Popular Documentary Movies on Kanopy - Page 305

Dani Houses

1974

Dani Houses

1974
The film observes both round and square house construction techniques of the Grand Valley Dani. It shows how the ground is cleared, walls are made from boards, poles lashed together, and roofs being thatched. Though it follows the house-building process from beginning to end, one is left asking the question: What happened after the houses were built?
Holding Tightly: Custom and Healing in Timor-Leste

2019

Holding Tightly: Custom and Healing in Timor-Leste

2019
Healing in Timor-Leste is rarely straightforward. Timorese people acknowledge and embrace multiple pathways to healing in a complex interplay between spiritual care, comfort and personal connection. Through lifelong observation and learning, they trial a variety of practices and pass down their knowledge to the next generation. Holding Tightly observes seven approaches to healing in remote, rural and urban parts of the Baucau municipality in the country’s east, spanning contexts and experiences from the armed resistance era to the independence period.
Kau Faito'o: Traditional Healers of Tonga

1999

Kau Faito'o: Traditional Healers of Tonga

1999
This is a documentary which not only shows the ancient traditional art form of healing, but also tries to capture the essence of being a traditional healer in an ever-changing environment. Traditional healers are shown collecting, preparing and administering herbal remedies that they have passed down from one generation to the next. Healers discuss where, why and how they gained their knowledge and why they choose to carry on age-old customs and practices despite the fact that Tonga is becoming a nation increasingly dependent on western medicine. Tonga's traditional healers are adapting to niches such as prenatal care and physical therapy. Interspersed throughout the film are beautiful scenes of water, agriculture, rainforest and people, all of which comprise current island life in the Kingdom of Tonga.
Her Name Came on Arrows - A Kinship Interview with the Baruya of New Guinea

1982

Her Name Came on Arrows - A Kinship Interview with the Baruya of New Guinea

1982
In the eastern highlands of Papua New Guinea, French anthropologist Maurice Godelier invites five of his Baruya friends and informants to his house to discuss Baruya kinship and rules of marriage. As Godelier poses questions, the kinship rules that provide the cohesive fabric of Baruya culture are brought to life. Abstract terms are given practical meanings as Godelier investigates Baruya customs of stealing wives, exchanging sisters for wives, stealing names and exchanging 'food for blood.'
Namekas: Music in Lake Chambri

1979

Namekas: Music in Lake Chambri

1979
On the southern shores of Lake Chambri (Middle Sepik River) live 1500 Pondo-speaking villagers. The Chambris trade fish, mosquito nets and baskets for sago, pottery, and other goods. All elements of the natural world are associated with spirits which have individual personalities and powers, characterized in legend, art, and music. A constant dialog between man and spirits is carried on through various communicative media, including invocations, dreams, and music. As this film beautifully reveals, there is a wealth of musical tradition in Lake Chambri: carved wooden drums whose lively vibrations are said to shake loose ripened fruits for harvest; pairs of sacred bamboo flutes used in boys' initiations and concealed from women; orchestras of flutes identified with dogs or turkeys; flutes captured in warfare used with dance masks to invoke fish; and the panpipe with its melodies of mourning.
The Akha Way

1999

The Akha Way

1999
For over a thousand years, the Akha people have inhabited the hills of Asia — mainly Southern China, Burma and Northern Thailand. The Akha Way or Akhazaunh, is the code by which they live. This documentary describes their origins and their culture. It contains extraordinary footage of a shaman healing ceremony; a funeral, with the ritual sacrifice of a water buffalo; the reading of a pig's liver after a new house is built, and more. Today the Akha Way is fast disappearing. Forced migration, Christianity, money and drugs are eroding the cultural heritage of the Akha tribe.
Hunting in Packs

2022

Hunting in Packs

2022
Who runs the world? With the recent surge of women in politics, director Chloe Sosa-Sims's timely feature debut focuses on three political stars in three countries. For Jess Phillips of the UK, Pramila Jayapal of the US and Canada's Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner, politics is a deep and committed passion. Positioned on different points along the political spectrum, they take on their jobs in government with bold determination, advocating for their individual agendas. Phillips is focused on combating domestic violence, while Jayapal has set her sights on a new bill to expand American health care and Rempel Garner is looking for ways to create jobs for oil workers in her home province of Alberta. With elections looming in all three countries, the women are working hard on reforming patriarchal political institutions from the inside, and despite their differences they each fight to rise to the occasion.
Kuo Hina E Hiapo: The Mulberry is White and Ready for Harvest

2001

Kuo Hina E Hiapo: The Mulberry is White and Ready for Harvest

2001
Tapa cloth, or ngatu as it is called in Tonga, is cloth made from the bark of the mulberry tree. The inner bark is beaten into fine sheets and painted using traditional designs. After centuries of use, ngatu has literally become the fabric of Tongan society. In Tonga and throughout much of Polynesia, bark cloth has deep symbolic and ceremonial use. At birth, babies are swaddled in it. At marriage, newlyweds line their wedding bed, and at death, the departed are buried wrapped in it. This documentary investigates the highly collaborative process of making ngatu and the organizations of women who carry on with the tradition. While the process continues to be passed on from generation to generation, there are signs of change as a cash economy begins to infiltrate Tongan life. Young people show less interest in such labor intensive endeavor in the face of the older generation's belief that this tradition will never die.
Freedom Hill

2022

Freedom Hill

2022
Princeville, NC is the first town incorporated by freed, formerly enslaved Africans in America. This historical significance sits on a precipice: It is gradually being washed away.
25 Texans in the Land of Lincoln

2019

25 Texans in the Land of Lincoln

2019
Join the quest with 25 intrepid history students – mostly Mexican American – who drive 2,000 miles from the Alamo in Texas to a Springfield, Illinois museum. Their mission? Asking to repatriate General Santa Anna’s prosthetic leg to Mexico and honor Abraham Lincoln with a Day of the Dead altar.
Our Brother James

2001

Our Brother James

2001
10
Australia has one of the highest youth suicide rates in the world. The suicide rate in men under 25 has tripled in the last 30 years, and young men in rural and remote communities are particularly vulnerable. This reality has disturbing implications for society. When it affects you directly, it's shattering. In this very personal film, director Jessica Douglas-Henry and her sister Alix explore the impact of their brother’s suicide. In 1996 James Dalmann killed himself. He was found dead in the bathroom of his housing commission unit in Geraldton, Western Australia. James was only twenty. Although this film is about James, it's really Alix's story. It's about the people left behind, whose lives have been changed forever by the suicide of someone they loved. Although Our Brother James focuses on a personal tragedy, it is ultimately a film about survival and growth, about love, strength and hope for the future.
Dear Sirs

2022

Dear Sirs

2022
10
Filmmaker Mark Pedri had never heard his grandfather Silvio's story. Ten years after his grandfather's death, Mark found an archive of photos and letters that changed the rest of his life. The discovery inspired Mark to journey across Europe on a bike to examine his grandfather's experience as a Prisoner of War in WWII in an effort to understand the man who helped raise him.
The Living Sea

2021

The Living Sea

2021
Twelve-year-old scuba diver Ema sets out on a quest to find out why corals around the globe are dying, but are somehow more resilient in Hong Kong.
Breaking Trail

2021

Breaking Trail

2021
Emily Ford, 28, Black, LGBTQ, sets out with Diggins a borrowed female Alaskan Husky sled dog to become the first woman and person of color to thru-hike the 1,200-mile Ice Age Trail in winter. As the 69-day journey through subzero temperatures tests her physical and mental endurance, Emily and her canine protector develop an unbreakable bond as they embrace the unexpected kindness of strangers and discover they've become figureheads in the movement to make the outdoors more accessible for everyone. What begins as an extraordinary physical journey also becomes a spiritual adventure.
Eager for Your Kisses: Love and Sex at 95

2006

Eager for Your Kisses: Love and Sex at 95

2006
After overcoming the loss of his wife of fifty years, a 95-year-old singer-songwriter places an ad in the personals and goes ballroom dancing. He soon finds himself singing and dancing his way into the hearts (and bedrooms) of the women in his life.
Myanmar's Killing Fields

2018

Myanmar's Killing Fields

2018
10
Secret footage and eyewitness accounts shine new light on a brutal campaign by the Myanmar military against Rohingya Muslims — an effort that has been described by both the United Nations and the United States as “ethnic cleansing.”
Erik H. Erikson: A Life's Work

1999

Erik H. Erikson: A Life's Work

1999
Narrated by Erikson's colleague, Margaret Brenman-Gibson, Ph.D. and Ruthie Mickles, Ph.D. Using archival materials and newly shot footage, this film introduces students to the rich wisdom of Erik H. Erikson. Best known for his identification of the eight stages of the life cycle, Erikson spent a lifetime observing and studying the way in which the interplay of genetics, cultural influences and unique experiences produces individual human lives. This film combines biographical information about Erikson with his theoretical proposals to give students an understanding of the relationship between the life experience of a theorist and the work that is produced.
The Space Between You & Me

2022

The Space Between You & Me

2022
Two Korean-American adoptees navigate their transracial identity through meeting their birth mothers.
Bring the Sun Home

2013

Bring the Sun Home

2013
Women. Illiterate. Coming from villages with no light. They leave their villages in South America to go in India to become solar engeneers. They will bring solar light back home.
The Abortion Divide

2019

The Abortion Divide

2019
From producers Mark Obenhaus and Elizabeth Leiter, “The Abortion Divide” offers a window into the sometimes difficult and deeply personal choices women face with unplanned pregnancy – and examines the steadfast belief of the anti-abortion community that there should be no choice at all.