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About RAI Film
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Watch on demand
Ethnographic Film Catalogue
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Film Festival 2025
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RAI FILM
Login
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Twitter
About
About RAI Film
Meet the team
Prices
Film Distribution
Watch on demand
Ethnographic Film Catalogue
Teaching resources
RAI Film Festival
About RAI Film Festival
Film Festival 2025
Film Festival 2025 Group passes
Film Festival prizes and awards
Film Conference 2025
Archive of past editions
Menu
About
About RAI Film
Meet the team
Prices
Film Distribution
Watch on demand
Ethnographic Film Catalogue
Teaching resources
RAI Film Festival
About RAI Film Festival
Film Festival 2025
Film Festival 2025 Group passes
Film Festival prizes and awards
Film Conference 2025
Archive of past editions
Login
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Films
found one film
with a digital version available
x
Keywords
“Social Conflict”
x
Year of production
“1990”
x
Status
“A”
x
films with a digital version
1
x
Region
South Asia
1
Country
Pakistan
1
Keywords
Agriculture / Farming
1
Festivals / Carnival
1
Land Rights
1
Social Conflict
1
x
Directors
Sheppard, John
1
Series
Disappearing World Series
1
Country of production
United Kingdom
1
Year of production
1990
1
x
Status
Film
The Kalasha: Rites of Spring
1990
60
‘
Directed by
John Sheppard
.
The Kalasha are a tribal people, 3,000 strong, who live in the high valleys of the Hindu Kush mountains in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan. The Kalasha are unique as a pagan people in this Islamic Republic. Joshi, their three day festival of song and dance, rituals and sacrifice and the re-telling of legends celebrates the coming of spring and encourages chivalrous romance between the sexes. All this provides a colourful focus for this film which explores the life and customs of the Kalasha. Before the menfolk depart to the high mountain pastures for the goats’ summer grazing they present the women with goats’ milk and bread that has been ritually purified. The women sing their thanks, praise and food and clamour for more. Whilst the men are away, the women stay in the narrow valleys, tending their tiny terraced fields of wheat, maize and millet. The Kalasha are worried that their way of life is under threat. The naively mortgaged land and walnut trees to their Chitrali Muslim neighbours, often in exchange for paltry loands. The Chitralis now covet the profits to be made from exploiting the cedar and holm oak which grow in the Kalasha valleys. The Pakistan government is aware of the problems and would like to safeguard the Kalashas’ existence as a flourishing minority culture and tourist industry. But a future as a ‘zoo people’ within a tourist park does not appeal to the Kalasha. They are happy to welcome tourists at their festivities and they appreciate interest in their customs, but they are pragmatic about its value to them.
South Asia
Festivals / Carnival
Land Rights
Agriculture / Farming
Social Conflict