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

Mongolia is a country the size of Western Europe with under 1.5 million people but over 23 million head of livestock. This film concentrates on life in the great plains of Mongolia, at the foot of

The second of two films on Mongolia made by Granada Television in 1974–75 looks at life in Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia and home of a quarter of the population. The city celebrates the 53rd

The film is a valuable treatment of archival footage that George Milner shot while conducting fieldwork in 1955 and 1959. The footage (18 minutes of the total film) focuses on the traditional Samoan

The Migrants is the third film in the trilogy ‘In Search of Cool Ground’ for Granada Television’s Disappearing World series. It is about a drought-induced migration of Mursi from their traditional

The Mursi are a cattle-keeping and agricultural group without chiefs or leaders from south-west Ethiopia. This film, made under extremely difficult conditions, focuses on the way decisions are made

Mirror Mirror is based on an audio-visual ethnography of London’s queer Club Wotever. Begun in the autumn of 2003, it promoted itself as a club that welcomed all genders and sexualities – a

The Masai are cattle herders living in the East African rift valley: they grow no crops and are proud of being a non-agricultural people. Cattle are the all-important source of wealth and social

This film was made after ‘Masai Women’ and in the same area. Together the two films provide a vivid view of Masai men and women and their place in Masai society. The Masai are pastoral nomads in

Over the last three thousand years the Meo (Miao or Hmong) have migrated south from north and central China to avoid oppression and protect their way of life. Today they live in scattered mountain

This is a portrait of Kpuawala, Sierra Leone, a village of some 260 Mende people living in a clearing in the forest in houses of mud brick and tin. Like any village portrait it gossips, happy

A further visit to the Mursi of Southern Ethiopia with whom contact was established 17 years ago, for an important coming of age ceremony which has had to be postponed many times. An elder of the

Shot on the mosquito-ridden shores of the Mackenzie Delta in Canada’s North-West territories, the film deals with the annual Beluga (white whale) hunt. Three families are followed who have

The Mehinacu live near the head-waters of the River Xingu in Central Brazil, in a single village within the protective confines of the Xingu National Park. Although the film concentrates upon the

The proper time for a man to go through the Age Set Ceremony, the nitha, is just as he reaches physical maturity. But many years may elapse from one nitha to the next, so it is inevitable that some