Movies: Anthropology

A young anthropologist reflects on her late grandmother's religious background....

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Women from three separate Ju/'hoan bands have gathered at a mangetti grove at !O to play an intense game in which under-tones of social and personal tensions become apparent....

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Explores the historical and contemporary significance of salt, detailing its extraction from the earth and oceans, its role in food preservation, livestock nutrition, and its various industrial uses. The film highlights how salt has shaped human civi...

John Bishop and Naomi Bishop present a portrait a peculiar life style of the Himalayan indigenous Sherpa people in their documentary , the Himalayan Herders. The 76 minutes long film is about the diverse culture and life style of herders community ne...

A short film on Gnawa trance shot in south Morocco....

Marianne Lehmann, born in Switzerland in 1936, married a Haitian and moved to Port-au-Prince in 1957. Fascinated by voodoo cult objects, she began with buying them to avoid their scattering abroad. Over the years it became the largest collection in t...

Saint Anthony, Abbot of the Desert, protector of animals, is a central figure in the Italian countryside, where fortune depends on the health of the animals. To heal his donkey, Antonio asks the village priest to bless the sick animal. Faced with his...

The subject is two grotesque-looking human beings who are sitting on the deck of a ship. The two weird individuals sit cross-legged and do the bidding of a man in oriental costume. The point of the film seems to be directed at the fact that the bone ...

Explores the themes of trance and dance in the rituals and religion of Bali. The famous Kris Dance is performed....

Several filmmakers discuss the introduction of Western modes of communication, especially film, to native cultures. While these tools can help a native people to document their own culture, it can also "swallow" their culture, encroaching upon and ir...

Children and teenagers throw sticks, berries, and leaves at each other from perches in a large baobab tree....

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A deep dive into contemporary Brazilian music. Guided by the composer, anthropologist and ethnomusicologist Kilza Setti and the Hésperides Música das Américas nucleus, the documentary takes us to a world where contemporary music, the Guarani and Timb...

Sequel to the "The Waterfowl People". The author interprets the kinship, linguistic and cultural relationships of the Finno-Ugric peoples. Finns, Vepsians, Votes, Setos, Erzya-Mordvinians, Mansi, Hungarians, Sami, Nganasans, and Estonians appear in ...

"Heart of the Country" is the story of Shinichi Yasutomo, the extraordinary principal of a rural elementary school in Kanayama, central Hokkaido, Northern Japan. Yasutomo is a man driven by his vision for learning and his passion for educating the he...

The director’s grandparents Wilhelmine, an Austrian Catholic, and Bernard, a Jewish Czechoslovakian communist, have always been part of her life, although she never met them in person. Her uncle Hermann lives in what was once their house, with their ...

Globe-trotting Slovakian filmmaker Pavol Barabas explores Earth's biggest tropical island, New Guinea, in this breathtaking tour of a culture wholly unfamiliar with modern civilization and with no previous contact with white people. Along the way, Ba...

The history of Amos, a town in Abitibi-Témiscamingue (Quebec)....