For centuries Inuit have been studying white people. Now, revealed for the first time, the results of their research into one of the most perplexing societies on earth.
Qallunaat! Why White People are Funny is an irreverent look at Western Civilization through Inuit eyes. Inspired by the satirical essays of Zebedee Nungak, the film turns the tables on generations of…
Rasa dan Asa is a short documentary film shot by a group of Indonesian domestic workers living in Malaysia, assisted by a team of video makers, at the height of the 2021 Covid-19 pandemic. In the Indonesian language, “Rasa dan Asa” means “taste, feeling and hope”. Through the film, Binti and Ningrum told intimate stories of endurance as migrant domestic…
The Tao people believe flying fish to be a gift bestowed by the heavens. In February or March when the flying fish arrive near the coast, the Tao tribal groups carries out “flying fish summoning ceremonies” to call the fish back to their shores: “Come on back flying fish. Come back to our bay. When you get here we’ll welcome…
A reflection on filming in rural Senegal and a critique of the anthropological I/eye. The film “denotes something more than an exceptional spirit of observation; let’s say by all means a kind of amorous enthrallment” — Alberto Moravia, L’Expresso
With uncanny eloquence, Reassemblage distills sounds and images of Senegalese villagers and their surroundings to reconsider the premises of ethnographic filmmaking.…
Anthropologist and filmmaker Carolina Arias Ortiz returns to Costa Rica, where she spent her childhood. She visits her estranged father. When he is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, death suddenly draws close. At the same time she meets the archaeologist Ifigenia Quintanilla, who is conducting research into one of Costa Rica’s most famous cultural phenomena: the large, pre-Columbian stone spheres found…
Cremation rites are the most elaborate rites of passage performed by Balinese householders. Poor families may wait years before accumulating enough resources to cremate their dead, who are buried in the meantime. This film is about a group of villagers in Central Bali who cooperated to carry out a group cremation. It had been 15 years since they last held…
Strongly encouraged by an environmental protection program, Rendala and his clan left their native forest in the southwest of Madagascar and the rest of the Mikea community to settle a few kilometers away. Attracted by the modern world, spit tobacco, and the promise of a better future, they gave up their lives of hunting and gathering. But five years later,…
Over the years, we have been educated to teach our children to be upstanding Chinese people, but have received no education on how to live a tribal community. When a group of professionals and wise members of the tribal community aspire to use traditional tribal values to educate our next generation, they are met with unfriendly government policies that force…
All the discussion over the White Terrors, be it in the books or in the images, takes largely the Hans as subjective and concerns less the treatment exerted on the Taiwanese aboriginals during the period of martial law. In an era of reticence, the aboriginals also followed suit in the fear of making even the slightest mistake which would lead…
In the historically most famous ancestral house of the matrilineal Amis tribe in Taiwan, the carved pillars tell legends. After a strong typhoon toppled the house 40 years ago, the pillars were moved to the Institute of Ethnology Museum. Recently young villagers, with assistance from female shamans, pushed the descendants and village representatives to communicate with ancestors in the pillars.…
For years, the stories of West African migrants and refugees have been told through the lenses of foreign journalists. Now there is a story from the inside.
Part road-trip, part memoir, part journalistic investigation, REVENIR follows Kumut Imesh, a refugee from the Ivory Coast now living in France, as he returns to the African continent and attempts to retrace the…
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.
When Kyle Felter, the lead singer of I Don’t Konform sent out a demo album to Flemming Rasmussen, the Grammy Award-winner producer of Metallica, they never imagined themselves a few months later rehearsing with Rasmussen inside a hot hogan on a Navajo reservation before recording their debut album at the iconic Sweet Silence Studio in Denmark. While following I Don’t…
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.
“Rituals of Resistance” looks at the evolving generational responses by pacifist Tibetans under 65 years of Chinese occupation. Through first-hand oral accounts by three Tibetan exiles living in disparate parts of the world, the film traces the three paths of resistance from the active and the brutal, to the realm of the symbolic and sacrificial. The film creatively explores the…
Sailing A Sinking Sea explores the culture of the Moken people of Myanmar and Thailand. The Moken are a nomadic seafaring community and one of the smallest ethnic groups in Asia. Spending eight months out of the year in thatch-roofed wooden boats, they are wholly reliant upon the sea, and their entire belief system revolves around water. Filmed on boats,…
This intimate and personal documentary pays homage to an indigenous agrarian culture in Indonesia that centers on a traditional palm wine and blends with a centuries-long religious devotion in the only predominantly Catholic region within the world’s largest Muslim-majority country.
Sakuliu is a Paiwan artist who treasures his tribal traditional culture. After leaving his tribal village due to unpleasant circumstances for many years, he decides to return to help rebuild his hometown, Da-She Village, which was devastated in the August 8th typhoon in 2009. However, gulf and conflicts between personal vision and traditional thinking, between old and new, which traumatized…
SAMA explores the Islamic music tradition in India and portrays how the two have borrowed and taken inspiration from each other, in both form and content to become a truly magnificent sound. The film attempts to discover that connection which allows the artiste to become one with the creator and experience the peace, calm, serenity and joy with the artiste…
The highest peaks of the mountains rise above the clouds. Sometimes they seem to merge with the sky. There is no god and neither there is a devil. We are in the heights of the Peruvian Andes, more than 5000 meters above sea level, where Celestino, a peasant hermit, undertakes a healing journey with his cow Samichay, from the loneliness…