Films

The film Alfred Haddon made in 1898 in the Torres Straits, lasting for less than a minute, is the world’s first example of anthropological cinema. ‘The Masks of Mer’ tells the extraordinary story of

The Hamat’sa (or “Cannibal Dance”) is the most important—and highly represented ceremony of the Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwakiutl) people of British Columbia. This film traces the history of

In isolated mountain hamlets in Nigeria’s Jos Plateau the Ngas have traditionally observed the movements of the moon in the night sky. The moon is a key symbol in Ngas cosmology, believed to

Among the Yoruba of Western Nigeria and Dahomey the Gelede cult honours the earth spirits, the ancestors and especially the Great Mother. The festival filmed here emphasises the status of women and

Four million Tiv people form the major culture of the Benue state of southern Nigeria. They are popularly known as the greatest democrats in Africa as their society is based on fraternal cooperation

Until it was conquered by the British in 1897, the city of Benin, in what is now Nigeria, was the centre of a powerful kingdom. Its rulers, the Obas of Benin, were mysterious, secluded figures who

A detailed account of domestic life in the Sepik area of Papua New Guinea, mainly from the women’s point of view. It describes their everyday activities in the ‘gardens’ in order to produce

Cemeteries are not only places for the dead. They are also spaces in which the living interact with each other – and with the dead. “Cultivating Death” depicts the different ways in which

The communal rituals of most villages of the Eastern Niger Delta focus on two great classes of spirits – the heroes and the water people. The heroes once lived with the men, founded their

Held every October in the city of Matsuyama, the Dogo Autumn Festival is one of the most violent religious festivals celebrated in Japan. Eight teams of men carrying massive portable wood shrines

The RAI has reedited the original film of this ceremony among the Ainu people of Japan. In the bear ceremony, now no longer performed, a specially reared bear was reverently killed and its flesh and

This ethnopsychiatric film shows the management of psychiatric disorders by the Yoruba of Nigeria. There are two basic types of institutions to deal with psychiatric disorders. First there are

Once a year a ritual is held in a Javanese village. After a distribution of food, men dance with professional female dancers. Their allegedly sexual ethos makes these ‘tayuban’ unacceptable as

‘We Don’t Need a Grave’ attempts to show how the people who choose Shizenso rather than the typical family grave try to accept one’s death. Shizenso is a natural mortuary practice that has no