films
New Film Tonight at Inuit Cultural Festival
The third feature film produced by Igloolik Isuma Productions, titled “Before Tomorrow,” will be shown this evening in Peterborough, Ontario, as part of an Inuit cultural festival at Trent University. The first feature film by the company, “Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner,” won considerable critical acclaim in 2000. Filmed between July 2006 and January 2007 and […]
Inuit Man in a City
Natar Ungalaaq, star of “Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner,” has the leading role in a new film premiered last week at the World Film Festival in Montreal. The new film by the Quebecois director Benoit Pilon, “Ce qu‘il faut pour vivre,” is about an Inuit man named Tivii (Ungalaaq) who, in 1955, is diagnosed with tuberculosis […]
New Film Upsets the Buid
A Buid support group claimed last week that a prominent independent film was recently shot on their lands without their express approval. The issue is controversial because the movie is a top contender in a major, upcoming, Filipino film festival. The film, called “Brutus,” was directed by Tara Illenberger and filmed in Oriental Mindoro. It […]
Traditional Nubian Culture Featured in New Film
An independent travel/ethnographic film about the culture and music of the displaced Nubians will be screened at a festival in Bahrain early next month. According to the February 6 – 12 issue of Gulf Weekly, the film, “Memories of Utopia,” will be shown at the Coral Beech Club on the Al Fateh Corniche in Bahrain. […]
Atanarjuat: Love, Violence, and Reconciliation in Inuit Myth [DVD and journal article reviews]
At the conclusion of a haunting tale of love and violence between Inuit families, Grandmother ends the cycle by sending two of her own grandchildren into permanent exile. Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, a feature film from Igloolik Isuma Productions in Nunavut, won the Camera d’Or prize at Cannes in 2000. It is a beautifully crafted, […]
Ju/’hoansi Chronicles—The Marshall Family Legacy, part 2 of 2 [video review]
Extracts of John Marshall’s epic film about the Ju/’hoansi, A Kalahari Family, available for several years in five videocassettes, were released to the Web last year by Documentary Educational Resources. Over an hour of the five films, the first 12 to 18 minutes of each, is now available (see citations below). The descriptions of the […]
Portion of a Ju/’hoansi Film Now Available on the Web
The first 14 minutes of John Marshall’s 1958 documentary film “The Hunters” was released on November 30th by Documentary Educational Resources on the Google Video website. It is the first film about the Ju/’hoansi produced by the famed film maker. The full 70 minute video is available for purchase through the Google site. The film […]
Do the Ju/’hoansi Still Drink the Morning Dew? [journal article review]
Mention the Bushmen of southern Africa and millions of people will think of the idyllic Kalahari Desert scenes portrayed in the immensely popular 1980 film “The Gods Must Be Crazy.” But how accurate, really, was the romantic portrayal of the peaceful Ju/’hoansi in that film and in its 1989 successor, “The Gods Must Be Crazy […]
Films Pay Tribute to John Marshall
The Boston Museum of Fine Arts is presenting a series of films from Documentary Educational Resources (DER) as a tribute to John Marshall, a leading filmmaker who died last year on April 22. Marshall devoted most of his life to making films of the Ju/’hoansi in the Nyae Nyae area of Namibia. The first films […]
Lancaster County Celebrates “Witness” Anniversary
Hollywood films about exotic societies sometimes impress fans with their good acting and brilliant cinematography, but their accuracy may be questionable. For instance, twenty-five years ago the comedy “The Gods Must Be Crazy” misrepresented the Ju/’hoansi, one of the San peoples of the Kalahari, as having an idyllic life in the desert. While the gentle […]
