Ethnographic Film Movies

Robert J. Flaherty's South Seas follow-up to Nanook of the North is a Gauguin idyll moved by "pride of beauty... pride of strength."

In the Darhat valley in northern Mongolia, the horses of nomadic tribes are stolen by bandits who then sell them to Russian slaughterhouses....

Founding father of Anthropology, Bronislaw Malinowski's work raises powerful and disturbing questions today. This is a look at his legacy and the...

Forest of Bliss is an unsparing yet redemptive account of the inevitable griefs, religious passions and frequent happinesses that punctuate daily...

This documentary started as part of a photography project about the indigenous Ainu population in northern Japan, portraying people from tightly knit...

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....

Shigeki, one of the Ainu people of northern Japan, follows the traditions of his ancestors and teaches his son Motoki about their heritage. But how...

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...

Remember the culture clash in THE GODS MUST BE CRAZY? This time it's real. One of the most ancient cultures on our planet is undergoing a major...

The people of Unamenshipu (La Romaine), an Innu community in the Côte-Nord region of Quebec, are seen but not heard in this richly detailed...

David and Judith MacDougall are exploring the marriage rituals and roles of Turkana women in this ethnographic documentary. The film's biggest part...

As retailers, wholesalers, and negotiators, Asante women of Ghana dominate the huge Kumasi Central Market amid the laughter, argument, colour and...

Germaine Dierterlen talks about Dogon mythology at a conference on the Bandiagara cliffs. The Songo canopy is a sacred site in Bandiagara. Its walls...

The Greek shadow puppetry began 130 years ago. A student of Greek shadow puppetry travels to China, where shadow puppetry began over 2000 years ago....

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...

In front of Jean Rouch's camera, Germaine Dieterlen recalls her ethnographic itinerary, at the Musée de l'Homme, in Mali and in the Paris of...

For months filmmaker Thierry Knauff lived with the Cameroonian tribe, the Baka. This is his document of that time.

Lightning struck the hut of a Fulani shepherd near a village of settled fishermen, Ganghel, in Niger. A yenendi, a purification ceremony to obtain...

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...

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