemned to a girls' boarding school in an old, isolated castle in Buckinghamshire. Wisely, she ran away at the age of 17, and years later took the opportunity for sweet revenge. In this dark and expressive film, Longinotto exposes the repressive school from the students’ perspective—as a kind of miniature state with bizarre rules, indigestible food and absurd punishments. One year after the release of the film, the boarding school was closed down. With Pride of Place, Longinotto sets the tone for a long career of films in which individuals revolt against oppressive authorities and stifling traditions
Series Strangers Abroad, Programme 5 Director André Singer, Bruce Dakowski (writer and presenter) Country/Production UK Release 1986 Length 52 mins Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL or NTSC / All region Location various Comments Special price for series, 6 for 5
Central Television’s major documentary series looks at the first anthropologists to stop ‘armchair theorising’ and go out to live among the peoples who so interested them. The six part series was filmed all over the world, from the frozen Canadian Arctic to the dry outback of Australia, from New Guinea to India, Africa to the South Pacific.The programme makers retraced the steps of the pioneering anthropologists in those countries and, by following the life story of each scholar, they reveal how social anthropology has contributed to our lives.(For further details on each individual programme, please contact the Film Officer at the RAI.)
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film Director Caro MacDonald Country/Production UK Release 2001 Length 23 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region Location Japan / Asia Ethnic Group Japanese Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
The modern Japanese woman has the world at her feet: she can pursue any career, wear whatever she likes, and spend her leisure time however she likes - even playing sumo. This film follows five young wrestlers as they endure the hardships necessary to succeed in the unusual world of female sumo wrestling.
Director Paromita Vohra Country/Production India Release 2006 Length 55 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region Location India, Mumbai / Asia Ethnic Group South Asian Language English, Hindi (English sub)
Q2P is a film about toilets and the city. It sifts through the dream of Mumbai as a future Shanghai and searches for public toilets, watching who has to queue to pee. As the film observes who has access to toilets and who doesn’t, we begin to also see the imagination of gender that underlies the city’s shape, the constantly shifting boundaries between public and private space; we learn of small acts of survival that people in the city’s bottom half cobble together and quixotic ideas of social change that thrive with mixed results; we hear the silence that surrounds toilets and sense how similar it is to the silence that surrounds inequality. The toilet becomes a riddle with many answers and some of those answers are questions – about gender, about class, about caste and most of all about space, urban development and the twisted myth of the global metropolis.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film Director Carlos Flores Country/Production UK Release 1997 Length 45 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region Location Guatemala / America Ethnic Group Maya-Q’eqchi Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
During the 1980s the Guatemalan army launched ruthless counter-insurgency campaigns against indigenous communities, killing or displacing thousands. This film documents the struggle of a group of Maya-Q’eqchi’ villages to reconstruct their communities and come to terms with their violent past.
Director Kim Longinotto, Ziba Mir-Hosseini Country/Production UK Release 2001 Length 87 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region Location Iran, Tehran / Asia Ethnic Group Iranian Collection Kim Longinotto
This film is set in a refuge for girls in Tehran and follows the stories of five girls who come here. These girls, in leaving a situation that has become intolerable, show incredible courage and resourcefulness. The film explores their experience of male authority, their longing for respect and freedom, and their hopes for a brighter future. The centre is run by the dynamic and charismatic Mrs Shirazi, who protects the girls from their families and helps them to renegotiate their relationships. The film shows how Iranian women are learning to challenge the old rules, and how rapidly their country is changing.
Director Mark Brice Country/Production UK Release 1984 Length 85 mins Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region Location USA, Sand Mountain, Alabama / America Ethnic Group North Americans
A moving portrait of harp singers Leonard and Mazine Lacy. Sacred harp music is a kind of harmonised plainsong practised in rural America. This film was shot in Sand Mountain, Alabama, and is recommended for Ethnomusicology in particular.
Director Kim Longinotto, Jano Williams Country/Production UK Release 1997 Length 54 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region Location Japan, Tokyo / Asia Ethnic Group Japanese Collection Kim Longinotto
A film about love and gender. This film is set in the New Marilyn night club in Tokyo where all the hosts are women who have decided to live as men. They make their living by working in a club with other ‘onnabe’ like them. The young women who come there often have relationships with them but the underlying fear is whether such a relationship can withstand the pressures on a girl to get married and have children.
Series Granada Center for Visual Anthropology Student Film Director Sara Asadullah Country/Production UK Release 2009 Length 28 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region Location London, UK Ethnic Group Bengalis Language English, Bengali (engl.subt.) Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
Four scenes from a Bangladeshi community in London. Each scene is an encounter with a different generation (children, teenagers and adults) until the final scene where all generations are brought together in a wedding.
Director Ulrich Grossenbacher, Damaris Luethi Country/Production Switzerland Release 1997 Length 63 mins Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region Location India, Nagercoil, South Indian / Asia Ethnic Group Indian
The documentary, filmed during ethnographic field research, shows three portraits of ‘ordinary’ personalities — Mala, a young weaver sharing a one-bedroom house with nine siblings; Santa Cruz, once a fishtrader and now a healer and magician; and Muthiah, a videographer of upper class weddings — living in a neighbourhood in Nagercoil, a south Indian town. The aim of the video is to show the persons not as representatives of homogeneous masses, but to acknowledge them as individuals who nurse their own specific worries and strategies in a changing world. The protagonists thus themselves comment about their own lives and actions.
Series Granada Center for Visual Anthropology Student Film Director Stacey Williams Country/Production UK Release 2009 Length 23 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region Location Ecuador Ethnic Group Shuar Language Spanish with English subtitles Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
Shuar traditions and land are intimately tied to another. This film explores how the traditions and relationships change when foreign mining companies enter their territory.
Director Russel Hawkins Country/Production Australia Release 2001 Length 52 mins Format Colour, B&W / DVD / PAL / All region Location Salomon Islands / Pacific Language English (English sub) Collection NA
Set in the South Pacific, in a remote Solomon Islands village, SINCE THE COMPANY CAME is the story of a community coming to terms with social, cultural and ecological disintegration. When village leaders invite a Malaysian company to log their tribal land, the Haporai people of Rendova Island in the Solomon Islands find themselves at a difficult crossroads. Most of the men embrace the chance to earn money and participate in the modern economy; many of the women are more concerned with preserving the forests and traditions that sustain their families. At a village meeting, Chief Mark Lamberi calls into question the tribe's finances, only to find himself the target of furious accusations from the new 'big man' of the community and Chairman of the logging project, Timothy Zama. The community is embroiled in conflicts over land ownership and logging royalties, conflicts that threaten the very core of their traditional social values. Mary Bea and Katy Soapi are two village women who are desperate to stop the logging before it destroys their land. Although women are custodians of land according to matrilineal tradition, their power is severely diminished. Forests have become a source of money, and money is the domain of men. Mary tells us: "Men don't want to hear anything from women, but we women are actually the centre of life in our village." As Rendova's forest rapidly disappears, the loggers turn to Tetepare, a nearby, pristine island held sacred by the villagers. Evocative archival footage from the 1920's provides an insight into Solomon Islands' colonial experience, and raises questions about the ongoing legacy of colonialism. We witness the ongoing disruption of their land and society, and see those same forces at work internally within the people themselves, even to this day.
"The film has significant pedagogical value in anthropological, ecological, and economic instruction... The cinematography lends a sense of realism and sensitivity to the film. Guided only by visual imagery and indigenous voices, (the film goes) beyond western representations of global processes and faces (the viewer) with actual human impacts, illustrating the ongoing legacy of colonialism. We come to see that the manner of exploitation, which plays on vulnerabilities within traditional societies to the pressures and promises of westernization, has not changed much in the last century." Keith Prufer, Dept. of Anthropology, Auburn University, for Anthropology Review Database
Director Lina Fruzzetti, Ákos Östör Country/Production USA Release 2005 Length 45 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region Location India, Kolkata, West Bengal / Asia Prizes/Commendations Winner Material Culture &Archaelology Film Prize 2005
Material Culture and Archaeology Film Prize 2005 For generations the Patua (Chitrakara) communities of West Bengal have been painters and singers of stories depicted in scrolls. The film follows the daily lives of Muslim Patua women from Naya villages near Kolkata, which have formed a scroll painters' cooperative.
Director Kim Longinotto, Florence Ayisi Country/Production UK Release 2005 Length 104 mins Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region Location Cameroon / Africa Language English (English sub) Collection Kim Longinotto Prizes/Commendations Commendation Basil Wright Film Prize 2005
Six year old Manka has run away from home, fleeing her abusive aunt. Sonita has daringly accused her neighbor of rape. Amina has decided to end her brutal marriage by taking her husband to court. Set in Kumba, a small town in Southwest Cameroon, Sisters in Law follows the work of the female State Counsel and Court President as they try to help women to change their lives. Incredibly moving and at times disturbing, Kim Longinotto's latest film spectacularly encompasses courage, hope, and the possibility of change. Longinotto is known for her insightful, compassionate studies of women's lives, and the pull between tradition and change. (Audience Prize and Commendation Basil Wright Film Prize 2005)
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film Director Hugh Hartford Country/Production UK Release 2004 Length 37 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region Location Indonesia, Sumatra / Asia Ethnic Group Asian Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester Prizes/Commendations Commendation Student Film Prize 2005
Murray Collins leaves his city life in search of a bipedal ape. On his journey to highland Sumatra, he meets an academic, three farmers, two conservationists and a shaman, all of whom advise him on his search for the Orang Pendek, the 'small man of the forest'.
Series Disappearing World Series Director Leslie Woodhead, Sherry Ortner Country/Production UK Release 1977 Length 52 mins Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region Location Nepal / Asia Ethnic Group Nepalese
Thami is a village 12,000 feet up in the Himalayas in the Kingdom of Nepal. As the film's opening shots illustrate, in a type of filmic short-hand, Thami is composed of a patchwork of individual farms – indicative of the Sherpa emphasis on independence and family self-sufficiency. The main concern of the film is to examine what it means to be Sherpa today in both cultural and economic terms: to this end the film concentrates on the varied career choices of three brothers from Thami – peasant farmer, Buddhist monk and head guide. Interviews with the brothers, enabling them to express their own attitudes and expectations, deepen the analysis. The second half of the film deals with the preparations for the festivities of a Sherpa wedding, emphasising that negotiations about bridewealth are lengthy – often taking years – since marriage is viewed primarily as an economic transaction. Sequences showing peasant farming activities, in combination with scenes of Sherpa life in Katmandu, contrast the old way of life with the new and illustrate the changing socio-economic conditions encountered by Sherpas today. C. von Furer-Haimendorf, 1964. The Sherpas of Nepal. University of California Press, Berkeley. E. von Furer-Haimendorf, 1977. Review of the film. RAIN, 21, pp. 7–8. S.B. Ortner, 1978. Sherpas through their Rituals. Cambridge Studies in Cultural Systems, No.2. Cambridge University Press.
Series The Well Being Quest in Botswana Director Richard Werbner Country/Production UK Release 2006 Length 60 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region Location Botswana, Moremi Village, Gaborone / Africa Language Tswapong, English (English sub) University University of Manchester
Set in Moremi village within Botswana’s awesome Tswapong hills, the film makes village elders self-consciously reflexive. The elders, including a controversial healer, view and discuss an earlier film of his séances with a participant, a former patient, now the anthropologist’s research assistant.
Their main subject is Seriti. Literally ‘Shade’, the idea ties dignity, power and charisma to the light in which a person is seen by others, the dead and the ancestors above all. The healer’s own Seriti is regarded at risk. He is accused of polluting the earth, of wrongly mixing the Christian and the non-Christian, of making the public private for personal gain. Elders condemn him but he defends his God-given mission for ‘the original way’. The film discloses the intimate play of light and dark in villagers’ lives, their concern for well-being and the public good, against the background of séances, a funeral, a wedding, and a sacrifice to restore communication with the ancestors.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film Director Declan Healey Country/Production UK Release 2004 Length 28 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region Location Ireland, UK / Europe Ethnic Group Ireland Traveller community (nomadic people) Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
Ireland's Traveller community - traditionally a rural nomadic people - have survived despite the effects of modernisation. Based around the experiences of one particular Traveller community in Cork, this film looks at the ways in which Traveller culture and identity have altered as a result of broader changes within Ireland and asks what the future may hold for a people who have come under increasing presssure to settle.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film Director Hanna Musleh Country/Production UK Release 1991 Length 46 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region Location Palestine / Asia Ethnic Group Palestinian Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester Prizes/Commendations Commendation Student Film Prize 1992
The chronicle of a wedding in a village in Palestine under Israeli occupation at the time of the first Intifada, this film looks at the lives of the bride and groom, and their families. Attitudes toward marriage, the role of women and politics are undergoing great changes, and, despite the military presence, there is hope for the future.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film Director Anne-Katrine Hansen Country/Production UK Release 2007 Length 30 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region Location India, Kerala / Asia Collection University GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
From temples to recording studios of Kochi, Kerala in South India, we follow four musicians -a student and his master, a professional and a promoter - all uniquely devoted to the music that permeates life in India. Most, if not all, members of a family will know how to play the tabla, a popular instrument in Indian music culture. God is believed to be a lover of music and so great care is taken to pass on the skill from generation to generation
Director John Baily Country/Production UK Release 2007 Length 97 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL or NTSC / All region Location Various locations, London, Kabul, Hamburg Dublin / Europe Ethnic Group Dari speaking people from Afghanistan Language Dari amd English, English subtitles) University Goldsmiths, Afghanistan Music Unit, Dept. of Music
Scenes of Afghan Music is Part IV of A Quartet of Afghan Music Films, made in the author’s personal “fieldwork movie” style. It reveals the diversity of music and dance practices in the Afghan transnational community: old and new, male and female, public and private, amateur and professional, controlled and uncontrolled.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film Director Navarro Smith Country/Production UK Release 2000 Length 30 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region Location Mexico, Chiapas / America Ethnic Group Mexican indigenous people Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
A series of portraits of life in a Zapatista indigenous community in Chiapas, Southern Mexico. This film invites us into the people's everyday lives, and presents their own views of the fight against misrepresentation and oppression.
Director David MacDougall Country/Production Australia Release 2007 Length 77 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region Location India / Asia Ethnic Group Indian Language English Collection MacDougall University Centre for Cross-Cultural Research, Australian National University Prizes/Commendations Basil Wright Film Prize 2007
Inspired by the cinema of Lumière and the ideas of the 20th century Indian thinker Jiddu Krishnamurti, David MacDougall follows up the Doon School Quintet, his series of films about a traditional school in North India, with this film made at the Rishi Valley School, a famous progressive co-educational school in Andhra Pradesh, South India.
Throughout his life, Krishnamurti taught that one should strive to observe the things around one more calmly and clearly. This was also how cinema began, and what excited its first audiences. SchoolScapes attempts to recapture that freshness of observing the world. It is dedicated to the simple act of looking, in which each scene is a single shot. (Winner Basil Wright Film Prize 2007)
Series The Well Being Quest in Botswana Director Richard Werbner Country/Production UK Release 2004 Length 45 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region Location Botswana / Africa Ethnic Group Tswapong Language Tswapong, English (English sub University University of Manchester Comments Special price 4 for 3, when buying the whole series
Njebe and Martha are a childless couple living in Botswana’s capital. Seeking to recover their well-being, they consult a charismatic diviner and healer, in Njebe’s old village, Moremi. They watch their filmed séances on a monitor and reflect with ethnographer Richard Werbner.
Moved by the diviner’s revelations, about their intimate lives, they try to make sense of the séances puzzling moments. They wonder about the diviner’s rapid recital of highly ambiguous, archaic verse, his leading them in chants of call and response, and his preaching against Christianity and for restored communication with the ancestors. They express their doubts about the healing treatment.
The film turns back and forth in time, and it moves across town and country. It follows the uncertainties of interpretation during and after séances, the blaming of occult attack on others, and the understanding of personal responsibility for failure to be caring of kin. It illuminates predicaments of urban villagers who straddle the city and the village.
Director Lina Fruzzetti, Alfred Guzzetti, Ned Johnston, Akos Östör Country/Production USA Release 1989 Length 36 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region Location Bangladesh, Janta, near Bishnupur town / Asia Ethnic Group Indian Comments Study guide available
Seed on Earth is a film about everyday life in rural Bangladesh (village of Janta, near Bishnupur town). It follows the daily schedule of two families and observes the complementary and difference of gender and generation in work, ritual and leisure activities of men and women, adults and children. The film reveals the strong links between the sacred and social life, the events and ideas of family, cultivation and worship. Village life and people are presented through their own activities in their own words in naturally occurring situations.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film Director Maria Elena Planas Country/Production UK Release 2002 Length 28 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region Location Peru, Ayacucho / America Ethnic Group Peruvian Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
With the Shining Path guerilla movement in decline, the government in Peru set up a Commission for Peace and Reconciliation to hear the testimonies of those who had suffered in the war. Framed by the Commission's hearings in Ayacucho, this film follows one of the witnesses back to her village in the mountains and hears of the terrible atrocities that were committed there.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film Director Julie Milling Country/Production UK Release 2003 Length 28 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region Location Denmark, Christiania, Copenhagen / Europe Ethnic Group Danish Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
Christiania is a self-governing community in the heart of Copenhagen set up by squatters at the height of 1970s idealism. Faced with extinction or urban redevelopment, residents struggle to redefine a fading ideology.
Director Harry Powell Country/Production UK Release 1952 Length 67 mins Format Colour, B&W / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region Location Papua Neuguinea, Omarakana, Trobriand Islands / Pacific Ethnic Group Trobriand Islanders Comments Study guide available.
During his field work in the region of Omarakana, H.A.Powell filmed various sequences from which the film is assembled. In spite of the technical handicaps under which he was operating — shooting with a single, fixed-focus lens, 16mm camera without tripod — the film is nevertheless useful as a teaching aid. The commentary concentrates on the ethnography of Trobriand life.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film Director Cristina Grasseni Country/Production UK Release 1998 Length 30 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL or NTSC / All region Location Italian Alps / Europe Ethnic Group Italian Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
An observational documentary about dairy farmers in the Italian Alps Caught between pride for tradition and the pressure for modernisation, the story of one family is told through the eyes of teenager Sara, full of hopes and doubts, and of her grandmother, tired and frustrated after a life of hard work.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film Director Rebecca Savage Country/Production UK Release 2006 Length 22 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region Location Mexico / America Ethnic Group Nahuatl Language Spanish (English sub) Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
The ‘Quinceañera’ celebration is a lived illusion. A day dream shared by the whole community of Tetlanohcan, a rapidly urbanising agricultural town in Tlaxcala, Central Mexico. The dream is shared even by those living and working in the USA. 'Tiempo de Vals' mixes observational footage and testimonials from three generations of women to analyse the meaning of the celebration in the context of the massive social and economic changes in this part of Mexico over the last 40 years.
Director M. Trinh Nguyen Country/Production USA Release 1998 Length 57 mins Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region Location Vietnam / Asia Ethnic Group Viatnamese Language English & Vietnamese w/subtitles Prizes/Commendations Basil Wright Film Prize 2000
Tiger's Apprentice is the story of m. Trinh Nguyen's journey to her native Vietnam. She observes and documents her great-uncle's folk medicine practices treating many patients and making his medicines for tumours, leprosy, and infections. She also seeks out people cured by her great-uncle, talks to local doctors and herbalists, battle Vietnamese government censors fearful her footage might make them seem backward to the Western world, and ultimately realises that through her investigation she has unwittingly begun to apprentice.
Director Dawa T Lepcha, Anna Balikci-Denjongpa, Asen Balikci Country/Production India Release 2005 Length 60 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region Location India, Dzongu reserve, North Sikkim / Asia Ethnic Group Lepcha
The film illustrates the changes the Lepcha of the Dzongu reserve, North Sikkim, have been through in the last 60 years. From the 1940s, the Lepcha of Tingvong village gradually abandoned hunting, gathering and the slash and burn cultivation of dry rice, and became settled agriculturalists. Entire mountains sides were converted to cardamom and terraced for the cultivation of irrigated paddy. The irrigated rice and the cardamom cash crop not only brought the Lepcha within Sikkim’s market economy but helped create a surplus which could among other things be invested in religion. In the 1940s, the Lepcha of Tingvong embraced Buddhism and all its complex rituals without however abandoning their strong shamanic traditions. Today, both forms of rituals amiably co-exist in the village. This film is part of a long-term visual anthropology training project for the tribal communities of Sikkim. The first phase aims to document the social life and rituals of the Lepcha of Dzongu. We have accumulated over 100 hours of material which is archived at the institute for research use. This is the first film edited from the material. Short thematic films will be edited for museum use in Sikkim
Director David MacDougall Country/Production Australia Release 1978 Length 70 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region Location Australia Collection MacDougall
An important historical film of events surrounding early meetings of the Northern Land Council in 1977, where uranium mining, land rights and Aboriginal leadership were the key issues.
Director David MacDougall Country/Production Australia / USA Release 1972 Length 90 mins Format B&W / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region Location Uganda, North-eastern Uganda / Africa Ethnic Group Jie Collection MacDougall
The Jie are semi-nomadic pastoral people living in North-eastern Uganda, who are striving to maintain their way of life in the face of unsympathetic government policy, and, at the time of filming, a dry-season famine.
Director Luc de Heusch Country/Production Belgium Release 1983 Length 48 mins Format Colour, B&W / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region Location Mali / Africa Ethnic Group Dogon
This film tells with verve and a touch of self-irony the history of research on the Dogon since the famous 1931 expedition of Marcel Griaule. The film establishes the original expedition in the context of French anthropology at the time. Jean Rouch, celebrated filmmaker and less known as an anthropologist on the Dogon, narrates part of the story, and interviews Dogon elders and veteran expedition-member, Germaine Dieterlen.
Director Johannes Sjøberg Country/Production UK/Sweden Release 2007 Length 58 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region Location Brazil, Sao Paulo / America Ethnic Group Brazilian Language Portuguese (English sub) Collection S
Transfiction explores 'ethnofiction' - an experimental ethnographic documentary film style in which the participants collaborate with the filmmaker to act out their own and others' life experiences in improvisations. The film focuses on identity and discrimination in the daily lives of transgendered Brazilians living in São Paulo. Fabia Mirassos projects her life through the role of Meg, a transsexual hairdresser confronting intolerance and re-living memories of abuse. Savana 'Bibi' Meirelles plays Zilda who makes her living as one of the many transgendered sex workers in São Paulo, as she struggles to find her way out of prostitution.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film Director Henriette Levaulx-Vrecourt Country/Production UK Release 2001 Length 31 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region Location India, Ladakh / Asia Ethnic Group Ladakhi Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
In Tia village, in an isolated area of Ladakh - North West India - lives an amchi (a local herbal doctor) and his wife. It is summer - a short season in the Indian Himalayas and the only period of the year when food harvesting is possible, after which the country gets cold and isolated for eight months. Watch as the amchi devotes his time both to this intense process as well as to healing the local community.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film Director Mari Finnestad Country/Production UK Release 2002 Length 32 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region Location Zimbabwe / Africa, Norway / Europe Ethnic Group African, Norwegian Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
The Zimbabwean girls' team comes to Norway to take part in the world's largest kids' football tournament. The film questions the outcome of this well-intentioned cultural exchange because some of the girls begin to wish that they were white
Director Kim Longinotto, Claire Pollack Country/Production UK Release 1979 Length 57 mins Format B&W / DVD / PAL / All region Location UK, Soho, London / Europe Ethnic Group English Collection Kim Longinotto
The “Theatre Girls Club” is a hostel for homeless, destitute and alcoholic women in Soho, London. It is run by six paid workers and it is the only hostel in London which takes any women at any time. The filmmakers lived in the hostel for more than two months, establishing an extraordinary level of trust with their “cast” —from the home’s feisty cook to an elderly resident who was a terminal alcoholic. In what will later be recognized as a signature style, Longinotto films without judgement and finds the humor and humanity in situations and characters that might otherwise be seen as tragic.
Series Disappearing World Series Director David Wason, Annette Weiner Country/Production UK Release 1990 Length 52 mins Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region Location Papua New Guinea, Trobriand Island / Pacific Ethnic Group Trobriands
The Trobriand Islands lie off the eastern tip of Papua New Guinea. The island society has a complex balance of male authority and female wealth. Magic spells and sorcery pervade everyday life. This programme focuses on two important events: the distribution of women's wealth after a death and the "month of play", a time of celebration following the yam harvest.
Series Disappearing World Series Director Charlie Nairn Anthropologist Jeremy Keenan Country/Production UK Release 1972 Length 52 mins Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region Location Algeria, Hoggar Mountains near Tamanrasset / Africa Ethnic Group Tuareg
This film is about a group of nomadic Tuareg living high up in the Hoggar Mountains near Tamanrasset in Algeria. The main focus of the film is the collapse of the former economic basis of their camps. In 1962 the Algerian government banned the system of slavery and contract labour which had helped to keep the Tuareg camps supplied with grain. Now, instead of undertaking 500 mile long trading journeys to Niger, Tuareg buy grain in Tamanrasset with money obtained form selling cheap leather goods to the burgeoning tourist trade. The commentary, by Jeremy Keenan, also introduces aspects of the Tuareg kinship system, and material about the social life of the group. The second part of the film concentrates on the devastating effects of the recent drought on this way of life. The pasture is now so poor that camps have to move more frequently, and so traditional patterns of life are being abandoned in favour of a sedentary existence as cultivators alongside the Tuareg's former slaves. J. Keenan, 1978. The Tuareg: People of Ahaggar. Allen Lane, London. R. F. Murphy, 1974. Review of the film. American Anthropologist, Vol. 76, pp. 212–213.
Series Disappearing World Series Director Peter Carr, William Kavanagh Country/Production UK Release 1989 Length 52 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region Location Spain, Navalguijo, Sierra de Gredos of Central Spain / Europe
The 130 villagers of Navalguijo in the Sierra de Gredos of Central Spain live in a village perched high in the mountains and they face an extreme climate with very cold winters and hot summers. The soil is acid and poor, and the steep slopes and short growing season mean that agriculture cannot provide a living. Collectively the villagers own summer pastures high in the mountains, and individually they hold smaller autumn pastures. With access to winter pastures across the mountains in the region of Extremadura, they are able to maintain a large herd of beef cattle, which form their main source of wealth and which are their dearest possessions. To make this film, the crew joined the village men on their trek to Extremadura, when they drive their cattle down the mountains. This cattle drive is a mixture of hard work and holiday, with passing round of leather wine bottles, story-telling and evening stopovers at favourite inns punctuating the long march. This film portrays a society whose ideals of village co-operation and the rigid and efficient organisation of tasks have given the village a strong sense of identity over generations. It remains to be seen if this sense of identity survives the breakdown of their isolation from the outside world as tourists discover `hidden Spain' and better communications and roads bring increasing contact with the rest of the country. S. Brandes, 1975. Migration, Kinship and Community: Tradition in a Spanish Village. Academic Press, London. [Examines a village not far from the one in the film, but whose economy and style of life are very different.] G. Brenan, 1957. South from Granada. Hamish Hamilton, London. J. Pitt-Rivers, 1971. The People of the Sierra. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. [Although the book deals with Andalusia and not with Old Castille where the film is set, it is considered a classic of Spanish anthropology.] S. Tax-Freeman, 1970. Neighbours: The Social Contract in a Castillian Hamlet. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. S. Tax-Freeman, 1979. The Pasiegos: Spaniards in No-man's Land. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. [Deals with cattle herders in Santander whose way of life is quite different from that of the villagers in the film.]
Director André Singer, Steven Lansing Country/Production UK/ USA Release 1989 Length 52 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL or NTSC / All region Location Indonesia, Bali / Asia
The film demonstrates how in Bali, development projects can threaten a carefully balanced ecological irrigation system that is maintained by temple priests. A biologist and an anthropologist look at the traditional irrigation system and show through the use of a computer how it works. They then present the computer system to the temple priests as an aid to explore the effect of changes in the traditional irrigation system.
Series Indonesia Series, ANU, DVD 2 Director J. Fox, Timothy Asch, Patsy Asch Country/Production Australia Release 1983 Length 30 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region Location Indonesia, Roti / Asia Ethnic Group Rotinese University Australian National University
This film examines the ecology and poetry of everyday life. Two Rotinese narrate this film, each offering his perception of the importance of the Lontar (Borassus) palm: a clan leader describes the many practical uses of the palm; a poet tells of its origin and mythic significance. The film complements Fox’s book, The Harvest of the Palm, as well as his essays on ritual language.
Series Turkana Conversations 3 Director Judith MacDougall, David MacDougall Country/Production Australia / USA Release 1976 Length 108 mins Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region Location Kenya / Africa Ethnic Group Turkana Prizes/Commendations RAI Film Prize 1980
Also about individuals from the Turkana in north-western Kenya (see Lorang’s Way and A Wife Among Wives), this film chronicles a series of events which surround the marriage of Lorang’s daughter Akai to Kongu, his agemate. A large section of the film is concerned with a dispute which arises over the number and size of large and small animals — goats and camels — to be given as bridewealth to Lorang and his kin.
Series Disappearing World Series Director John Blake, Robert Barnes Country/Production UK Release 1988 Length 52 mins Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region Location Indonesia, Lembata, Nusa Tenggara Timur, Eastern Indonesia / Asia
The Whale Hunters of Lamalera was filmed over a period of four weeks during June 1987. Lamalera is a village which is perched on the rocky slopes of an active volcano on the southern coast of the island of Lembata, in Nusa Tenggara Timur in eastern Indonesia. An anonymous Portuguese document of 1624 describes the islanders as hunting whales with harpoons for their oil, and implies that they collected and sold ambergris. This report confirms that whaling took place in the waters of the Suva Sea at least two centuries before the appearance of American and English whaling ships at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The film follows the daily life of the villagers of Lamalera, a community of about 1500 people. The Christian Mission has been in place in the community for a hundred years, schools have been established and a training workshop teaches carpentry. It is a fishing village in a region where most communities support themselves by agriculture. Lamalera has very little productive land, so the villagers have to fish in order to survive. Their preferred quarry is sperm whale. Catching sperm whale with hand-thrown harpoons from small open boats powered by muscle and palm-leaf sail is no easy task, and the hunt is by no means uneven between man and whale. The tail flukes of a whale can smash the timbers of the boats and many boats are temporarily disabled by their prey. Harpooners have been disabled and killed. But the attraction of the whale is its size. The flesh of the whale (and shark and manta ray) is cut into strips and sun dried in the village. The meat is then carried to small markets where it is bartered with mountain villagers. One strip of dried fish or meat is equivalent to twelve ears of maize, twelve bananas, twelve pieces of dried sweet potatoes, twelve sections of sugar cane, or twelve sirih peppers plus twelve pinang nuts. Commercial whaling is banned throughout much of the world, but subsistence whaling is permitted by International Whaling Commission regulations in Alaska, the USA, the USSR and Greenland. Indonesia is not, however, a signatory to the IWC. Seven whales were caught in Lamalera in 1987. R. Barnes, 1989. The Ikat Textiles of Lamalera. E.J. Brill, Leiden. R.H. Barnes, 1974. `Lamalerap: A Whaling Village in Eastern Indonesia'. Indonesia, No. 17, pp. 137–59. R.H. Barnes, 1984. Whaling Off Lembata: The Effects of a Development Project on an Indonesian Community. IWGIA Document 48. International Workgroup On Indigenous Affairs, Copenhagen. R.H. Barnes, 1985. `Whaling Vessels of Indonesia'. In S. McGrail and E Kentley (eds.) Sewn Plank Boats. British Archaeological Reports, Oxford. R.H. Barnes and R. Barnes, 1989. Barter and Money in an Indonesian Village Economy. Man N.S., Vol. 24, pp. 399–418. R. Ellen, 1988. Review of the film. Anthropology Today, Vol. 4, No. 5, pp. 23–24.
Series Disappearing World Series Director Leslie Woodhead, Mette Bovin Country/Production UK Release 1988 Length 52 mins Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region Location Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon / Africa Ethnic Group Wodaabe
... is the Wodaabe world disappearing? and how are we to place the painted male faces? The very considerable success of this film is the ways it answers these questions. J. Picto The Wodaabe follow their herds in an endless migration across the borders of Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon in search of pasture. The droughts which have ravaged the Sahel since the late 1960s have devastated Wodaabe cattle herds, and this film looks at the daily pattern of survival of one hard-pressed family group at the height of the dry season. Gorjo bi Rima and his family have been the focus of Mette Bovin's fieldwork since 1968 and she has seen his herds decline from more than 300 cows to less than half a dozen. Yet, as she emphasises, the Wodaabe see their life as a balance between hardship and joy, and the film expresses this in sequences which record a child's naming feast and the Wodaabe's obsession with male beauty and adornment. `We like beauty,' Gorjo says. `We like to see people who are young and handsome and this is why we put on make-up.' The elaborate make-up of the young men and their dances, a kind of male beauty contest to gain the attention of women, are linked to a complex system of taboos which the Wodaabe insist they will maintain despite mounting pressures to abandon their nomadic lives. For another view of the Wodaabe and additional bibliographic references, see the entry for Deep Hearts (in RAI Film Library Catalogue Volume II). A.M. Bonfiglioli, 1988. Dudal. Histoire de Famille et Histoire de Troupeau Chez un Groupe de Wodaabe du Niger. Cambridge University Press. M. Bovin, 1974/5. `Ethnic Performances in Rural Niger: An Aspect of Ethnic Boundary Maintenance'. Folk (Copenhagen), Vol. 16/17, pp. 459–74. M. Bovin, 1985. `Nomades "Sauvages" et Paysans "Civilisés": Wodaabe et Kanuri au Borno'. Journal des Africanistes, Vol. 55, No. 1/2, pp. 53–73. M. Bovin, 1990. `Nomads of the Drought: Fulbe and Wodaabe Nomads between Power and Marginalisation (Burkina Faso and Niger Republic)'. In M. Bovin and L. Manger (eds.) Adaptive Strategies in African Arid Lands. Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, Uppsala. M. Bovin, 1990. `"Mariages de la Maison" et "Mariages de la Brousse" dans les Sociétés Peules, WoDaaBe et Kanuri autour du Lac Tchad'. In N. Echard et al (eds.) 4ème Colloque MEGA-TCHAD. ORSTOM and CNRS, Paris. M. Dupire, 1975 (1962). Peuls Nomades. Etude Descriptive des WoDaaBe du Sahel Nigérien. Institut d'Ethnologie, Paris. J. Picton, 1988. Review of the film. Anthropology Today, Vol. 4, No. 5, p. 23. C. Ver Eecke, 1989. Review of the film. American Anthropologist, Vol. 91, pp. 835–36. C. White, 1984. `Herd Reconstruction; The Role of Credit Among WoDaabe Herders in Central Niger'. Cambridge Anthropology Vol.9, No.2, pp.30–42.
Director Gary Kildea, Jerry Leach Country/Production UK / USA Release 1974 Length 50 mins Format Colour, B&W / DVD / PAL / All region Location Papua New Guinea, Trobriand Islands / Pacific Ethnic Group Trobriand Islanders
The film documents the transformation by the Trobriand Islanders of the game of cricket, first introduced by British missionaries into a highly distinctive political ritual. Shot in 1973-1974, shortly before the independence of Papua New Guinea, the film was made with the active co-operation of the Kabisawali Movement, a local political organisation.The film has been enthusiastically received by anthropologists, television audiences, film festivals and (most important, perhaps) by the Trobriand sponsors. However, much of the film’s political dimension is related to the way in which it was made, the type of co-operation between Trobriand sponsors and makers, and its role in Kabisawali propaganda, factors which are not explicitly part of the film’s content.
Director Graham Johnston Country/Production UK Release 1985 Length 47 mins Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region Location Alaskar, Kobuk River, USA / America Ethnic Group Kuvanmiit Eskimo Comments Joint purchase with Muktuk recommended
Tuktu is the Kuvanmiit Eskimo word for caribou. The film traces the early evolution of Ambler, founded almost 30 years ago on the Kobuk River in Alaska. Change and development mark life now in this village near an old caribou migration path. Subsistence values face rapid Westernization, but the villagers’ desire to combine their old way of life with the new remains the strongest force.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film Director Andy Benfield Country/Production UK Release 1999 Length 25 mins Format Colour / PAL / All region Location UK / Europe Ethnic Group English Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
Duncan Williamson is of Traveller descent and lives in Scotland, Amy Douglas is fifty years younger and lives in Cheshire. But they share a love for telling stories and both manage to make a living from it. The film shows them telling stories to school children, fair-goers, tourists as well as to the film-maker. The stories they tell are filled with timeless heroes and an otherworldly charm. Around a camp-fire at night, they meet to discuss their art and their passion for it.
Director Rahul Roy Country/Production India Release 2000 Length 43 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region Location Delhi, India Ethnic Group Indian Language Hindi with English subtitles
Bunty, Kamal, Sanjay and Sanju, best of friends and residents of Jehangiripuri, a working class colony on the outskirts of Delhi are young and trying to make their lives in an environment which is changing rapidly…girls seem to be very bold…stable jobs are not easy to come by…sex is a strange mix of guilt and pleasure…families are claustrophobic…and the blur of television the only sounding board…
Series Disappearing World Series Director André Singer, John Ryle Country/Production UK Release 1982 Length 52 mins Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL or NTSC / All region Location Ghana Ethnic Group Azande
`Witchcraft among the Azande' is suitable for showing in undergraduate and graduate classes on topics of religion, philosophy, and African ethnography. It could also be stimulating to discussions of psychology and medicine. The success of the Granada series on public television in England indicates its appeal to a much wider audience as well. P. Leis Evans-Pritchard's book Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande has become a classic of both ethnography and theories of witchcraft. Now, anthropologist John Ryle and film-maker André Singer, who was himself one of Evans-Pritchard's students and has published on the Azande, have teamed together to produce the film Witchcraft among the Azande for Granada Television's Disappearing World series. Singer wanted to learn for himself the accuracy of Evans-Pritchard's analysis and to note the changes since the original fieldwork carried out between 1926 and 1930. Among the Azande, witchcraft is considered to be a major danger. They believe that witchcraft can be inherited and that a person can be a witch, causing others harm, without realising her or his influence. Because of this danger, effective means of diagnosing witchcraft are, for them, vital. One method is through the use of an oracle. Several kinds of oracles are explored in the film, the most important being benge, a poison which is fed to baby chickens. The chick's death or survival provides the oracle's answer. Azande also use benge to judge other evidence in a court before a chief. Anthropologists have long argued about the nature and significance of beliefs in witchcraft and sorcery and, more generally, about the similarities and differences between `traditional' thought and Western science. This film treads a delicate path, exploring an explanation of reality incomprehensible to a majority of Westerners and, at the same time, trying to portray the Azande as a clear-thinking, and almost familiar group of people. In this aim the film succeeds by creating a tension whereby the oracle's answers are important to the viewers because they have become involved and are forming their own opinions about the guilt or innocence of the defendants. Zande is not a static society and much has changed since Evans-Pritchard's original fieldwork. The area filmed is influenced by Catholicism; people are Christian, but the church cannot give answers to many of the questions of the Azande people. The older people see their children abandoning traditional moral and other values. For this schism, the older people seem to blame the government more than the church as the church teaches a value system consonant with the traditional one. Yet, alongside the Christian influence and changes among the younger generation, the power of beliefs in witchcraft and oracles remains. If Singer wanted to give support to Evans-Pritchard's ethnography, he has done so with Witchcraft among the Azande. Catalogue number (VHS): RA/VHS141 £8. J. Beattie, 1982. Review of the film. RAIN, No. 50, pp. 19-20. M. Douglas, 1967. `Witch Beliefs in Central Africa'. Africa, Vol. 37, pp. 72-80. M. Douglas (ed.), 1970. Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations. Tavistock, London. E.E. Evans-Pritchard, 1937. Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande. Faber and Faber, London. E.E. Evans-Pritchard, 1971. The Azande: History and Political Institutions, Clarendon Press, Oxford. E.E. Evans-Pritchard, 1974.(ed.) Man and Woman among the Azande. Faber and Faber, London. E. Gero, 1968. Death among the Azande of the Sudan (Beliefs, Rites, Cults). Nigrizia Press, Bologna. [A Catholic priest's impressions of witchcraft after living with the Azande for thirty years.] R. Horton, 1967. `African Traditional Thought and Western Science. 1 and 2'. Africa, Vol. 37, pp. 50-71 and pp. 155-87. [African ideas of causation, differences from Western beliefs.] P. Leis, 1984. Review of the film. American Anthropologist, Vol. 86, pp. 1066-67. L.Mair, 1969. Witchcraft, Weidenfield and Nicholson, London. C.C. Reining, 1966. The Zande Scheme, Northwestern University Press, Evanston Illin
Series Doon School Project Director David MacDougall Country/Production Australia Release 2001 Length 110 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL Location Dehra Dun, Uttaranchal, India / Asia Ethnic Group Indian Collection MacDougall Comments Special rate for ordering whole Doon School Series, 5 for 4
This film continues MacDougall's long-term study of an elite boys' boarding school in northern India. It focuses on a group of twelve-year-olds during their first year in one of the 'houses' for new boys. The film concerns their attachment to the house, but, more importantly, their attachment to one another in a communal life. It follows, in particular, the experiences of one boy and several of his close associates, from their initial homesickness, to their life as member of the group, to their separation from the house at the end of the year.
Director Hua Cai Country/Production China Release 1995 Length 26 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL or NTSC / All region Location China, South-East / Asia Ethnic Group Na Prizes/Commendations Winner of the JVC Student Video Film Prize 1996
The Na are an ethnic group in south-east China. Their particularity is that all the members of each household are consanguineous relatives; their social organisation is absolutely matrilineal and as incest is prohibited, like elsewhere, their sexual life mainly takes the form of nocturnal visits of men to women.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film Director Joanna Hill Country/Production UK Release 1997 Length 22 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region Location Indonesia, Java / Asia Ethnic Group Javanese Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
Jaipongan is a new style of music and dancing which was ‘invented’ about a decade ago on Western Java, Indonesia. Drawing on more classical Javanese music and taking elements from Japanese and Indian music as well, Jaipongan has become widely popular. D
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Staff Film Director Paul Henley Country/Production UK Release 1996 Length 30 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region Location Venezuela / America Ethnic Group Panare Indians Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
Marie-Claude Muller is a linguist who has worked for many years with the Panare, an Amerindian people of Venezuelan Amazonia. She has now been commissioned by the government literacy programme to prepare reading primers in Panare. Writing Panare shows her gathering a range of materials for the primers, from zoological taxonomies to myths. She is also shown working with Panare schoolteachers on an alphabet to accommodate local dialectical variations. These scenes are intercut with an interview in which she describes the principles underlying the literacy programme and considers its role in helping the Panare confront the consequences of contact with the national society. The film also features three myths told at length by a senior Panare man as well as scenes of everyday life in a number of different Panare communities.
Director Laurent van Lancker, Robin Shuffield Country/Production Belgium Release 1998 Length 52 mins Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region Location Ivory Coast, West Africa Ethnic Group African Prizes/Commendations Basil Wright Film Prize 1998
Winner of the (RAI) Basil Wright Film Prize 1998 Ymako Teatri, a theatre company based in Ivory Coast, uses street theatre to question some contemporary West-African problems. Their originality consists in using the ‘invisible theatre’ method in order to surprise the public and thus make it react itself to its own problems. This documentary shows how a local theatre company efficiently uses fiction to problematise today’s African reality. This film presents two performances, one criticises the current proliferation of religious sects, the other deals with the awakening of villagers towards AIDS. Ymako, in Bambara, means ‘our concerns’.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film Director Joao Nicolau Country/Production UK Release 1999 Length 29 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region Location Cape Verde / Africa Ethnic Group African Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
Cape Verde is an archipelago situated 500km off the West Coast of Africa. On the island of Santiago lives Mano Mendi, the last player of cimboa, a one-string violin used to accompany the traditional batuque music. Through the portrait of Mano Mendi and the learning experience of To, a music teacher in the capital city Praia, the film shows us how this music is rooted in the rhythms of everyday life.
Director Frank Speed, Raymond Prince Country/Production USA, Nigeria Release 1963 Length 30 mins Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region Location Nigeria Ethnic Group Yoruba Language English Collection Frank Speed Film Collection on Nigeria
This ethnopsychiatric film shows the management of psychiatric disorders by the Yoruba of Nigeria. There are two basic types of institutions to deal with psychiatric disorders. First there are treatment centres managed by herbalists and diviners with specialist knowledge of traditional psychiatric therapy. Second there are cult groups that provide a setting for the expression of otherwise socially unacceptable behaviour through ‘possession’ and masquerade dances. The film shows a number of aspects of both types of institution, including sequences of male Gelede masqueraders and women of the Egun possession cult. In spite of the diversity of ethno-medical practices which are portrayed, the film has been criticised for not drawing sufficient distinction between major and minor forms of healing.
R.G. Armstrong, 1967. Review of the film. American Anthropologist, Vol.69, p.426.
P.C. Lloyd, 1965. 'The Yoruba of Nigeria'. In J.L. Gibbs (ed.), Peoples of Africa. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York. (General ethnographic material on the Yoruba.)
R. Prince (ed.), 1968. Trance and Possession States. Proceedings of the Second Annual Conference, R.M. Bucke Memorial Society, Montreal.
A. Seronde, 1975. Review of the film. American Anthropologist, Vol-77, pp.181-182.
Series Disappearing World Series Director Debbie Christie, Tone Bringa Country/Production UK Release 1993 Length 52 mins Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL or NTSC / All region Location Bosnia, Sarajevo / Europe Ethnic Group Bosnian Prizes/Commendations Winner RAI Film Prize 1994
The effect of war on families in a racially mixed village outside Sarajevo, Bosnia, where Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Moslems ahve hitherto lived peacefully together. In January, year, Disappearing World set out to make a film about how war affected families and friendships in a village in Bosnia. Eight weeks after they finished filming, they heard that violence had erupted there.This is the programme they made earlier in the year, followed by the film of their return visit.
