Thanassakis, a 13-year-old boy, is staying with his grandparents in the Greek village of Ano Ravenia, while his parents stay with his younger brother in Zurich, Switzerland. It was filmed during three periods: winter in the village, summer in the village (while his parents, as most migrants, come back for the holidays), and Christmas in Zurich when the grandfather and the young boy visit their family. Who is most important to the young boy - his father or grandfather?
Thanassakis, a 13-year-old boy, is staying with his grandparents in the Greek village of Ano Ravenia, while his parents stay with his younger brother in Zurich, Switzerland. It was filmed during three periods: winter in the village, summer in the village (while his parents, as most migrants, come back for the holidays), and Christmas in Zurich when the grandfather and the young boy visit their family. Who is most important to the young boy - his father or grandfather?
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In GLOBAL METAL, directors Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn set out to discover how the West's most maligned musical genre - heavy metal - has impacted the world's cultures beyond Europe and North America. The film follows metal fan and anthropologist Sam Dunn on a whirlwind journey through Asia, South America and the Middle East as he explores the underbelly of the world's emerging extreme music scenes; from Indonesian death metal to Chinese black metal to Iranian thrash metal. GLOBAL METAL reveals a worldwide community of metalheads who aren't just absorbing metal from the West - they're transforming it - creating a new form of cultural expression in societies dominated by conflict, corruption and mass-consumerism.
"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 heart as well as the mind. The film follows Yasutomo, his teachers and staff, students and their families over the course of one entire school year. The film is also the story of the families of Kanayama. Parents and elders of this once impoverished town embrace Yasutomo's vision, but not without wary glances back to the past. This small community, bound together by love for its children, is also defined by its journey through the cultural upheavals of postwar Japan.
Scientist Mark Plotkin races against time to save the ancient healing knowledge of Indian tribes from extinction.
Huelva, Spain, an isolated region lost in time. The grass, the sand and the sky are the same that those foreigners saw in the spring of 1895, when they crossed the sea from a distant country to mark the unspoiled terrain and extract its wealth, when the tower was new, when people could climb to the top of the highest dune and imagine that the city of Tartessos was still there, in the distance, almost invisible in the morning brume.
Haji Omar and his three sons belong to the Lakankhel, a Pashtoon tribal group in northeastern Afghanistan. The film focuses on his family: Haji Omar, the patriarch; Anwar, the eldest, his father's favorite, a pastoralist and expert horseman; Jannat Gul, cultivator and ambitious rebel; and Ismail, the youngest, attending school with a view to a job as a government official.
IN THE LAND OF GIANT PYGMIES, a diary of Aurelio Rossi's 1925 trek into the immense Belgian Congo, preserves a long-gone-Colonial-era wonder at natural resources, "primitive" tribes, customs and costumes in Europe's cast African possessions, and implies that the "dark continent" could benefit from the "civilizing" influences of home.
Inspired by Steven Blush's book "American Hardcore: A tribal history" Paul Rachman's feature documentary debut is a chronicle of the underground hardcore punk years from 1979 to 1986. Interviews and rare live footage from artists such as Black Flag, Bad Brains, Minor Threat, SS Decontrol and the Dead Kennedys.
In 1935, German scientists dug for bones; in 1943, they murdered to get them. How the German scientific community supported Nazism, distorted history to legitimize a hideous system and was an accomplice to its unspeakable crimes. The story of the Ahnenerbe, a sinister organization created to rewrite the obscure origins of a nation.
A documentary about the histoy and linguistic ties of the Finno-Ugric, and Samoyedic peoples. Speakers of the Kamassian, Nenets, Khanty, Komi, Mari, and Karelian languages were filmed in their everyday settings in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The footage was shot in Altai Krai, the Nenets Okrug, Khantia-Mansia, Uzbekistan, the Komi Republic, Mari el, Karelia, and Estonia. The first documentary in Lennart Meri's "Encyclopaedia Cinematographica Gentium Fenno - Ugricarum (1970 - 1997)" series.
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 the film. The film was shot in 1977 on location in northern Finland, Sapmi, Vepsia, Votia, Mordovia, Khantia-Mansia, Hungary, the Taymyr Peninsula, the Setomaa region in Estonia, and on the Estonian islands of Saaremaa and Muhu. Footage was also shot in 1970 in the Nenets Okrug. The second documentary in Lennart Meri's "Encyclopaedia Cinematographica Gentium Fenno - Ugricarum" series.
A three-act film-essay about memory and the historical-cultural ties of the Finno- Ugric peoples. The first chapter is dedicated to ancient Bearese of memory, such as Karelian cliff drawings, Kalevala runo song and Khanty bear feast rituals. the second act portrays the visit of Elias Lonnrot, compiler of the Finnish national epic Kalevala, to Estonia and his meetings with local intellectuals. Part three re-enacts an ancient smelting and blacksmith ritual set to Veljo Tormis' cantata 'curse upon iron'. Filmed in 1985 in Uhtuo, Karelia; in Khantia-Mansia at the Agan river, a tributary of the Ob; and in Estonia (Tallinn, Kuusalu, Tartu, Voru, Litsmetsa in Voru county, Lullemae, Karula, Rongu, Narva, and at a bend of the Pirita river). The third documentary in Lennart Meri's "Encyclopaedia Cinematographica Gentium Fenno - Ugricarum" series.
The film follows Ongka's struggles to accumulate huge numbers of pigs and other items of value to present at a Moka ceremony to another tribe.
In the same vein as Meri's other documentations, this one takes advantage of the glasnost policy to discuss the social and ecologic impact of the Russian oil industry on the natives and the lands they inhabit.
"Shaman" was filmed on July the 16th, 1977 in the northernmost corner of Eurasia, on the Taymyr Peninsula, at the Avam river, concurrently with the shooting of the documentary "The Winds of the Milky Way". The Nganasan Shaman Demnime (1913-1980) was 64 years old at the time. The documentary about Demnime's incarnation ritual was completed 20 years later. The fifth and final documentary in Lennart Meri's "Encyclopaedia Cinematographica Gentium Fenno - Uricarum" series.
Tchai is the word used by Ju/'hoansi to describe getting together to dance and sing; n/um can be translated as medicine, or supernatural potency. In the 1950's, when this film was shot, Ju/'hoansi gathered for "medicine dances" often, usually at night, and sometimes such dances lasted until dawn.
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.
As retailers, wholesalers, and negotiators, Asante women of Ghana dominate the huge Kumasi Central Market amid the laughter, argument, colour and music. The crew of this `Disappearing World' film have jumped into the fray, explored, and tried to explain the complexities of the market and its traders. As the film was to be about women traders, an all female film crew was selected and the rapport between the two groups of women is remarkable. The relationship was no doubt all the stronger because the anthropologist acting as advisor to the crew, Charlotte Boaitey, is herself an Asante. The people open up for the interviewers telling them about their lives as traders, about differences between men and women, in their perception of their society and also about marriage.
Bomb Hunters is an engrossing examination of the micro-economy that has emerged in Cambodia from untrained civilians harvesting unexploded bombs as scrap metal. The film explores the long-term consequences of war and genocide in an attempt to understand the social, cultural, and historical context and experiences of rural villagers who seek out and dismantle UXO (unexploded ordnance) for profit. Part of a global economy, these individuals clear UXO from their land in order to protect their families from harm and to earn enough money to survive. Bomb Hunters is an eye-opening account investigating the on-going residual, persistent effects of war experienced by post-conflict nations around the globe, and the complex realities of achieving "peace".
An unprejudiced portrait of Spanish folklore and a crude analysis in black and white of its intimate relationship with atavism and superstition, with violence and pain, with blood and death; a story of terror, a journey to the most sinister and ancestral Spain; the one that lived far from the most visited tourist destinations, from the economic miracle and unstoppable progress, relentlessly promoted by the Franco regime during the sixties.
One of the most significant cases in European archaeology is the grave of the shaman woman of Bad Dürrenberg, a key finding of the last hunter-gatherer groups. From a time when there were no written records, this site was first researched by the Nazis, who saw a physically strong male warrior from an ‘original Aryan race’ in the buried person. It was, in fact, the most powerful woman of her time. The latest research shows that she was dark-skinned, had physical deformities, and was a spiritual leader. The documentary – using high-end CGI and motion capture – compares the researchers of the Nazi era, who misrepresented and instrumentalised their findings, to today’s researchers, who meticulously compile findings and evidence, and use cross- disciplinary methods to examine and evaluate them. It also substantiates the theory of the powerful roles women played in prehistoric times. The story of this woman, buried with a baby in her arms, still fascinates us 9,000 years after her death.