Peruvian alpaca wool is a material of utmost significance among Andean highland communities and their rich textile traditions. Entretejido is an observational documentary that weaves together the different sites and communities involved in the making of alpaca wool fashions. The film is a sensorial immersion into the textures that compose this supply chain, from animal to runway, employing sonic and…
Set in the high plateau of eastern Tibet, Drokpa is an intimate portrait of the lives and struggles of Tibetan nomads whose life is on the cusp of irreversible change. Richly observed daily lives and family relationships, especially those of Tamku, a teenage single mother, Dhongya, a senior nomad, and Yithan, a mother of two boys, are at once deeply…
In the very waters where Melville’s Pequod gave chase to Moby Dick, Leviathan captures the collaborative clash of man, nature, and machine. Shot on a dozen cameras — tossed and tethered, passed from fisherman to filmmaker — it is a cosmic portrait of one of mankind’s oldest endeavors.…
An unsentimental elegy to the American West, Sweetgrass follows the last modern‐day cowboys to lead their flocks of sheep up into Montana’s Absaroka‐Beartooth mountains for summer pasture. This astonishingly beautiful yet unsparing film reveals a world in which nature and culture, animals and humans, vulnerability and violence are all intimately meshed.…
Path of Destiny is a documentary about a group of Sikawasay from the Amis tribe of Hualien, Taiwan, known as the people who possess gods. This fate calls upon them to maintain traditional rituals to serve the tribe, living by way of interaction with the gods. We followed Panay Mulu, who has been with them for more than 20 years,…
This film depicts the Gonya festival among the Tamang ethnic group in the Kathmandu valley of Nepal. The celebration for Gonya revolves around the performance of the bonbo, an equivalent for the more universal term “shaman” in Tamang culture. The film consists of three parts: The first part shows how the Gonya is incorporated within the overarching tradition of Janai…
In a popular neighborhood of Brazzaville, Prince Dethmer, a famous Congolese dancer, has just died. His family organises his burial, inviting all of his artist friends to pay him their final tribute.
In the day he is a delivery driver for a factory, but on dates that ends with 3, 6, or 9, he exchanges his dirty work clothes for a mottled apron with a delicate yellow dragon. The apron is like a mission that carries on the last wishes of his late father. Taking over the mantle of his father, he…
Fengshui is to say using winds to gain water. The earth is mother, and burial brings peace to the deceased, symbolizing reincarnation. So the name of this story in English is “Revive,” which means getting into the cycle of reincarnation.
The cult of María Lionza, one of the most important religious practices in Venezuela, is beginning to manifest itself in Barcelona. Through the testimonies of believers, artists, and esoteric art sellers, this documentary depicts for the first time the appearance of this religion in the Catalan capital.
Unity: Dress-scapes of Accra is an ethnographic film about African fashion in the capital of Ghana. The comeback of African print seems to be emerging in the fashion world of Accra. While following Allan, a fashion designer, and his wife Cynthia, this mosaic film shows the great diversity of tailor-made fashion and hybrid styles, the ways that African wear is…
Born in 1981, a Nanao Atayal from Yilan, Wu Ta Elementary School teacher Wilang hunted with elders in the mountains and learned rattan weaving techniques since he was a boy. He has an old soul that is passionate about Atayal culture. In 2014, Wilang embarked on the “Finding our Roots Project” at Wu Ta Elementary School. He took school children…
Welcome to the daily routine of Akbar Pir Ahmadi, one of the few masters of felt-making in Shiraz, Iran. He begins early in the morning and welcomes many visitors throughout the day: a friend comes for help, two customers buy felt, and his little girl joins him for lunch. In the evening, Akbar goes to the Zurkhaneh (traditional gymnasium) to…
Faber Navalis is Latin for boat builder, words in an ancient language for describing an ancient profession. This might seem to be a film just about the restoration of a wooden ship, but the actual subject of this documentary is the state of mind of its shipwright: an Italian researcher in maritime ethnography who decided to learn boat building skills…
Laundry Lives takes us into the usually invisible everyday worlds of five middle class Indonesians: Lia, Dyna, Ning, Adi and Nur. As Indonesia’s economy and market grow, there are hidden implications for the domestic lives of the country’s rapidly expanding professional middle classes and for environmental sustainability. Laundry Lives captures this moment of change, showing the shifting gender relations, new…
In a world where everyone has a mobile phone, a personalised ringtone says a lot about you. Welcome to a once-remote Aboriginal community in northern Australia, where individual ringtones reveal rich insights into lives and relationships.