Ethnographic Film Movies

The story of a poor girl who leaves her starving family and sheep for a more prosperous village. Her grandfather finds her and tries to convince her...

Marianne Lehmann, born in Switzerland in 1936, married a Haitian and moved to Port-au-Prince in 1957. Fascinated by voodoo cult objects, she began...

This intimate ethnographic study of Voudoun dances and rituals was shot by Maya Deren during her years in Haiti (1947-1951); she never edited the...

A unique 'direct cinema' feature length documentary (no narration or interviews) originally filmed in the Spring of 1970 and concluded during the...

In February 1974, Pam Sambo Zima, the oldest of the priests of possession in Niamey, Niger, died at the age of seventy-plus years. In his backyard,...

A group of filmmakers travel to a Kolla community in Salta to film their folkways. We see all aspects of their life: farming, herding, cooking,...

The title of this film translates literally as 'to put on a hori,' a hori being the Songhay term for ceremony of festival. Here it is used to refer...

An account of the journey that King Alfonso XIII of Spain made to the impoverished shire of Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in the...

Portrays the Nuer, Nilotic herdsmen of the Nile basin. Shows how their daily lives revolve about their cattle, and depicts the psychological bonds...

In Sangha, through the window of her house, Germaine greets Djamgouno, her main informant. He then translates for her a conversation she has with a...

In Isère, in the mountainous region of Trièves, is the Tournesol farm, an experiential farm totally autonomous in energy, a veritable...

In Cerro Bayo, a mountainous region of Patagonia on the Chilean border, a Kolla Indian falls in love with a girl from another village. His mother...

An intimate documentary about one family's endeavor to live as Ainu in today's Japan.

Biopic of Ceferino Namuncurá (1886-1905), son of a Mapuche cacique and a white woman, and the first Indian of South America to be beatified....

A ritual vase, the hampi, is placed in the center of the Musée de plein air de la République du Niger in Niamey, during a ritual...

An ethnographic documentary about the Mangbetu tribe of the Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). The film features a discussion...

Rye, a photographer, and Chris, a political science student, are in their final year of college, and have lived together in the same house for three...

At dawn a nomad caravan descends on Aq Kupruk from the foothills of the Hindu Kush. In their camp, and in commerce with the townspeople, the Maldar...

A musical documentary woven around the endangered musical culture of the Rangdani Rabhas from Manikganj, Meghalaya, North East India.