Films

In 2013, the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Brussels (Belgium) closed for renovation. It is not only the building and the museum cabinets that are in need of renewal: the spirit of the museum has

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 filmmaker and two historians went into the village of Banjeli in 1985 to recreate for the film the traditional iron smelting techniques (which are no longer used) of the area. By focusing on the

The film was made in 1914 by Edward Curtis. The plot concerns the efforts of a young man, Motana, son of a great chief, to obtain a bride and how he is thwarted by a wicked sorcerer. Many of the

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

The history of cannibalism around the world and its role in different culture, from ancient Britain to Papua New Guinea. The Forbidden Rites trilogy explores cannibalism, head hunting and human

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

Human remains from the California Channel Islands were donated to an English city museum nearly a century ago. More recently research began into how they came to be there, and whose remains they

In 1993, Anthony Forge filmed the cremation of an older woman from an affluent ‘commoner’ family. As her body was moved from her family compound to the cremation tower, men of the ward seized the

The film is a brief description of life in a busy commercial centre that still depends upon and retains its ancient traditions. These are based on the history of the town which was founded on the

The film complicates any simple reading of a colonial photographic archive from Southern Nigeria and Sierra Leone that was collected between 1909 and 1915. Through a collaborative creative effort

Brazilian Guarani filmmaker Patrícia Ferreira reflects on New York City and Indigenous representation in dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History. This film is part of the collected DVD

Library spacescape. quiet, history, dreams, wisdom, structure, anomaly, affection, preservation, creation, galaxies, distraction and contemplation. An exploration of a changing world withinwithout