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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...

During Mongolia’s seventy years of domination by the Soviet Union, shamanism, like many aspects of Mongolian tradition, was forbidden by the Communist authorities, and went into decline. Since the early...

The film is in two parts and focuses on the Mongols living in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China. Part One (28 minutes) follows the life of a nomadic...

This award-winning film opens a door into the amazing world of the Takarazuka Revue, the all-female theatre troupe in Japan. Thousands of young women aspire to perform in the Revue’s...

A compelling biography of Hanayagi Genshu, a feminist and dancer who spent her lifetime defying the conservative traditions of Japanese society with her radical politics and unconventional avant-garde performances. On...

In 1949, the author’s young grandfather migrated from An Xi, China, to Singapore. Spending almost 70 years in Singapore, he has only been back home four times. As an immigrant...

A film about courage, transformation and dreams in the extraordinary world of Japanese women’s wrestling. Gaea Girls focuses on the hopes and fears of the beleaguered Gaea Japan squad, whose...

‘The Gaijin’ tells the story of an individual negotiating his identity in a foreign country. It follows Luke Jonathan Driscoll, an American who has been residing in Japan for nearly...

Kazuko Hohki goes back to Tokyo with her band, the ‘Frank Chickens’, after living in England for 15 years. This wry and delightful film records her re-experiencing of Japan after...

Religious life in the village is highly gendered, with female shamans dominating most religious activities. These shamanesses and their gods are organised as a “court”, which expresses a hierarchy of...

The Tuvinians live deep inside the Soviet Union, at the very centre of Asia. Tuva is geographically closer to Peking than to Moscow. It only entered the USSR in 1944...

Taiga Nomads is a film series about the Evenki (previously the Tungus), a nomadic people scattered all over eastern Siberia, and living under harsh conditions in the taiga, an area...

Tokyo life as rarely seen on mainstream media. This short film takes you to the lives of men who live on the outskirts of the city and of Japanese society.

Once brutally persecuted under the Soviet regime, Buddhism is re-emerging in Siberia. But with a past where Lamas were killed in prisons and temples burnt to the ground, there are...

This film tries to solve the mystery of a bizarre Arctic fairy tale. Priit Tender, an Estonian animator, makes a film about an old Chukchi legend – The Maggot Feeder....

The Kazakhs of Xinjiang (Sinkiang) are one of the fifty-five national minorities that now live within the borders of the People’s Republic of China. The policy of the Chinese Communist...

This film takes us into the world of Udehe – indigenous people of the Far East of Russia. According to the census of 2010, their population dropped to 1,490 souls…

Zhouguan, a Tunpu village in a multiethnic area of southwest China, is renowned for its performances of the Dixi exorcism operas. The village elders believe that they are descendants of...

Futuru Tsai explores the relationship between Amis people and the sea in this playful portrait of maritime culture in coastal Taiwan. The film focuses on various social and practical activities...

*These three films (‘Inside China: Living with the Revolution’; ‘The Newest Revolution’; ‘The Kazakhs of China’) present a valuable record of aspects of most recent developments in China.* (A. Jenkins)...