The Panare Indians live in the jungles of the northern Amazon. With homes only 300 miles from Caracas, Venezuela, they have seen cars and jet aircraft, yet their lives continue as if they were part of the Stone Age - as they resist outsiders and opt for the traditional way of life they have always known. This film focuses on their daily activities, such as preparing cassava, making blow darts, and hunting and gathering. As the Panare resent even the presence of the Granada TV crew, the film's producer captures their ethos when noting, "They grew tobacco, but just enough for their own needs. The government tried to persuade them to work longer hours to produce more, and have offered to pay them, but they are just not interested
The Cuiva Indians are nomadic hunters who once roamed the plains that sweep from Andes eastwards to the Orinoco river. With only bows and arrows to protect themselves, they face extinction at the hands of the cattle ranchers and well-armed colonists desperate for land.
At first sight, the peaceful Embera people of Colombia live what seems an idyllic life. Four centuries ago, the Spaniards went to Colombia for gold - and found that the Indians wouldn't work for them. In the clashes that followed, many Embera were massacred, and the invaders were forced to import slaves from Africa. Those former slaves, or libres, remain poor and largely without rights themselves, yet they have pushed the Embera into the remote jungle headwaters - while, as if to seal their fate, the Colombian government drives the last section of the Pan-American highway straight across the territory. The Embera tell how they want both legal rights over the land they now inhabit and protection from the physical attacks of the libres with whom they trade. This film shows them in their plight, caught between the government's bulldozers and the libres' banknotes.
This film contrasts the belief systems and ways of life of the Maku and Barasana Colombian Indians with those of the Protestant and Catholic missionaries who, in competing to convert the Indians to Christianity, threaten to consume their ancient culture. The Protestants, North American Fundamentalists from the Summer Institute of Linguistics, are said to have used their organization as a cover in order to be allowed to work with the Indians, because open Protestant missionary activity would not have been acceptable to the authorities.
How the life of the nomadic Tuareg has changed as the years go by. Through changes in the social structure of Tuareg society, the ancient wandering ways are becoming extinct.
Anthropologist Jacques Lemoine looks at the Meo (Hmong) who were originally aborigines of northern central China but forced to migrate south to avoid oppression and to preserve their way of life. Today they live in villages scattered over China and Southeast Asia. This program is about the Meo in Laos where they suffered heavy losses in the civil war. Shows the Meo in American backed refugee camps and includes their traditional lifestyle which they are trying to preserve
Explores the revival of mystical belief in the ancient Hindu god, Kataragama. Tells how modernization in Sri Lanka has changed the roles of the gods as some fade away and others grow more powerful. Using the example of a lost eleven-year-old boy, this documentary traces how the god interacts with humans.
The village of Baiveh, in Iran's rugged mountain frontier with Iraq, is home to a group of Kurds who belong to the Quadiri dervishes, a mystical cult of Islam. This program examines the role that religion plays in their daily lives - through ceremonies like the Zikr, in which the dervishes work themselves into an ecstatic trance, able then to endure electric shocks and pass skewers through their flesh without apparently hurting themselves. The dervish tribesmen claim fantastic powers for their leader, the 27-year old Sheikh Hossein - for him, they will skewer their faces, slash their bodies, lick white-hot spoons, and eat glass. Since religious power goes hand in hand with political power in traditional Kurdish society, the sheikh is both spiritual and temporal leader. And as Hossein claims a personal link with God, his religious authority is paramount - only by his authority can a dervish aspire to communion with God.
The Mursi are a tribe living in southwestern Ethiopia, along the Omo River. They are constantly at war about grazing rights with a neighboring tribe, the Bodi - and the most interesting feature of their way of life is the open public debate through which they settle their most important problems, including that of the war. As we learn from the filmmakers, "They never shout each other down, never interrupt, always allow every man to have his say - [there is] no chairman, no vote
The Mehinacu are a delightful people living near the headwaters of the River Xingu in central Brazil. The idyllic lifestyle and joyous outlook of this society is now threatened by a motorway being cut through their territory. As a people, they know they are doomed.
"The Maasai, a prosperous society of animal herders whose sustenence and wealth is their cattle, live primarily in the Rift Valley between Kenya and Tanzania. Women tend the cattle, bring up the children, clean mud from the village when it rains, and belong to a man's estate. This film highlights the Maasai female's rights of passage from childhood to old age, and her lot in life as she is tied to the fortunes of not only husbands but sons as well. Since they alone can give birth, the women see themselves as important contributors to their husband's wealth and develop close supportive relationships with the co-wives. In this society, if a man is rich, "it's his wives who made him so
Focuses on the Quechua, who live in the Andes mountains in an isolated part of Peru. Observes that, unlike many tribes in remote areas, the Quechua desperately want a road to link them with the outside world and its benefits, especially the tourist trade.
Ongka is a "bigman," a leader of a Kawelka tribe in New Guinea where a man's authority and prestige are derived in large part by his ability to organize a lavish "moka," or gift-giving. The moka is an elaborate system of gifts which forges alliances and maintains peace among the tribes. In this particular moka, which Ongka had been planning for ten years, the gifts included 600 pigs, cattle, rare birds, a motorcycle and a truck. The gifts obligate the recipients to repay the debt with even more "generosity" so as to maintain their own prestige. The film closely chronicles this celebration, including the preparations, and reveals a fascinating portrait of Ongka himself
Describes the life of the Sakuddei who live on the Indonesian island of Siberut off the west coast of Sumatra. Portrays their peaceful existence which is being threatened by modern society and the corruption of money, missionaries, civil servants, and industry (especially lumber companies).
An ethnographic view of Masai culture and society, focusing on the preparation of young Masai boys for manhood and leadership in their society. Follows the seven years of transition in which the boys serve as warriors and learn about survival and the outside world, as dictated by their elders.
The Kirghiz of Afghanistan are a group of some 2,000 pastoralists living on a bleak mountain plateau in a narrow isthmus of land between the borders of the Soviet Union and China. For nine months of the year heavy snows cover the ground, which was formerly used only by the Kirghiz for their summer pastures before the borders were closed, virtually terminating the contact of this group with other Kirghiz communities.
This film presents a compelling visual and aural analysis of Shilluk kingship in 1975, and provides a very useful complement to Evans-Pritchard's 1948 text, The Divine Kingship of the Shilluk. Although the Reth (king) has been reduced to the status of second-class magistrate in dispute settlement by the Sundanese government, he is still the focus of political and national identity for a Shilluk people composed of competing territorial groupings. At the death of the Reth, his spirit passes into the Nile.
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.
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.
The Rendille are camel herders who live in villages and camps dotted over 10,000 square miles of desert and scrub bush in Northern Kenya. As the terrain they occupy is so dry, the Rendille grow no crops and their cultural and economic life is centred on their animals. As with other pastoral peoples, the Rendille have to be sensitive to the ever-shifting relationship between humans, animals and 'natural' resources in order to maintain a suitable balance between them
Thami is a village 12,000 feet up in the Himalayas in the Kingdom of Nepal. 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.
Umbanda is a syncretic religious movement, combining elements from orthodox Catholicism with submerged African and indigenous Indian spiritual beliefs. In spite of past attempts to suppress it, Umbanda flourishes in the heterogeneous culture of contemporary urban Brazil. The film seeks to give an exposition of the eclectic repertoire of the Umbanda movement. There is coverage of ritual performances, including interviews with mediums and their clients, which emphasise the role the movement plays in the management of personal malaise and affliction experienced as a by-product of change and urbanisation.
Film documentary about the changes in the life of the Kwegu tribe of Ethiopia now that drought and famine are driving them into contact with the outside world.
Continues the story of the Dings and the Zhus, two families living near Wu-hsi, Kiangsu Province, southeast China who were first interviewed in Inside China: living with the revolution. Filmed at work and at home, these people show the human side of the political and social changes that have swept China this century.
The Mursi, the inhabitants of the Omo Valley on the far edge of southwest Ethiopia feel that after a series of natural and man-made disasters, the land they live on is turning against them. Despite this they remain faithful to old ways and traditions, herding cattle and cultivating sorghum, even as the Omo's flood level drops continuously.
Documents the Nitha or age set ceremony of the Mursi tribe of Ethiopia, wherein, under the guidance of an elder, participants act out the conflict between generations preparatory to the bestowal of adulthood and authority on the initiates.
Faced with a harsh climate and poor soil, the Rrogamis, inhabitants of a northern Albanian alpine valley, survive now as in the past by keeping sheep and goats. With the government redistributing land and animals to the peasants, the young taking over village rule, and communities recovering their autonomy, the future of Rrogam is hard to predict.
