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Films & DVDs on Anthropology  Text Size Increase Font Size Decrease Font Size
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    A

  • Advertising MissionariesAdvertising Missionaries - Follows the mission of one theater company to bring the consumer revolution to the people of the highlands of Papua New Guinea.

  • Alabba - An exploration of the fascinating history of Santeria.

  • All Restrictions End - Reflections on Islam and clothing, Iranian cinema, Persian painting and more characterize this thought-provoking artistic documentary.

  • As Long as the Rivers Flow - A series of five films which document the epic struggle of Canada's Native People.

  • B

  • Bauhaus SpiritBauhaus Spirit - Celebrate the 100th anniversary of Walter Gropius’ Bauhaus with this lively, wide-ranging documentary exploring the history, present and future of the utopian design and architecture school and communal social movement around the world.

  • A Better Life - Returning to Todos Santos after 30 years, a look at the profound economic and social changes that have transformed this Guatemalan Mayan village.

  • Between Two-Spirit - Neither man nor woman, Chris is a "Two-Spirit," in between genders.

  • Bitter Money - Documents China's rapid economic and social transformation by following the rural workers who leave their Yunnan hometown to move to the city of Huzhou to work in its textile factories.

  • A Boatload of Wild IrishmenA Boatload of Wild Irishmen - The life and work of legendary director Robert Flaherty ("Nanook of the North"), the "father of documentary."

  • Bride Kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan - The first film about the Kyrgyz tradition of bride kidnapping takes viewers inside families, to talk with kidnapped brides who have managed to escape as well as those who are making homes with their new husbands.

  • C

  • Can't Do It In Europe - Some people travel to Bolivia to go down the dangerous silver mines, to see the medieval work conditions. Are they crawling through the contaminated tunnels to learn about a foreign culture, or to escape boredom?

  • Congo in Four Acts - A quartet of short films (on one dvd) that lay bare the reality of everyday life in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

  • D

  • Die Before BlossomDie Before Blossom - The rising importance of Islamic values in an Indonesian public school is apparent in this portrait of modern schoolgirls Kiki and Dila.

  • A Distant Thud in the Jungle - In Papua New Guinea, local tribes are caught in a cycle of poverty due to oil companies looking for new fields and tourists in search of exoticism.

  • Division of Hearts - Ordinary people from Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh recount their tumultuous experiences after the 1947 British subdivision of colonial India.

  • Do Communists Have Better Sex? - In divided Germany, studies showed that East Germans enjoyed their sexual lives more than their West German counterparts. What could account for the difference?

  • E

  • Eight Films by Jean RouchEight Films by Jean Rouch - Eight of the legendary filmmaker’s key works in a 4-disc boxset, with a 24-page booklet and bonus film about Rouch in Africa. Newly restored!

  • Everything Must Come to Light - This documentary focuses on the lives of three dynamic lesbians sangomas (traditional healers) living in Soweto, South Africa.

  • F

  • Fang - Mixes documentary and fiction techniques to recount an African art object's 100 year journey - a whole century of Western attitudes towards African culture packed into 8 minutes!

  • For the Best and for the Onion! - A verite documentary that captures the rhythms of agricultural life in Niger, and how the vagaries of market price and harvest can affect the most intimate personal decisions.

  • For Those Who Sail to HeavenFor Those Who Sail to Heaven - Captures the Sufi rites of the annual Opet Festival in Egypt.

  • Forever - A poignant tour of the importance of art in the lives of visitors to the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris, the final resting place for legendary writers, composers, painters and other artists from around the world.

  • France (Les Habitants) - Documentarist Raymond Depardon travels through provincial France in a camper, gathering conversations with people from all walks of life.

  • G

  • Gringo Trails - A global survey of the impacts on cultures, economies, and the environment of the most powerful globalizing force of our time: tourism.

  • H

  • Hamou-Beya, Sand FishersHamou-Beya, Sand Fishers - For generations the Bozo people of Mali lived along the banks of the Niger river, fishing for their livelihood. But now...

  • The Human Pyramid - At a lycée on the Ivory coast, Jean Rouch meets with white colonial French high school students and their black African classmates (all non-actors) and persuades them to improvise a drama.

  • The Human Zoo - The story of 25 people from four Chilean indigenous groups who in the 19th centry were exhibited as attractions across Europe.

  • I

  • The Inheritors - At early age children begin to work in the Mexican countryside. This is a portrait of theirs lives and their daily struggle for survival.

  • Inside OutInside Out - Transsexuals in Iran. Intimate conversations with doctors, religious authorities, and transsexuals about the mind/body conflict, Islamic interpretations, and the impact of sex-change treatments on their lives.

  • J

  • J'y Crois - I Believe In It - A beautifully composed political documentary investigating the decentralization process in Mali.

  • Jaguar - In Jean Rouch's collaborative ethnofiction, three Nigerien men journey to Accra for work.

  • Jean Rouch, the Adventurous Filmmaker -

    A documentary about Jean Rouch, his films, and his influence on African cinema.

  • K

  • Kings of the Wind & Electric QueensKings of the Wind & Electric Queens - A colorful, sensory experience of the Sonepur Fair in India.

  • The Koran: Back to the Origins of the Book - Explores the origins and history of the Koran - where Muslim tradition and scientific research converge.

  • L

  • Le Joli Mai - Chris Marker and Pierre Lhomme's legendary portrait of Paris and Parisians at the close of the Algerian war.

  • The Life and Times of Sara Baartman - Kidnapped from South Africa in 1810 and "exhibited" around Great Britain, Sara Baartman was treated as a scientific curiosity.

  • The Lion HuntersThe Lion Hunters - Jean Rouch's self-reflexive depiction of lion hunting among the Songhay people of Niger, and the social structure that underlies it.

  • Little By Little - Jean Rouch brings his Nigerien collaborators to France to perform a reverse ethnography of late-1960s Parisian life.

  • Living Memory - About Mali's ancient culture, and this culture's position in the country today. Exposes tensions in a society assailed by modernization, Islam and global tourism, yet confident that it will maintain its own distinctive character.

  • Long Story Short - Over 100 people at homeless shelters, food banks, and job training centers discuss their experiences of poverty.

  • Lost CourseLost Course - Examines an unprecedented experiment in local democracy in the southern Chinese village of Wukan.

  • Lucanamarca - In the Peruvian Andes, in the town of Lucanamarca, old wounds are re-opened when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission arrives to investigate a massacre from 20 years ago.

  • M

  • The Mad Masters - Jean Rouch's essential and controversial work is a classic of ethnographic cinema.

  • Mammy Water - A gentle portrait by Jean Rouch of the spiritual traditions of a fishing village in the Gulf of Guinea.

  • A Man's PlaceA Man's Place - Confronted with unforeseen pregnancies and, in most cases, abortions, men reveal their feelings and thoughts.

  • The Marquis of Wavrin - Follows the extraordinary path of the Marquis of Wavrin, a Belgium explorer who lived with and documented Amazonian tribes in the early 1900s.

  • A Mayan Trilogy: Life, Death & Migration - Now on one DVD, Olivia Carrescia's three films on the Mayan Indians of Guatemala preserve a record, and provide an acute observation on how the indigenous culture has been affected by, yet survived, that country's tumultuous history.

  • Metal and Melancholy - Roving the city of Lima, Peru, Heddy Honigmann meets teachers, actors, professionals, civil servants and many others who have turned to taxi driving to earn enough to get by.

  • Middletown - This classic series, created by Emmy and Academy Award winner Peter Davis, explores both the continuity and the change embodied in the people and institutions of one Midwestern community: Muncie, Indiana.

  • Moi, Un Noir - In this landmark documentary, Jean Rouch collaborates with his subjects to produce a complex portrait of Nigerien migrants in Abidjan, Cote D'Ivoire.

  • N

  • A Normal Life: Chronicle of a Sumo Wrestler - The dreams and disenchantments of a teenager who is discovering the reality of the traditional world of sumo.

  • North-South.com - In West Africa many young women, who dream of escaping a life of misery by marrying a rich, white foreigner, surf the Internet for marriage proposals.

  • O

  • 100 Children Waiting for a Train100 Children Waiting for a Train - Poetically tells the story of a group of Chilean children who discover a larger reality - and a different world - through the cinema.

  • 1428 - Du Haibin's award-winning documentary of the earthquake that devastated China's Sichuan province in 2008 explores how victims, citizens and government respond to a national tragedy.

  • P

  • Paths of the Soul - An astonishing journey of redemption, faith, and devotion, following a group of villagers who leave their families and homes to make a Buddhist "bowing pilgrimage" to the holy capital of Tibet.

  • Portraits of America - Natalie Bookchin is an artist and filmmaker who, through virtuosic editing and innovative sonic and visual montage, interrogates the American crisis and its increased inequality and polarization.

  • The PunishmentThe Punishment - An aimless young woman is sent home from school with nothing to do. Drifting through the streets of Paris, she comes across a variety of people.

  • R

  • Red Persimmons - A visually elegant paean to the cultivation and harvesting of the sweet red fruit, and the disappearance of a traditional way of life in rural Japan.

  • The Return of Sara Baartman - After years of unsettling negotiation with France, South Africa finally welcomes home the remains of Sara Baartman in an historic event of repatriation.

  • Route One/USA - New restoration! A journey along Route 1, from Maine to Miami, yields a rich tapestry of American life. 

  • Route One/USA - Pt. 1Route One/USA - Pt. 1 - New restoration! A journey along Route 1, from Maine to Miami, yields a rich tapestry of American life. Part 1.

  • Route One/USA - Pt. 2 - New restoration! A journey along Route 1, from Maine to Miami, yields a rich tapestry of American life. Part 2.

  • S

  • Sacred Soil - The Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation exhumes up to 1,000 bodies a year to identify them, and return the remains to their families.

  • Saints and Spirits - Explores the personal dimensions of Islam during three religious events in Morocco.

  • School of BabelSchool of Babel - Welcome to a unique Parisian program for immigrant children from all over the world.

  • Silvestre Pantaleon - The story of an elderly man from the Nahuatl-speaking village of San Agustin Oapan, Mexico.

  • Sociology is a Martial Art - An introduction to the work of Influential sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, whose 40 books and countless articles represent a renovation and application of social science.

  • Space Dogs - Laika, a stray dog, was the first living being to be sent into space and thus to a certain death. Following her trace, and filmed from a dog’s perspective, SPACE DOGS accompanies the adventures of her descendants: two street dogs living in today’s Moscow.

  • Spears From All SidesSpears From All Sides - Continuing the story started in TRINKETS AND BEADS (1995), in Ecuador, the Waorani people resist the destruction of one of most remote and beautiful areas of the world.

  • Stolen Land - Illustrates the decades-long often violent resistance movement of the indigenous Nasa people of Colombia over rights to their native land.

  • T

  • 10th Parallel - A voyage deep into the Amazon to explore the implications of Brazil's policy on uncontacted indigenous tribes.

  • They Are We - Anthropologist's film reunites a family 200 years after they were torn apart by the transatlantic slave trade.

  • Three SistersThree Sisters - Three little sisters live alone in a small village in the high mountains of the Yunnan region. The little girls don't go to school, spending their days working in the fields or wandering in the village.

  • 'Til Madness Do Us Part - The daily lives and isolation of a group of men locked on one floor of a Chinese city's psychiatric institution.

  • Timber Gang (aka Last Lumberjacks) - Yu Guangyi's stunning debut explores a grueling winter amongst loggers in Northeast China, as they work with traditional methods through one last, fateful expedition.

  • Todos Santos Cuchumatan: Report from a Guatemalan Village - This film provides an intimate look at everyday life in Todos Santos, a village in Guatemala's highlands, before the violence of the 1980s.

  • Todos Santos: The Survivors - Demonstrates how the political turmoil of the 1980s affected this once quiet Guatemalan village.

  • Togoland Projections - A film director shows long forgotten, historical footage of Togo to modern day audiences.

  • Travels in the Congo - In 1925, novice French filmmaker Marc Allégret headed to equatorial Africa, on a journey to film the people of the Congo region.

  • Trinkets and Beads - The oil company MAXUS and Huaroni Indians of the Amazon.

  • U

  • Under the SunUnder the Sun - A fascinating portrait of one North Korean girl and her parents in the year as she prepares to join the Korean Children's Union on Kim Jong-Il's birthday.

  • V

  • A Veiled Revolution - Considers the possible reasons for modern Egyptian women's turn back to tradition.

  • W

  • What If Babel Was Just a Myth? - The societies that populate the heart of the African continent form such a mosaic that it is not uncommon to meet villagers speaking six to seven languages. But how much longer will this last?

  • Winter Nomads - Modern-day shepards Pascal and Carole bring 800 sheep on a snow-covered odyssey.

More Films & DVDs on Anthropology
  • Awakening from Sorrow: Buenos Aires 1997 - Documents the power to transform pain into action and to lift the veil of repression that has gripped a generation of young people orphaned by Argentina's 'Dirty War.'

  • Breasts - Twenty-two women, ages 6 to 84-years-old, discuss how breasts play a crucial role in the experiences of puberty, motherhood, sex, health and aging. *Outstanding Achievement Award, Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality

  • Bruly Bouabré's Alphabet - In the 1950's, Ivory Coast artist Bruly Bouabré created hundreds of pictograms based on one-syllable words in his language, Bété.

  • Celso and Cora - A young couple and their two children living in a squatter settlement in the Philippines' capital, Manila.

  • Coincidence in Paradise - Delves into the mystery of our origins, seeking the latest discoveries that may answer the question - What exactly was it that first initiated our genesis, our species' actual birth?

  • The Cow Jumped Over the Moon - The story of Fulani cattle herders in West Africa using U.S. satellite imaging technology to find grazing and water for their herds during drought.

  • Cracks in the Mask - A Torres Strait Islander sets out on a voyage of discovery to the great museums of Europe where his cultural heritage now lies.

  • The Dreamers of Arnhem Land - The two Aboriginal elders who set out to save their community from cultural extinction by combining traditional knowledge and contemporary scientific expertise.

  • Fernando is Back - Documents the workings of Chile's Forensic Identification Unit in its quest to reclaim the identities of those 'disappeared' and killed during the Pinochet dictatorship.

  • Five Centuries Later - Examines the current status of Central American aboriginal civilizations, five hundred years after they were "conquered" by European invaders.

  • From Opium to Chrysanthemums - The Hmong, in Southeast Asia and America - struggling to preserve essential aspects of their culture, while coping with the enormous changes forced upon them.

  • Goldwidows: Women in Lesotho - "Goldwidows" are the women whose husbands work in South Africa's mines - often without returning home for five years at a time.

  • How Happy Can You Be? - What is happiness? And how do we get more of it? Visiting leading figures in positive psychology and observing clinical experiments, this is a light-hearted but serious investigation.

  • Loss - An examination of German Jewish life and culture and the lasting intellectual, moral and spiritual void that loss has meant to their fatherland.

  • Mabo - Life of an Island Man - Traces the story of the life of an extraordinary man, one whose struggle for land rights, and his remarkable life in general, had a profound effect on indigenous rights in Australia.

  • Mayan Voices: American Lives - Contrasts the experiences of Mayan families who came to Indiantown, Florida as refugees fleeing the violence in Guatemala in the early 1980s, with the struggles of those continuing to arrive in search of better lives.

  • Ordinary People - The first ever independently produced current affairs series aired by the South African Broadcasting Corporation's TV1.

  • The Passion of María Elena - Following the hit-and-run death of her son, Maria Elena, a young woman from Mexico's Raramuri community, embarks upon an eye-opening journey from grief to unexpected spiritual resolution.

  • Rapayan - High in the Andes mountains of Peru, above a small village that scarcely seemed to notice, archaeologists have found the ruins of an indigenous settlement that predates the Incas.

  • Red Hat - Where Are You Going? - An examination of the socio-political role of the Mossi chiefs in the West African nation of Burkina Faso.

  • Since the Company Came - In the Solomon Islands extensive logging forces the Haporai people to confront social, cultural and ecological disintegration.

  • Stories of Honor and Shame - Through a series of remarkable personal accounts, fifteen women reveal their roles in the patriarchal Islamic society of the Gaza Strip where men dictate most aspects of life.

  • The Sugar Curtain - An intimate portrait by Camila Guzmán Urzúa about growing up in Cuba during the "golden years" of the Cuban Revolution.

  • Tambogrande - Follows the efforts of a small Peruvian town over five years as they fight government efforts to sell the mineral rights under their homes to a multi-national mining company.

  • Taxi to Timbuktu - Men from Mali seek work in New York, Paris, and Tokyo.

  • Winds of Memory - Filmed over three years, WINDS OF MEMORY reveals Mayan life and culture in Guatemala today, five centuries after the "discovery" of America.