Les Maitres Fous is about the ceremony of a religious sect, the Hauka, which was widespread in West Africa from the 1920s to the 1950s. Hauka participants were usually rural migrants from Niger who came to cities such as Accra in Ghana (then Gold Coast), where they found work as laborers in the city’s lumber yards as stevedores at the…
Drugs sending which was based on the idea of paying after using was originated from the third year of Genroku (Japanese year). During the domination of Japan, due to the lack of medical resources and the inconvenient transportation in rural areas of Taiwan, almost every family hanged a medical kit called Yao Pao Tsai on the wall for the people…
The Dulong River is located in the northwest of China’s Yunnan Province,Every winter, the traffic between the Dulong River and the outside world is blocked by the heavy snow on Gaoligong Mountain,This situation will continue for half a year,During this half year, the Dulong River valley becomes an isolated island.
The Dulong people have lived here for generations,The Dulong are…
According to the belief of ‘Sufis’, the mystical Islamic, ‘Mast’ is someone who walks the road of love to reach his beloved Saint, one who is in a state of ecstasy, absorbed in an inner rhythm of meditation and trance in his search for spiritual love. ‘Mast Qalandar’ was a Sufi Saint, who settled down in Sehwan Sharif in the…
There are many local Mani associations that are mainly composed of the elders in Tibetan rural areas. It’s a very important daily routine for them to recite Mani scripture (om mani ped me hom). The Tibetan people believe in the life cycle and that evil deeds will cause suffering. They have to do good things and recite the Mani all…
“Mainay u? (Do you want to be a man?)”
“Mainay ku! (Yes! I want to be a man!)”
“Mainay” means “man” in the language of Pinuyumayan. The two paragraphs above were the vows to the forefathers for the boys who entered the “Palakuwan” (man’s assembly place) to have proper training which to become a real man. He will obey the…
Deng Nan-Guang was one of the most important photographers in Taiwan at 1930s. This film is talking about his pictures and his home town, Bei-Pu where he loved the most. It has been four decades, after Deng Nan Guang passed away. The small town changed a lot. The director imitated the eye sight of Deng Nan Guang and observed the…
According to Indigenous elders, the process of standing up for tests to win the qualification to wear the feather headdress is a symbol of becoming a man (Tamdaw) for the Pangcah people of Taiwan. The process of qualification has changed over time in recent days due to the lost of traditional environment and lifestyle.
The scars made by colonization and…
Every Lantern Festival in eastern Taiwan, a group of men strips bare above the waist, and wearing nothing but red shorts, stands on a sacred palanquin, allowing people to pound their bodies with bottlerockets, singeing their skin. They are believed to be human incarnations of the god Handan. The “Scorching of Handan” has in recent years become a major event…
In recent years the political tension in Poland has been escalating unprecedentedly. This film presents the dramatic developments through the eyes of 2 women on opposite sides of the political barricade.
Marta and Tita are patriots. Both are proud of their country and its history, and they want only the best for it. But their attitudes could not be more…
On Honolulu’s famed Waikiki Beach stand four giant boulders placed as a tribute to the four legendary mahu – individuals of dual male and female spirit – who brought the healing arts from Tahiti to Hawaii long ago. Although the stones have survived for centuries, their story has been hidden and the respected role of mahu erased. The Healer Stones…
The first documentary about hospice care in China. Hospice care is usually called palliative care because of cultural taboos in China. In the hospice care center of Lukang, Hangzhou, there are more than 60 patients, but over 20 patients will be gone in a year’s time. Most of them cannot be cured. Their family members sent them here to ease…
When Geraldine Kawangka’s husband died she and her six children moved out of their suburban-style house at Aurukun on Cape York Peninsula. In earlier times their bark house would have been abandoned and burnt to avoid contact with the dead man’s spirit and to allow it to return to its own traditional country. Now, with Western-style housing, this is no…
The Image Man is an ethnobiography of Hermógenes Cayo, a self-taught woodcarver and painter who lives on the high Andean plateau of Argentina. The film portrays Hermógenes, his wife Aurelia Kilpe, and their children in their Andean lifestyle, as well as Hermogenes’ passion for painting, carving, building, and his devotion to the Virgin Mary. The film does not follow a…
“MLABRI marry MLABRI”. But what will young IDang do, when there are no Mlabri girls around? Chalat is leaving for boarding school. His mother asks: will he ever come back? As a child Chuwit roamed the jungles with his parents. He knows Mlabri life is about to change radically, and he wishes to have a say, but will he get…
The Inheritance is a three-act video montage essay on inheritance as an accumulation of racial and settler dispossessions. Seeking to intervene in what Povinelli has called the current white counter-reformation of white nativism, The Inheritance pivots the ideas and affects of history, inheritance, and social identity against the sedimentations of white supremacy and settler colonialism through a retelling of the…
In 1999, the construction for the laying of the first optical fibre cable in South east Asia is now crossing Cambodia from the Thai border to the frontier with Vietnam. The cable is to link up with another running from Europe along Silk Road. The worksite provides employment opportunities for many Cambodians. Peasants with no land, demobilized solders and families…
The Directorate General of Highways lends an impetus to build the road no.26 from An-Shuo to Shu-Hai by 3.8billion in 2006. The villagers in the tribe have many different kinds of opinions.”Tribe’’ is the main point of this documentary. It’s filled with rational and perceptual and it describes the relationship between the land and people deeply. It makes people have…
This film explores the leadership system in lives of chiefs such as Rangalu who was sworn in as the Head of Santiman District, Taiwan, which consists of 10 villages with population of 70,000, most of whom are of indigenous Paiwan. The Paiwan people live in the mountain area of southern Taiwan. Their rich oral traditions and cultural traits are revealed…
Join the enthusiastic converts to a new alternative trend that recognizes and embraces the healing powers of laughter. People from all works of life are engaging in spontaneous, uninhibited laughter as a means of reducing stress and warding off depression. While the movement’s founders claim that their practices derive from the venerable art of yoga, India’s laughing club reflect an…