The arrival of the European button accordion to Texas and its merging with traditional Mexican songs gave birth to an explosive new sound called conjunto. From the early pioneers to the new generation of accordionists experimenting with rock, blues, and metal, ACCORDION DREAMS captures yesterday's and today's squeezebox trailblazers. Produced and directed by critically-acclaimed filmmaker Hector Galan and narrated by singer/songwriter Tish Hinojosa, ACCORDION DREAMS features performance footage of conjunto greats like Valerio Longoria, Mingo Saldivar, Ruben Vela, Eva Ybarra, and Flaco Jimenez and the newer generation of accordionists like Joel Guzman, Jaime De Anda, Albert Zamora, and Jesse Turner.
The Garifuna are a Central American people of West African and Native American descent. One of their most popular rituals is wanaragua, a three-fold system of masked Christmas processionals commonly called Jankunú. This ritual is a unique blend of African, European, and Native American (Arawak and Carib) art traditions in which social and cultural identities are expressed through music, dance, and costume. As dancers adorn themselves in colorful regalia to mimic past foreign oppressors they symbolically affirm their identity. They perform stylized movements to the accompaniment of drums and social commentary songs composed by men. Descriptions of the three processions and dance styles are interspersed with interviews by Garifuna singers, drummers, dancers, cultural advocates, and scholars on the significance of rituals.
Ride along on a rustic, and rusting, Polynesian cargo boat as it makes deliveries to 21 of the globe's most isolated coral reef atolls, in the heart of the South Pacific Ocean. Along the 3,000-mile route meet black pearl divers, the man who found the Kon Tiki, Marlon Brando's 'Mutiny' girlfriend, a ship laden with NFL-sized crewman and many more - all set against the backdrop of a fast-and-forever changing Paradise. I jumped on the cargo boat for one of its monthly, 3,000-mile delivery jobs, taking us to ports-of-call that were literally just piles of sand and rock washed up on rims of coral, halfway between Australia and South America, each home to populations ranging from seven to two hundred fifty people. The trip took us through the Tuamotus, a chain of 78 atolls that sailors going back to Magellan dubbed the dangerous archipelago for its low-lying, barely visible, wooden-boat-sinking reefs.
Sounds of Love and Sorrow lets the eerie sounds of the Paiwan flutes including the nose flute, which legend says imitates the call of the deadly hundred-pace snake, mix in with the recollections of tribal elders and traditional tales to present a rich background of Paiwan life in Taiwan. Tribal elders recall the days of the youth and their romances. They tell of the creation of the Paiwan people, and lament the end of tribal life, crushed by the irresistible and contradictory forces of government policies and alien cultural influences. Talking of love, both the charm and cruelty of a traditional society are revealed. For many of the Paiwan, love may be a high point of a young life – but it is also the gateway to sorrow. But in the end, it is the high spirits, the playful romances and the family spirit of the Paiwan which shine through.
"Some Aspects Of Cape Verdean Culture" is a re-discovered and restored documentary shot in 1975 in cape verde at the time of independence by pioneering video artist Anthony D. Ramos. This was some of the earliest video work by ramos, who received a 1975 grant from the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities for travel to Cape Verde and a sony color 1/2" reel to reel video camera . Ramos , a cape verdean american, traveled to the islands of Sao Tiago, Fogo and Sao Vicente , and was the only american camera to capture the historic end of 500 years of Portuguese colonial rule. Over eighty hours of video were shot, and efforts are currently underway to raise funds to restore and transfer the rest of videos in this valuable archive.
The Pasola, a traditional jousting battle with hundreds of horses and riders, is the Sumbanese New Year celebration, and also a ritual that anticipates the rice harvest. It is staged to welcome the annual swarming of sea worms on the western beaches, since the worms are seen as representing the spirit of the rice crop. The spirit of the fertility of the seas and the land comes from the body of a sacrificed girl, and her return each year is celebrated with a dramatic display of masculine virility, courage, and horsemanship.
A celebratory documentary, with engaging scenes of fishing, cooking, dancing, cassava preparation, thatching a temple, spiritual ritual, music and dance all demonstrating the Garifuna link to the Carib-African past. Descendants of African and Carib-Indian ancestors, the Garifuna fought to maintain their homeland and resisted slavery. For this love of freedom, they were exiled from St. Vincent in the Caribbean by the British in 1797. Despite exile and subsequent Diaspora, their traditional culture survives today. It is a little known story that deserves its place in the annals of the African Diaspora. In first person Garifuna voices, this documentary presents the history, the language, food, music, dance and spirituality of the Garifuna culture.
In Tunisia, the history of stambali goes back to the arrival of the first enslaved Africans from Mali, Timbuktu specifically. Practicing their music and worship in the house of their masters, the enslaved and their musical traditions survive to this day. Stambali is a religious ritual in Tunisia, a journey with the rhythm of the "gombri" and "chkackek," traces an individual and collective hypnosis, an annual tribute that the disciples of Sidi Saad pay to their master during an initiatory journey and rite of purification that lasts three days. In "Stambali," the camera, video and film follow the rhythm of the possession, dances, and goes into a trance, in the cemetery, in an open space of grass, trees, dust and sand, in the eroticism that is released by this physical and spiritual representation.
Mammy Water is a pidgin English name for a local water goddess worshipped by the Ibibio, Ijaw, and Igbo speaking peoples of southeastern Nigeria. The water goddess traditionally gives wealth and children, compensates for hardships, and is sought in times of illness and need, especially by women. Her various cults are led, predominantly, by priestesses.
Samaki wa Dar es Salaam/Fishers of Dar is an ethnographic film about the fishermen and women of downtown Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It explores the continuity and integrity of traditional fishing practices in new, contemporary settings
Among the Senufo people of northern Côte d'Ivoire, the balafon (xylophone with calabash resonators) is an emblematic musical instrument. Balafon makers are all musicians, but a balafon player isn't necessarily an instrument maker. The film shows in detail the manufacture of this musical instrument, an indispensable element in the life of the Senufo people. Each step is shown, from the initial prayer to the genies of the balafon before felling a tree, through the cutting and tuning of the keys and the resonators, to the fixing of the buzzing membranes, which give this instrument its very characteristic timbre. Nanga, the balafon maker, talks about his work and discusses different aspects with friends during a meal.
Among the Senufo people of northern Côte d'Ivoire, the balafon (xylophone with calabash resonators) is an emblematic musical instrument. The music of the balafon is a source of joy while the young men are doing collective work in the fields, at age-group ceremonies, for the poro initiatory society, for the catholic mass and during young people's dance evenings. Musicians and non-musicians, young and old, talk about the different occasions for which this instrument is an indispensable presence marking the rhythms of life for this agricultural people. Traditional balafon music is far from dying out, and its extraordinary vitality and importance are evident in the activities of the younger generations.
For these villagers, giving birth is a family affair; while a young girl is in labor, the birth attendant, mother and mother-in-law alternate between lending a hand and storytelling. Barbara Johnson studied documentary film and photography with Jerry Liebling and Elaine Mayes at Hampshire College from 1970-1974. She began working for the Smithsonian's newly formed National Anthropological Film Center in 1975. She was sent to Nepal to document early childhood socialization and daily life in a large farming village in the Kathmandu Valley.
When Geraldine Kawanka’s husband died, she and her children left their house at Aurukun on Cape York Peninsula. In earlier times a bark house would have been burnt, but today a ‘house-opening’ ceremony — creatively mingling Aboriginal, Torres Strait and European elements — has evolved to deal with death in the midst of new living patterns. Although sometimes suggesting a party, its underlying purpose is serious. This film records the opening of the house and Geraldine’s feelings about it in her informative and personal commentary.
This acclaimed documentary explores the revolutionary movement fighting for democracy in Burma and depicts how young people, in particular, are affected by the human rights abuses of Burma’s military government. Burma Diary focuses on the story of Tint Aung, a young Burmese man who was actively involved in the protest movement while in college. He is forced to flee from his home and take refuge in the jungles of the Burmese-Thailand border along with his wife and his two young daughters. As the film chronicles four harsh years of Tint Aung’s struggle to survive, it provides a passionate and at times heartbreaking study of the hopes of and the obstacles facing the Burmese democracy movement.
Long suppressed by missionaries and then by Soviet anti-religious campaigns, Siberian shamanism has experienced an unprecedented revival following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the number of shamans continues to rise. But who are these new shamans? Are they tricksters, magicians, businessmen, or cultural activists? This film takes a behind-the-scenes look at a Buryat shaman living on an island in the Lake Baikal as he moves between intimate shamanic rituals performed for local clientele and shows performed at various resorts for Western tourists in search of "primitive" cultures.
Cremation rites are the most elaborate rites of passage performed by Balinese householders. Poor families may wait years before accumulating enough resources to cremate their dead, who are buried in the meantime. In 1978 many more cremations than usual were carried out because of the great purification cermony, Eka Dasa Rudra, held at Bali's main temple, Besakih, in 1979. Religious officials recommended that all Balinese cleanse the island by cremating their dead, as part of the preparations for the great Besakih ceremony. Villagers of limited means pooled their resources to perform group cremations which greatly reduced the cost for each family. This film is about a group of villagers in Central Bali who cooperated to carry out a group cremation.
In March 2004, one of the world's last voluntarily isolated groups of hunter-gatherers walked out of the forest in northern Paraguay, fleeing ranchers' bulldozers. They formed a new village with their more settled relatives, where they confronted the complexities of learning how to become "Ayoreo Indians" and more critically, how to survive in a rapidly changing world. This documentary provides an intimate portrait of a divided community four months after this historical event, and their efforts to chart a collective future in a context shaped by deforestation, NGO activity, anthropologists and evangelical Christianity. Self-consciously engaging a history of ethnographic representations and tropes of "first contact," the reflexive video uses the filmmaker's narration to reflect on the experiences and confusions of a process that remains ultimately opaque for the "new people," for their relatives, and for the anthropologist.