Ethnography: Films

Following Brazilian filmmaker Denise Zmekhol deep into the Amazon in search of the indigenous Surui and Negarote children she photographed 15 years ago, this is the story of the devastation of the Brazilian rainforests by global agribusiness through the eyes of the region's children.

In what is often considered the very first documentary film, Robert Flaherty recorded the daily life of Nanook the Inuk hunter and his family living in the harsh conditions of Canada's Hudson Bay region. Essential viewing for students of anthropology and film, Nanook of the North raises many questions about truth, storytelling, and culture.

Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North created the very genre of film documentary, with its documentation of Nanook the Inuit and the Eskimo traditions which were even then being threatened by the influences of whites. This program revisits the site of Flaherty's filming, and learns that he staged much of what he filmed, sired children to whose future he paid no heed, and is himself now part of Inuit myth.

This classic anthropological study of a traditional Navajo family, the Neboyias, examines their lifestyle through the four seasons as they travel to each of their hogans-planting, sheepherding, harvesting, and weaving.

The extraordinary rock paintings of the San bushpeople provide a culturally rich point of reconnection with humankind's collective past. In this program, anthropologists Patricia Vinnicombe-author of the groundbreaking book People of the Eland-and Frans Prins as well as Megan Biesele, cofounder of the Kalahari Peoples Fund, take part in an ethnographic sojourn with the San in South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia. To better understand this venerable indigenous people, they immerse themselves in their culture, partaking of their art, myths, beliefs, rituals, and healing dance.

This program introduces Sufism, a branch of Islam which is much less well known in the West than some of the more fundamentalist forms which are frequently in the news.

"It has been a decade and a half since a streetcorner book vendor and intellectual named Hakim Hasan introduced Mitchell Duneier to the people he came to write about in the book Sidewalk (1999). Now Duneier has collaborated with director Barry Alexander Brown and photographer Ovie Carter to provide a visual presentation that begins where the book ended. It updates the stories of Ron, Mudrick, Ishmael, Butterroll, and other unhoused v endors on Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village, showing what happened as they struggled in the wake of new economic and political realities, including those associated with September 11, 2001."

Margaret Mead, 1954, Highlights differences in bathing and attachment between mom and child.

"This program features a case study of Alejandro Mamani, an elder Aymara Indian whose village is located in the mountains of Bolivia. The episode focuses on Alejandro's experiences with an unexplained mental illness diagnosed as spiritual possession by Alejandro, his family and the members of his village. Ethnographers trace the man's suffering as he and his family try to cope with the unpredictability of the illness and the inevitability of death.