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 can old customs be revived after centuries of suppression?
Social & External
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 footage, so this “finished” version was made by Teiji Ito and Cherel Ito after Deren’s death.
An NFB crew filmed a group of three families, Cree hunters from Mistassini. Since times predating agriculture, this First Nations people have gone to the bush of the James Bay and Ungava Bay area to hunt. We see the building of the winter camp, the hunting and the rhythms of Cree family life.
After a plane crash, four indigenous children fight to survive in the Colombian Amazon using ancestral wisdom as an unprecedented rescue mission unfolds.
Legendary documentary filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin provides a glimpse of what action-driven decolonization looks like in Norway House, one of Manitoba's largest First Nation communities.
In the Darhat valley in northern Mongolia, the horses of nomadic tribes are stolen by bandits who then sell them to Russian slaughterhouses. Shukhert, a brave horseman, relentlessly pursues them through the Mongolian taiga, bordering Siberia.
Explorer Bruce Parry visits nomadic tribes in Borneo and the Amazon in hope to better understand humanity's changing relationship with the world around us.
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 documentary about the rituals surrounding an Innu caribou hunt. Released in 1960, it’s one of 13 titles in Au Pays de Neufve-France, a series of poetic documentary shorts about life along the St. Lawrence River. Off-camera narration, written by Pierre Perrault, frames the Innu participants through an ethnographic lens. Co-directed by René Bonnière and Perrault, a founding figure of Quebec’s direct cinema movement.
Lonnie Kauk’s personal journey to honor his indigenous Yosemite roots, and to connect with his legendary father by repeating his iconic climbs.
Ningwasum follows two time travellers Miksam and Mingsoma, played by Subin Limbu and Shanta Nepali respectively, in the Himalayas weaving indigenous folk stories, culture, climate change and science fiction.
The ocean contains the history of all humanity. The sea holds all the voices of the earth and those that come from outer space. Water receives impetus from the stars and transmits it to living creatures. Water, the longest border in Chile, also holds the secret of two mysterious buttons which were found on its ocean floor. Chile, with its 2,670 miles of coastline and the largest archipelago in the world, presents a supernatural landscape. In it are volcanoes, mountains and glaciers. In it are the voices of the Patagonian Indigenous people, the first English sailors and also those of its political prisoners. Some say that water has memory. This film shows that it also has a voice.
A collage of daily life in Aq Kupruk builds from the single voice that calls the townspeople to prayer, the brisk exchange of the baazar, communal labor in the fields, and the uninhibited sports and entertainment of rural Afghans. The theme of the film focuses on rural society. The film and accompaning instructor notes explore concepts of development, modernization, environmental equilibrium, and especially change, identifying change agents, and analyzing barries and stimulants to change.
A poignant all-Indigenous English and Cree-English collaborative documentary that breaks long-held silences imposed upon indigenous children who were interned at the notoriously violent St. Anne’s Residential School in Fort Albany First Nation, Ontario. Use of a homemade electric chair at St. Anne's and the incorporation of testimony about student-on-student abuse makes this documentary stand apart from other films about Canadian residential school experiences. This film will serve as an Indigenous historical document wholly authored by Indigenous bodies and voices, those of the Survivors themselves.
For more than a century the great colonial powers put human beings, taken by force from their native lands, on show as entertainment, just like animals in zoos; a shameful, outrageous and savage treatment of people who were considered subhuman.
This documentary short by Alanis Obomsawin tells the story of Kahentiiosta, a young Kahnawake Mohawk woman arrested after the Oka Crisis' 78-day armed standoff in 1990. She was detained 4 days longer than the other women. Her crime? The prosecutor representing the Quebec government did not accept her indigenous name.
A young woman achieves cone consciousness.
In 1986, for the first time in 75 years, the "Chironnup Kamuy Iomante (the sending off of the spirit of the fox)" was held at Bihoro Pass, in Hokkaido. According to the Ainu's traditional beliefs, animals are "gods" called "Kamuy" who live in the "land of gods" ("Kamuimosiri"), but sometimes they come to the "land of humans" ("Ainumosiri"), to offer their meat and furs as gifts. The Ainu take care of them, and they eventually hold an "Iomante (spirit sending)". In this ceremony, people offer prayers, sing songs, and dance, and send the animal back to the "land of the gods" with food and souvenirs.
AMIN portrays Qashqai musician Amin Aghaie, a young modern nomad and his family who despite facing steep financial, cultural and political obstacles are dedicated to their art and culture. Amin travels to remote towns and villages to record the music of the surviving masters whose numbers decline each year. His nomadic family are selling their meager belongings to help support their son's education in performance and ethnomusicology at Tchaikovsky's Conservatory in Kyiv, Ukraine, but it is not enough. Amin, desperate to finish his academic education, sells his violins one at a time just to pay for his tuition.
An anthology of stories about the indigenous Nenet peoples of the Northern Russian tundra, and how their way of life was disrupted by the advent of Soviet power.
An intimate portrait of teenagers trying to understand their world and their possibilities. The film weaves together video shot by teens and by the filmmaker, as they work together to make a film and create expressive outlets for youth in the community. They organize dances and community events and paint a mural. At the same time, with humor and pathos, these young people raise issues around violence, feeling misunderstood by adults and lacking respect in their community. Set in the small town of Sitka, Alaska, home to a large Alaska Native population, the video chronicles their creativity, concerns and dreams.
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."
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