Director David MacDougall
Country/Production Australia
Release 2005
Length 74 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location India / Asia
Ethnic Group Indian
Language English
Collection MacDougall
Order No RAI-200.327
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A film about the famous experimental, co-educational boarding school in South India, the Rishi Valley School, founded by the influential Indian thinker Krishnamurti.
In this film about a progressive co-educational boarding school in South India, young boys and girls jokingly accuse each other of being like "alien creatures." In exploring this divide the filmmaker, David MacDougall, examines the lives of three boys at the school: Ashutosh, aged 10, Anjney, aged 12, and Deepak, aged 14. The engaging portraits that emerge reveal the thoughts and resourcefulness of the boys as well as their problems, dreams, and daily activities. The film gives an insight into contemporary Indian childhood which should catch the interest of Australian children of the same age. At the same time, it presents the everyday reality of one of India's most famous schools, founded on the educational ideas of Krishnamurti, one of India's most prominent 20th century thinkers. The film will be especially useful in opening up discussions about gender relations
Series Strangers Abroad, Programme 6
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 Africa
Comments Special price for series, 6 for 5
Order No RAI-200.280
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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 Dominic Elliot
Country/Production UK
Release 2002
Length 32 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Malawi, Blantyre / Africa
Ethnic Group African
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
Order No RAI-200.3054
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Through combining their own dramatic reconstructions and real life observation, this film tells the story of children who run away from their homes in search of a better life on the streets of Blantyre, Malawi.
Director Jean Hellwig
Country/Production UK
Release 1988
Length 46 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Indonesia, Java / Asia
Ethnic Group Indonesian
Order No RAI-200.208
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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. Dancers and musicians explain the place of Jaipongan within Sundanese culture.
Director David MacDougall, Judith MacDougall
Country/Production Australia
Release 1986
Length 86 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Australia, New South Wales / Pacific
Ethnic Group Australian
Collection MacDougall
Order No RAI-200.296
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A true story of a country family’s gradual involvement and growing passion for ‘picnic racing’. Sunny Bancroft is an Aboriginal cattle-station manager in New South Wales. With his non-Aboriginal wife Liz, two daughters and Liz’s mother ‘Tex’ he searches for a winning horse to triumph on the local circuit — but things don’t always go his way. Filmed as it happened, the events were later fashioned into a narrative in Sunny’s distinctive story-telling style. A film about Australian rural society and one Aboriginal man’s determination to succeed.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Simone Clifford-Jaeger
Country/Production UK
Release 2004
Length 29 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location UK, Norfolk / Europe
Ethnic Group English
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
Order No RAI-200.3074
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Suspension of the living body from hooks has been practiced in various cultural contexts and places in the past, but today forms part of a growing global interest in body modification. This film joins a group of contemporary British practitioners at a week-end meeting in Norfolk, examining what the experience of suspension means to them, and particularly its role in their understanding of the relationship between their selves, their bodies and the world.
Director John Baily, Afghanistan Music Unit, Goldsmiths
Country/Production UK
Release 2001
Length 58 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL or NTSC / All region
Location California, Fremont, USA / America
Ethnic Group Afghans
Order No RAI-200.328
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Ethnomusicologist John Baily visits Fremont, California, the new home of the large community of exiled Afghans. He is joined by Kabuli master-musician, Ustad Asif Mahmoud, who plans to open a small private music school to teach traditional tabla drumming to young Afghans. However, Fremont is also a centre of musical innovation, with electronic keyboards and their built-in drum machines. In a series of in context performances we witness the co-existence of traditional and modern Afghan music and the dancing that goes with them both.
Director David MacDougall, Judith MacDougall
Country/Production Australia
Release 1980
Length 90 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Australia, Queensland / Pacific
Ethnic Group Aurukun Aboriginals, Australians
Collection MacDougall
Order No RAI-200.142
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On March 13, 1978 the Queensland Government announced its intention to take over management of Aurukun Aboriginal Reserve from the Uniting Church. The people of Aurukun complained bitterly, fearing that the state was merely seeking easier access to rich bauxite deposits on their Reserve. When the Federal Government took the side of the Aborigines the stage was set for a national confrontation, which soon became front-page news across Australia.
Director Felicia Hughes-Freeland
Country/Production UK
Release 1996
Length 30 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Indonesia, Java / Asia
Ethnic Group Indonesian
Order No RAI-200.314
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Once a year a ritual is held in a Javanese village. After a distribution of food, men dance with professional female dancers. Their allegedly sexual ethos makes these ‘tayuban’ unacceptable as national culture, but the dancing is a gift to the protective spirit in exchange for well-being, and represents community identity.
Director David MacDougall, Judith MacDougall
Country/Production Australia /USA
Release 1984
Length 52 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Australia, New South Wales / Pacific
Ethnic Group Australian
Collection MacDougall
Order No RAI-200.232
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A film which explores the philosophy of teaching and learning of Sunny Bancroft, manager of an Aboriginal-run cattle station in northern New South Wales. It also tells the story of Shane Gordon, a 16-year-old apprentice, as he takes his first steps towards becoming a stockman under Sunny’s guidance.
Series Granada Center for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Siobhan McGuirk
Country/Production UK
Release 2009
Length 26 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location UK
Ethnic Group Migrants in the UK
Language English
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
Order No RAI-200.3109
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“I am here because I can’t go home.” Subject to strict controls in the UK, three women asylum seekers wait for claims to be processed and decisions made. Here they find the lives which they fled to save put on indefinite hold.
Director Massimiliano Mollona, Marker LTD
Country/Production UK
Release 2005
Length 45 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL or NTSC / All region
Location UK, Sheffield / Europe
Prizes/Commendations Commendation Student Film Prize 2003
Order No RAI-200.344
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The anthropologist spent several months working as unskilled labourer alongside Sheffield steelworkers at Morris for his PhD. This film is a look into the working lives of men who earn a living in what remains of the Sheffield Steel Industry.Endcliffe is an industrial area in the East End of Sheffield. The film follows the daily routine at the workshop as well as family and leisure activities and portraits the reactions to de-industrialization and work realities.
Series Disappearing World Series
Director Melissa Llewelyn-Davies, Elizabeth Fernea
Country/Production UK
Release 1977
Length 52 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location Morocco, Marrakech / Africa
Order No RAI-200.75
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In Marrakech, traditional attitudes to women prevail perhaps more strongly than in other Moroccan cities. This is especially true for those women who live by the standards of traditional ideals in the Medina, the old city of Marrakech still enclosed by its ancient walls. This film attempts to say something about women such as Aisha and Hajiba – two main characters – who have experienced the hardships of life for women in such a society. Aisha's husband is an unskilled labourer and so she is forced to find work cooking and cleaning. Hajiba has been thrown out of her natal home by the brother who became household head on her father's death and she works as a dancer (shaykha) in a troupe entertaining men for money. For both of them the ideal of seclusion remains unrealisable, economic factors taking them out into the public world of men. The all-women film-crew were privileged to be allowed to attend a series of events involving women – a visit to the steam baths, a religious celebration, a wedding, a visit to a shuwafa (fortune teller), a possession cult trance and a trip to the market to buy cloth. At many of these social events the guests entertain each other, and the film is remarkable not least for sequences showing women dancing and playing musical instruments, the brilliant colours of their dress and surroundings adding to the visual interest. Some Women of Marrakech is important for the manner in which it situates these `ethnographic events' in relation to the division between women in the private world and men in the public world, providing an analysis which puts in the foreground questions of women's consciousness, sexuality and male/female division. K.L. Brown, 1977. Review of the film. RAIN, 19, pp. 7–9. L. Brown, 1978. `The Two Worlds of Marrakech'. Screen, Vol. 19, No. 12, pp. 85–118. E.W. Fernea, 1976. A Street in Marrakech. Anchor/Doubleday, New York. V. Maher, 1974. Women and Property in Morocco. Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology, No. 10, Cambridge University Press
Director Timothy Ash, Asen Balikci, David Newman, Richard Sorensen
Country/Production USA
Release 1978
Length 58 mins
Format Colour / VHS / PAL / All region
Location Afghanistan, North-Eastern / Asia
Ethnic Group Lakenkhel, Pashtun
Order No RAI-200.268
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Haji Omar and his three sons belong to the Lakenkhel, a Pashtun tribal group in northeastern Afghanistan. Concentrating within one family, the film draw sharp, colourful portraits of the protagonists and their problems. Haji Omar, a wealthy settled nomad, determined on economic diversification through his sons; Anwar, the eldest, his father's favourite, pastoralist and expert horse-man; Janat Gul, cultivator and ambitious rebel; and Ismail, the youngest, attending school with a view to a job as a government official.Much of the film is concerned with pastoral nomadic activities, beginning in the spring camp in the steppe not far from the provincial centre, Baghlan, and moving in May and June up and over the Khawak pass to Mountain pastures in the Hindu Kush. Haji Omar's family home is near the small market town of Nahrin, which the nomads visit on their spring migration; further sequences show life in the bazaar, classes in the high school, dealing with government officials and the expression of local rivalries in the Central Asian sport of buzkashi.
Director Frank Speed, Deirdre LaPin
Country/Production USA
Release 1984
Length 25 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Nigeria, Jos Plateau / Africa
Ethnic Group Ngas
Collection Frank Speed Film Collection on Nigeria
Comments A study guide is available for this film (more titles will be released soon)
Order No RAI-200.332
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In isolated mountain hamlets in Nigeria’s Jos Plateau the Ngas have traditionally observed the movements of the moon in the night sky. The moon is a key symbol in Ngas cosmology, believed to regulate the rhythm of all life. The film traces the moon’s influence on Ngas work and thought during a single growing season. The documentary tells the story form the point of view of a single traditional Ngas bard.
Director Peter Loïzos
Country/Production UK
Release 1985
Length 35 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Cyprus, Nicosia / Europe
Order No RAI-200.149
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Sofia and her family lost their village home in 1975 when Turkey invaded Cyprus. The film, mainly set in Nicosia in 1983, shows the pressures of refugee economic recovery through shift work in a family bakery, and the pains of dislocation felt by Sofia in her laments which she sings at the intervals during the film.
Director Elhum Shakerifar, Ed Owles, Jamie Taylor (facilitators; plus students from Greenwich College)
Country/Production UK
Release 2007
Length 13.15 mins
Format Colour / PAL / All region
Location UK, London / Europe
Language English
University RAI, Greenwich College
Order No RAI-200.4005
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These 3 films on Southeast London were made by GCC college students who took a course in anthropology & film. ANGLESEA ROAD: Situated in Woolwich, South East London, Anglesea Road is a small world rich in Somali culture and tradition. THE GOOD OL' DAYS: The well-established butchers, Kennedy’s, famed for it’s sausages, is closing down this December after 130 years of business. TALK OF TRADE: Since the 1600s, Woolwich market has been a source of food, clothing and conversation for all who know it. This film explores the multi-cultures introduced by the 100 open and closed stalls.
Series Indonesia Series, ANU, DVD 3
Director James J. Fox, Timothy Asch, Patsy Asch
Country/Production Australia
Release 1988
Length 22 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Indonesia, Roti / Asia
Ethnic Group Rotinese
Collection Asch
University Australian National University
Order No RAI-200.238B
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The film begins as the groom’s side gathers the animals and money for a bridewealth payment, and discusses problems that might arise in negotiating the exchange. In ritual silence, they walk to the bride’s family house, where discussions proceed, interspersing ritual forms with lively conversation. When agreement is reached, drinking and feasting begin and a chanter recounts the origin of the first bridewealth payment.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Jakob Hogel
Country/Production UK
Release 1994
Length 30 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Faroe Islands, Kingdom of Denmark
Ethnic Group Faroese
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
Order No RAI-200.3009
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The Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic are a Danish dependency and for generations, young people have gone to Denmark to complete their studies. When they return for the summer, there is a tradition to put on a satirical theatrical revue. Through following the preparation and performance of the revue at a time of severe economic crisis, this film reveals what young Faroese feel about their identity and their relationship to Denmark.
Series Netsilik Eskimo Series Group B
Director Asen Balikci
Country/Production Canada / USA
Length 90 mins
Format Colour / VHS
Location Canada, Pelly Bay Canadian Arctic / America
Ethnic Group Netsilik
Order No RAI-208.43
Sale Info Currently not distributed, contact RAI Film Officer
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These films are for all who wish to see how life used to be among the Netsilik when they still lived apart and depended entirely on the land and their own ingenuity to sustain life through the rigors of the Arctic year. The filming was done in the Pelly Bay region of the Canadian Arctic.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Dan Bruun
Country/Production USA
Release 2006
Length 32 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location USA, New York / America
Ethnic Group West Indian
Language English (English sub)
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
Order No RAI-200.3082; 209.2007.166
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This film deals with the culture of Jamaican dancehall music as it exists in New York. It follows one young dancehall participant who makes his living performing and promoting dancehall music.
Director David MacDougall
Country/Production Italy / Australia
Release 1993
Length 100 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Sardinia / Europe
Ethnic Group Sardinian
Collection MacDougall
Prizes/Commendations Basil Wright Film Prize 1994
Order No RAI-200.311
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This film depicts the characters, and social dilemmas of three generations of Sardinian mountain shepherds. Although born roughly 20 years apart, Franchiscu (62), his son Pietro (17) and their friend Miminu (43) are united by ties of family, friendship and common experience. But increasingly these ties are being pulled apart by social and economic circumstance. The youngest, still a schoolboy, is likely to leave shepherding because he has more choices than the two older men have had. They have been committed to their way of life, but for one it has meant celibacy, and for the other, other kinds of hardships.The film makes clear aspects of the transformation of pastoral communities by the squeeze of falling prices for produce, coupled with the attraction of social mobility out of pastoralism via education, or the shorter hours of conventionally waged jobs.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Nadja Marin
Country/Production UK
Release 2008
Length 30 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Brazil / America
Ethnic Group Brazilian
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
Order No RAI-200.3095
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In a village inside the world’s fifth largest and tough city, São Paulo, a young Guarani created a children’s choir to raise money for his community. Filled with beautiful sounds, the film is a portrait of the choir called ‘Tenonde’i’ and shows the struggle of this young man to deliver his message to the non-indigenous society.
Director Felicia Hughes-Freeland
Country/Production UK
Release 1988
Length 44 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Indonesia, Java / Asia
Ethnic Group Javanese
Comments Study guide available
Order No RAI-200.184
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Javanese palace dancing has long attracted outsiders by it exotic costumes and effortless grace of movement. These first impressions belie the physical and philosophical rigours which are the reality of the tradition for those who create it. The film goes beyond appearances, and introduces the dance through the performer, Susindahati, and the connoisseur, Pak Seno; providing two perspectives on dance from the inside.
Director Kim Longinotto
Country/Production UK
Release 2002
Length 92 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location Kenya / Africa
Ethnic Group African
Collection Kim Longinotto
Comments Consultants: Fardhose Ali Mohamed, Eunice Munanie N'Daisi Kwinga
Order No RAI-200.329
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The documentary explores the local dimensions of the female circumcision debate in Kenyan societies. In a region of Kenya that is home to Muslims, Massai and Somali and crosscut by Christian evangelists, recently passed legislation makes it illegal for a girl to be circumcised without first consenting to the procedure. The film begins with Fardhosa a nurse on a tireless campaign to open people's eyes to the dangers of circumcision, both physical and mental. Next, Simalo, a Maasai runaway girl returns from Nairobi to confront her mother, who was responsible for her mutilation and young marriage. Finally the film shows how a group of Marakwet schoolgirls have successfully challenged their parents and centuries-old tradition in a court of law.
Director Paul Henley
Country/Production UK
Release 1987
Length 52 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Venezuela, Cuyaga / America
Ethnic Group Afro-Caribbean
Order No RAI-200.183A
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The men of the Afro-Caribbean population of Cuyagua enact a ritual that occurs 60 days after Easter. The film is a portrait of two men who direct the devil dancing. They tell the history of the village, the organisation of devil dancing, and stories associated with the Devil. The film also focuses on the intriguing ritual of the dancing itself.
Director János Tari
Country/Production Hungary
Release 2006
Length 56 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Hungary / Europe
Ethnic Group Hungarian Roma, Slovakians, Germans
Language (English sub)
Collection NA
Prizes/Commendations Commendation Material Culture & Archaeology Film Prize 2007
Order No RAI-209.2007.156
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The everyday life of migrant fun fair operators is the filter through which we view the social and economic factors of the 20th and early 21st century that define the life and work of this social group. Hungary's accession to the EU has presented new challenegs and difficulties to them continuing their traditional trade and lifestyle. Interest in their services has decreased considerably, so this once thriving form of business is now on the decline.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Eirik Sandberg
Country/Production UK
Release 2003
Length 25 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Norway / Europe
Ethnic Group Norwegian
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
Order No RAI-200.3060
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Arne Bakke Mælen lives alone on the small family farm he inherited on the edge of a fjord. The farm is no longer viable economically and, like many small farmers in Norway, he has not found a woman to share this life. But for Arne, the landscape is suffused with memory and he does not wish to leave. Instead he dreams of making a living as a wood sculptor, distilling the intensity of his feelings into works of art.
Series Disappearing World Series
Director Michael Grigsby, Hugh Brody
Country/Production UK
Release 1977
Length 52 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Canada, North Baffin Island / America
Ethnic Group Igulingmuit
Order No RAI-200.67
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.For the Eskimos of Pond Inlet - a new village in North Baffin Island in which they have been settled by the Canadian Government – the life of the semi-nomadic hunter has given way to that of wage-labourer, in what appears as a pre-fabricated `township'. Although hunting provides an important supplement to the Eskimos' income, it is now a part-time activity, and since 1975 (ten years after the start of the government's housing programme) nobody has lived all year round in hunting camps. For the older inhabitants of Pond Inlet, the old way of life is still vivid (in 1935 only 37 Eskimos lived in the village) and their reminiscences and recollections form part of a powerful statement about the present situation. These statements take the form of monologues, or comments addressed to friends and family about the effects of fifty years of contact with whites. Apart from these `interviews' with the Eskimos, the film accompanies one family – grandfather, father, mother and children – as they go out hunting seals and jigging for fish. The visual contrast between the splendours of the open spaces of snow and water and the township of Pond Inlet is a startling one which reinforces the Eskimos' statements. We also see one member of this family selling seal skins in a trade store, and captioned information is given about the cost of maintaining the hunter's equipment and what he can expect to earn in any one year. The material was filmed during a seven week period in June and July 1975. A sophisticated `observational' style is used, with long takes, few pans, no commentary or formal interviews and full subtitling. Caption cards are used to good effect, conveying necessary information without intruding on the narrative. These `technical' factors have important consequences for the film's anthropological value, not least because one of the aims was to enable the Eskimos to `speak for themselves'. Although it would be naive to suggest that the `people's voice' manages to override the exigencies of making such a film for a 52 minute television slot, the Eskimos did have a say in the making of the film, and one of them was also involved in the editing. The striking oratorical style of the Eskimos awakens the viewer to the point that in this film they are addressing the Whites, voicing their distrust, having overcome the fear with which they first encountered these `visitors' to the people's land. H. Brody, 1975. The People's Land: Eskimos and Whites in the Eastern Arctic. Penguin, Harmondsworth. H. Brody, 1975. `Seeming to be Real: Disappearing World and the Film in Pond Inlet', Cambridge Anthropology, Special Issue on Ethnographic Film, pp.22–31. D. Riches, 1976. Review of the film. RAIN, 13, p.7
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Chris Christodoulou
Country/Production UK
Release 2008
Length 24 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
Order No RAI-200.3090
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‘The Gaijin’ tells the story of an individual negotiating his identity in a foreign country. It follows Luke Jonathan Driscoll - an American who has been residing in Japan for nearly 3 years and who makes a living predominantly from English speaking related jobs
Director Kim Longinotto, Clare Hunt
Country/Production UK
Release 1992
Length 52 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location Japan, Tokyo / Asia
Ethnic Group Japanese
Collection Kim Longinotto
Order No RAI-200.308
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Kazuko Hohki goes back to Tokyo with her band, the ‘Frank Chickens’, after living in England for 15 years. This wry and delightful film records her re-experiencing of Japan after a long absence, examining traditional attitudes to women and those of Kazuko’s friends who are trying to live differently.
Director Peter Getzels, Harriet Gordon, Penny Harvey
Country/Production UK
Release 1989
Length 56 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location Peru / America
Ethnic Group Peruvian
Prizes/Commendations Basil Wright Film Prize 1990
Order No RAI-200.216
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Villagers from remote hamlets high in the Andes join together with people from the roadside village of Ocongate for the Peruvian Independence Day celebration. Festivities require that a wild condor be captured and pitted against a bull during a bullfight in the town plaza. Through this event power relations are revealed between the villagers of Ocongate and the highlanders, and of both of them to the Peruvian state.
Director Rahul Roy
Country/Production India
Release 2003
Length 78 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Sunder Nagri, India
Ethnic Group Indian
Language Hindi with English subtitles
Order No RAI-200.356
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Sunder Nagri (Beautiful City) is a small working class colony on the margins of India’s capital city, Delhi. Most families residing here come from a community of weavers. The last ten years have seen a gradual disintegration of the handloom tradition of this community under the globalisation regime. The families have to cope with change as well as reinvent themselves to eke out a living.
The City Beautiful is a story of two families struggling to make sense of a world, which keeps pushing them to the margins. Radha and Bal Krishan are at a critical point in their relationship. Bal Krishan is underemployed and constantly cheated. They are in disagreement about Radha going out to work. However, through all their ups and downs they retain the ability to laugh.
Shakuntla and Hira Lal hardly communicate. They live under one roof with their children but are locked in their own sense of personal tragedies.
Director Susi Arnott
Country/Production UK
Release 1988
Length 44 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location Papua New Guinea / Pacific
Order No RAI-200.220
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When they retired from selling insurance and teaching, John and Irene Brown volunteered to work overseas under a British Aid programme. They were sent to expand a marketing project aimed at gardeners in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. The film brings out the conflicts within a development project, where expectations of European market capitalism clash with the local subsistence system
Series Doon School Project
Director David MacDougall
Country/Production Australia
Release 2004
Length 87 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location India, Dehra Dun, Uttaranchal / Asia
Ethnic Group Indian
Collection MacDougall
Comments Not for sale in North America (Special rate for ordering whole Doon School Series - £ 200 / EURO 300 / $ 380)
Order No RAI-200.304
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In this fifth and final film in the Doon School quintet, MacDougall focuses on the life of one student whom he discovers at the school. The film was made in parallel with The New Boys and intersects with it at several points. However, instead of looking at the group, it explores the toughts and feelings of Abhishek, a 12-year-old from Nepal, during his first days and weeks as a Doon student. This is at once the story of the encounter between a filmmaker and his subject and a glimpse of the mind of a child at “the age of reason.” This is the most intimate and interactive film of the series.
Director Neil G. Munro, the Royal Anthropological Institute
Country/Production UK
Release 2001
Length 27 mins
Format B&W / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Japan / Asia
Ethnic Group Ainu
Order No RAI-200.1
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The RAI has reedited the original film of this ceremony among the Ainu people of Japan. In the bear ceremony, now no longer performed, a specially reared bear was reverently killed and its flesh and blood eaten by the participants. The film shows a series of ritual acts with some commentary on their meaning.
Series Disappearing World Series
Director David Wason, Berit Backer
Country/Production UK
Release 1991
Length 52 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location Albania, Rrogam / Europe
Ethnic Group Rrogamis
Order No RAI-200.286
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With the fall of the Stalinist regime in Albania, one of the poorest countries in Europe, the people of a remote mountain village, Rrogam, are faced with the dilmma of how to re-allocate the land and flocks after 40 years of collectivism. For the first time they have to make their own decisions in the face of an uncertain, changing future, and eke out an existence without the direction from above to which they have become accustomed. Rrogam is a small Catholic village more than 3,000 feel above sea level in Northern Albania. Closed to foreigners since the second world war, the Disappearing World team were the first outsiders to fully explore this area in the north. Traditional Northern Albanian society stressed honour and etiquette. Today these traditional codes have been replaced with Albanian law, effecting the Rrogamis deeply. But Northern Albanians still follow their own rules for interpersonal relations and stick to traditional behaviour when it does not conflict with new Albanian law. Durham, Edith, 1985 (reprint). High Albania. Virago, London. Logoreci, Anton, 1977. The Albanians. Gollancz, London.
Director Judith MacDougall, Kathy Zhang
Country/Production Australia
Release 2007
Length 60 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location VL ChinaPRC, Kunming / Asia
Language Chinese, English (Chinese, various dialects) (English sub)
Collection MacDougall - Judith
University Centre for Cross Cultural Research, Canberra
Order No RAI-209.2007.20
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Photography is known in China as the “Art of Regret”. In the rapidly changing city of Kunming, people are ambivalent about whether they want photography to be a medium of preservation and evidence, or of transformation and fantasy. While old photographs are cherished, digital technology can now make old people look young again. At computerized stalls in department stores, faces and clothing can be instantly transformed. An old-established studio digitally enhances the images made on their wooden 19th century portrait camera. Choices about how to regard history, reality, and material culture constantly confront everyone in contemporary China.
Series Disappearing World Series
Director Leslie Woodhead, Sandra Ott
Country/Production UK
Release 1987
Length 52 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location France, French Pyrenees / Europe
Ethnic Group French Basques
Order No RAI-200.186
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In her book `The Circle of Mountains' Sandra Ott provided a fascinating analysis of social reciprocity.... The film highlights the village's contemporary dilemmas and thereby complements rather than visualises the arguments in Ott's published ethnography.... The approach is to be applauded since the book and the film now make excellent companion pieces that can usefully be employed in any course on European ethnography. William Douglass. This film follows the lives over one year, shot during three intervals, of two Basque shepherding families who live in Santazi, a village in the foothills of the French Pyrenees. The film is the only Disappearing World film made in western Europe and it focuses on the continuity and change in the community. Change has come to the village of Santazi in recent years along the avenues of introduced roads and improved communication systems with the outside world. The effects stretch from people's relationship with the Catholic religion to inheritance customs. Television has of course also entered these villagers' homes. The traditional life of shepherding is also changing amidst the conflict of interest between those who have formed a syndicated in an effort to maintain the viability of shepherding and the sons who have taken jobs as linemen for the electricity company. This film shows the rationality behind the choice the villagers are making. This film is recommended for courses in anthropology, sociology, culture change, and European communities. W. Douglass, 1987. Review of the film. Anthropology Today, Vol. 3, No. 5 pp. 17–18. S. Ott, 1981. The Circle of Mountains. Oxford University Press, Oxford. S. Ybarrola, 1988. Review of the film. American Anthropologist, Vol. 90, pp. 1045–46.
Director Carlyn Saltman
Country/Production UK
Release 1997
Length 29 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Togo, Banjeli / Africa
Comments Study guide available
Order No RAI-200.180
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The filmmaker and two historians went into the village of Banjeli in 1985 to recreate for the film the traditional iron smelting techniques (which are no longer used) of the area. By focusing on the traditional technology the film offers fascinating insights on the society as a whole, and in particular the gender relations. The film also contains some early footage of the village.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Caroline Allward
Country/Production UK
Release 1998
Length 30 mins
Format Colour / DVD / 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
Order No RAI-200.3022
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Wayne has left school, sweet 16, disillusioned, with no qualifications. He is briefly distracted by Becka, the girl next door, and the discovery of his father's porno movie. But all he really wants is to find the right girl. An unlikely poet, he reveals his hopes and fears as he tries to woo Kimberley, his dream woman
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Amanda Ravetz
Country/Production UK
Release 2000
Length 49 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location UK / Europe
Ethnic Group UK
Language English
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
Order No RAI-200.3111
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In the late 1990s, when BSE was conclusively linked to vCJD, a number of British farmers went out of business whilst others faced an uncertain future. But for the Bracewells, a hill-farming family renting a 160-acre holding in the Pennines, the crisis was one more reason to maintain links with the past. Watch as the two generations of the Bracewells run the farmland as well as the meat stall in the nearby market town of Todmorden.
Director Anne Laure Folly
Country/Production France
Release 1991
Length 52 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Togo, Lome / Africa
Ethnic Group African
Order No RAI-200.213
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The guardian of the forces introduces the viewer to the world of Sikavi, a ‘fetish priest’ in Lome, Togo. He controls the spirits of several voodoos or gods. The film explores the significance of sacrifice and possession in communicating with spirits of ancestors and voodoo deities. Tradition and modernity are contrasted in this colourful documentary, which provides insight into healing practices of life and death.
Director Maarten Rens
Country/Production UK
Release 1991
Length 28 mins
Format Colour / DVD or VHS / PAL / All region
Location Netherlands, Monikkendam / Europe
Comments Joint purchase with John the Eel Trapper recommended
Order No RAI-200.217
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The film deals with fish smoking in Monnickendam, a small town twelve miles north of Amsterdam. Using archival footage, interviewing old fishermen, and contrasting the traditional and the modern industrial way to smoke fish, the film offers insight into changing life styles on the Dutch coast.
Series Granada Center for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Maria Mariwether
Country/Production UK
Release 2009
Length 27 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Liverpool, UK / Australia
Ethnic Group Aboriginees
Language English
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
Order No RAI-200.3106
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For the Ngarrindjeri people, the living and the dead are connected through shared land and heritage. The preservation of this connection is at the heart of the community’s effort to repatriate the bones of their ancestors.
Director Paul Henley, George Drion
Country/Production UK
Release 1987
Length 39 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location South America
Ethnic Group Indiginous South Americans
Order No RAI-200.148
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National governments, itinerant gold-miners, and indigenous inhabitants compete for control of an area of the South American rainforest. The film shows the potential conflict between the interests of aboriginal peoples and the responsibility of nation states to implement ecologically sound policies in tropical forest areas. It also demonstrates the complex relationship between culture and ethnic identity under conditions of rapid social change
Series Indonesia Series, ANU, DVD 3
Director Patsy Asch, Linda Connor, Timothy Asch
Country/Production Australia / USA
Release 1979
Length 44 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Indonesia, Bali / Asia
Ethnic Group Indonesian
Collection Asch
University Australian National University
Order No RAI-200.272A
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In 1978, as part of the preparations for the island-wide ceremony eka dasa rudra, religious officials urged all Balinese to cleanse the island by cremating their dead. Many were forced to pool resources and hold group cremation rituals. The film shows preparations for such a ceremony and its cycle of rituals: the cremation, post-cremation and casting of the ashes into the sea. This film includes subtitled comments by four of the participants.
Director Tone Bringa, Peter Loizos
Country/Production UK
Release 2001
Length 48 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL or NTSC / All region
Location Bosnia / Europe
Order No RAI-200.325
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The film is the sequel to, We are all Neighbours, the 1993 Granada Disappearing World film, about the breakdown of relations between Muslims and Croats as war overtakes their ethnically mixed village in Central Bosnia. Returning Home follows the same Muslim families seven years later as they rebuild their lives in their devastated village. It illustrates the decisive role of the international community in facilitating returns, the steely determination of displaced villagers to return, and their surprisingly sympathetic attitude toward Croat refugees living in their homes.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Fotini Stefani
Country/Production UK
Release 2001
Length 24 mins
Format Colour / PAL / All region
Location Greece / Europe
Ethnic Group Greek
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
Order No RAI-200.3045
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The monks from the monastery of Saints Augustine and Serapheim Sarow on mainland Greece have found modern ways to appeal to young people. The film explores how their traditional life co-exists with their popular means of bringing people closer to God.
Director Itsushi Kawase
Country/Production Japan
Release 2006
Length 23 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Gondar, Ethiopia / Africa
Ethnic Group Amhara
Language Amharic (English sub)
Collection Kyoto University
Order No RAI-209.2007.194
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The film recounts the life of children living on the street in Gondar, Ethiopia, by witnessing the interactionbetween two children and myself. The entire film was shot in the room of Ethiopia Hotel. This limited space allows the film to focus on our communication and captures some of the ideas that enable them to endure and survive on the street. Indeed, this film is more a sensitive testimony than a scientific documentary. This hybrid approach aims to explore new trends in visual anthropology, including the issue of dealing with intimacy and subjectivity.
Director Kim Longinotto
Country/Production UK
Release 2008
Length 103 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location South Africa / Africa
Language English
Collection Kim Longinotto
Order No RAI-200.350
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Jackie, Mildred, Eureka and Thuli are the women behind Bobbi Bear, a nonprofit organization based in Durban, South Africa, that counsels sexually abused children and works to bring their abusers to justice. Born out of recognition of cultural stigmas that discourage reporting abuse and inadequate methods of communicating with young victims, Bobbi Bear developed a method of letting children use teddy bears to explain their abuse. Since 1992, the multiracial staff has become the fearless and powerful voice for those victims who would otherwise continue to live in fear, powerless against their oppressors and ignored by the legal system.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Angela Torresan
Country/Production UK
Release 1999
Length 36 mins
Format Colour / PAL / All region
Location Portugal, Lisbon / Europe
Ethnic Group Brazilian, Portugese
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
Order No RAI-200.3030
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Portrait of a Brazilian woman and her friends, now living in Lisbon, exploring the basis of their sense of identity in the context of a transnational way of life.
Director Elhum Shakerifar
Country/Production UK
Release 2006
Length 17 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Iran / Middle East /USA / America
Language English/Persian (English sub)
Collection Goldsmiths, University of London
Order No RAI-200.4004
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This film is an exploration of transsexuality in the Islamic setting of Iran. The film follows 22 year old Bardia, a female-to-male transsexual, now living in America, who war previously known as Roya, when he was a girl, and as Omid, when he dressed up as a boy. His testimony of sex change contrasts with those of Handry, Lila and Donya, male to female transsexuals still living in Iran and enduring the difficulties of losing the rights they enjoyed as men, and embodying their new roles as women, an inferior sex.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Janina Kriszio
Country/Production UK
Release 2008
Length 29 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Germany / Europe
Ethnic Group German
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
Order No RAI-200.3092
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Reading traditionally played an important role for German (self-)identification. In 2000 an international survey revealed that German pupils are lacking basic reading skills, giving rise to nation wide shock. Taking this national identity crisis as a starting point this films starts to explore the reading from an anthropological perspective. It ends up giving a tacit portrait of 3 characters observed through a pair of reading glasses.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Rachel Webster
Country/Production UK
Release 2002
Length 26 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location India, Mumbai / Asia
Ethnic Group Indian
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
Prizes/Commendations Winner Student Film Prize 2003
Order No RAI-200.3052
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Street boys Ravi and Bhajay lead a tough life on the pavements of Mumbai in India. To get away from it, they visit the nearby holy city of Ujjain with the film-maker. But the call of life on the streets is still strong.
Director Marcus Banks
Country/Production UK
Release 1988
Length 40 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location India, Jamnagar, Western India / Asia
Ethnic Group Indians
Comments Study guide available
Order No RAI-200.177
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This film is set in the city of Jamnagar, western India. The film focuses on the emotions, quality of life, and on duty. Raju’s friendship with different people, including the director, provide a map of contemporary Indian urban life.
Director Juana Schlenker
Country/Production UK
Release 2004
Length 23 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location UK, London / Europe
Ethnic Group Spanish migrant
Language Spanish, English (subt.)
Collection Goldsmiths, University of London
Order No RAI-200.4002
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Pepe is a Spanish immigrant who came to England more than forty years ago to work as a waiter. After working in several restaurants and hotels, he retired two years ago and now he fills his days with daily routines that keep him occupied. This film offers an insight into the daily life of a retired person in London. As the spectator discovers, behind the repetitive routines that fill up his days lies a rich personal story. The film is a visual exploration of the spaces where the character moves, his memories and desires.
Series Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology Student Film
Director Charlie Clay
Country/Production UK
Release 1992
Length 30 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Papua New Guinea / Pacific
Collection GCVA, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
University School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester
Order No RAI-200.3005
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The post-colonial period in Papua New Guinea has seen resurgence in tribal warfare. Pepsi War follows the story of a fight between two clans, which developed from a dispute over cola bottles.
Director David MacDougall, Judith MacDougall
Country/Production UK
Release 1991
Length 60 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location India, Mussoorie / Asia
Ethnic Group North Indians
Language without commentary
Collection MacDougall
Prizes/Commendations Material Culture & Archaelogy Film Prize 1992
Order No RAI-200.229
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This film is an exploration of the cultural and personal meanings of photographs in a hill station in northern India. The ‘photo wallahs’ are the local photographers of Mussoorie, a town which once attracted Indian princes and British residents but now caters to Indian tourists.
Director Robert Boonzajer-Flaes
Country/Production The Netherlands
Release 1986
Length 50 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location USA / America, Austria / Europe
Ethnic Group Austrians, Chicanos
Order No RAI-200.211
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The film confronts the accordion music of Chicano immigrants in southern Texas with the traditional music of accordion players in Austria. Without making any final judgements on the ‘roots’ of ‘conjunto’ music of the Chicanos, the film is able to reveal the different claims to ethnic identity. Most interestingly, Chicanos in Mexico and Texas and Austrians comment upon each others’ way of playing Polka.
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