Is the Crown at war with us? is a powerful and painstakingly researched look at the conflict over fishing rights between the Mi’gmaq people of Esgenoopetitj (Burnt Church), New Brunswick and their non-Native neighbours. The Mi’gmaq had been fishing the waters of Miramichi Bay since time immemorial, and their right to do so had been upheld in a landmark 1999…
In year 2000, American cellist David Darling came to the far mountains in southern Taiwan. He was stunned when he first heard the pure voices of Bunu children. “That day,” he said,” my cello became silent.” Two years later, he returned to the aborigine village with an unprecedented music plan-using his cello and the Bunu voice to start a music…
This film focuses on Edmund Carpenter’s pioneering role in visual anthropology and media ecology. A maverick who explored the borderlands between ethnography and media over fifty years, Carpenter looked at the revolutionary impact of film and photography on tribal peoples, He opened the Pandora’s box of electronice media with delight and horror, embracing it even as he recoiled from its…
A sever earthquake shattered the modest living in this small village in the middle of Taiwan. In order to rebuild their ruined elementary school and transform it into an ecological forest school to fit the natural environment, villagers of Neihu, the small, undeveloped village, stand up to fight their war with the great and advanced National Taiwan University.
Being the…
A married mother of five, Duka enters a state of emotional turmoil when her husband marries again. Among the Hamar in Southern Ethiopia who live with herds and cultivate small fields of sorghum in their remote, bush-covered country, men are allowed to marry more than one wife, but few do. From dilemma to resolution, the complicated relationships between the wives,…
Alfred Melotu is a Big Man and Paramouth Chief among the Melanesians in the Reef Islands group off, the Solomon Islands. In 1994 a film crew visited Alfred in order to plan a future film. Unfortunately, on the return in 1996 Alfred was on his deathbed suffering from mouth cancer. Nevertheless, he was still a Big Man. Alfred consequently allowed…
Must we really forget our ancestors in order to become modern?”
In a small village of Papua New Guinea, three exceptional men rival with each other, in the field of rituals and artistic creation, in order to win over their neighbours to their own philosophical view of the future. The stakes are high, and the question is in fact identical…
In November 1993, Tian Feng, a first class composer from the Beijing Symphony Orchestra, arrived in Yunnan, and opened the Yunnan Minority Nationalities Institute of Traditional Culture.
Tian Feng proposed the prinicple of “seek authenticity and prohibit adaptations”. He wishes to start from this concept to save the music and dance culture with “classical
characteristics” (his words) from the…
DADDY & PAPA is a one hour documentary exploring the personal, cultural, and political impact of gay men who are making a decision that is at once traditional and revolutionary: to raise children themselves. Taking us inside four gay male families, DADDY & PAPA traces the day-to-day challenges and the larger, critical issues that inevitably intersect their private lives-the ambiguous…
When Bill and Mick Thaiday grew up on Palm Island in the 1950s, it was radio that imposed by the Aboriginal Protection Act. Later, it would also free them from the grip of alcohol addiction and start them on a journey that’s lasted almost 20 years. Together they have travelled like a couple of nomads, developing Aboriginal radio stations in…
Indo Pino is a Taw-Waliya.
In the Wana language, the word “Taw” means “man”, “human being”. The word “Waliya” designates “beings of the forest”. This is how the Wanas call their shamen: the “Taw-Waliya”.
The Wana Wewaju who number about 1600, live in Indonesia, in the eastern part of Sulawesi (Celebes Island), among the dense equatorial rain forest…
The word “music” does not exist in the Tao language, however, music and sound are indispensable in the lives of Tao people. The ever-present singing and chanting in Tao society are an integral part of their culture. Their music “does not seek to please the ears. The goal is simply to express every aspect of life through sound.”
With the…
According to Bunun legend, there were once two suns in the sky. The heat was intense, so the people shot down one of the suns. The wounded sun became the moon and fell into the mountains. Because of the pain, it pressed into the earth and created a gully into which its tears flowed.
As a child, Anu Takilulun was…