Anthropology Documentaries
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- StarsBruce ParryOle Jørgen HammekenKami CabanaBruce Parry visits native and modern people who live under Arctic conditions in Siberia, Greenland, Alaska, Canada, Nordic Russia, Norwegian Lapland and Spitzbergen. He shares for one summer and considers the locals' natural hardship, economic and conservation prospects, including the effects of modernization and global warming.
- StarsBruce ParryDudu GomesMatt BrandonIn his style as participating anthropological observer, fit and flexible British army-vet Bruce Parry travels along the vast Amazon, trough several South American states. He meets tribal people, 'ordinary' locals, people from (often foreign) exploiting firms, even drug traders, rebels and soldiers chasing those.
- StarsBruce ParryBruce Parry experiences first hand the day-to-day lives of tribal cultures around the world.
- DirectorBruce ParryMark EllamStarsBruce ParryIngrid LewisJerome LewisExplorer Bruce Parry travels the world, living with indigenous peoples, delving deeper then ever on a journey into the heart of our collective human conscience.
- DirectorMark AnsticeBruce ParryStarsBruce ParryMark AnsticeIn 2001, two British ex army officers set out to climb the unscaled face of Mandela--a remote mountain rising 15,400 ft. above the jungles of New Guinea. This is the extraordinary story of their trek through some of the world's most unexplored terrain.
- StarsWill MillardExplorer and writer Will Millard visits the Korowai tribe in Papua over the course of a year, in an attempt to understand the pressures they face adapting to a modern world they have only come into contact with within the last 40 years.
- DirectorBrad AllgoodJoshua WolffStarsBil YoelinThis shocking documentary tells the story of the indigenous Miskito lobster divers along Nicaragua's Caribbean Coast who risk their lives every day diving for the region's most lucrative resource - the Caribbean spiny lobster.
- DirectorSarah BegumStarsSarah BegumLauren MaddoxThe Huaorani TribeBritish Explorer, Sarah Begum follows her childhood dream at the age of 21, travelling deep into the Ecuadorian Amazon Rainforest to live with the legendary Huaorani tribe and immerse in their ancient way of life. Sarah hunts and gathers with warriors, captures their stories and struggles whilst investigating into the impacts of modernity on their culture. Through a defining challenge, she becomes one of the tribe to send their message about protecting their land from exploitation.
- DirectorPaul WolfframStarsPaul WolfframA remarkable story of a young man who traveled to the remote rain forests of Papua New Guinea where he discovered an indigenous community with a dark secret.
- DirectorJosé PadilhaStarsRobert BorofskyJesus CardozoNapoleon A. ChagnonThe field of anthropology goes under the magnifying glass in this fiery investigation of the seminal research on Yanomami Indians. In the 1960s and '70s, a steady stream of anthropologists filed into the Amazon Basin to observe this "virgin" society untouched by modern life. Thirty years later, the events surrounding this infiltration have become a scandalous tale of academic ethics and infighting.
- DirectorNigel NobleDocumentary about the rural population who earn their living as coal miners, thus helping to keep metallurgic activity going and contributing to the forest devastation in South America.
- DirectorYann Arthus-BertrandStarsLuis CancuAtmanBerthonyA collection of stories about and images of our world, offering an immersion to the core of what it means to be human.
- DirectorNikolaus GeyrhalterDuring the year 2000 Geyrhalter and his teams travelled to a different destination each month, looking for places untouched by the millennium hysteria. Locations include Niger, Finland, Micronesia, Australia, China, Siberia or Greenland.
- DirectorRobin AndersonBob ConnollyStarsJoe LeahyJoe Leahy is the half-caste son of one of the first explorers of the Papua New Guinean interior. His relations with the local Ganiga tribe who work his coffee plantation on their land are difficult at times. However he has successfully managed to get them to agree to open a second plantation in partnership with him. Things are looking up until the international coffee market hits rough times and conflict seems imminent between the Ganiga and their neighbouring traditional enemies.
- DirectorCy KuckenbakerStarsVitumbiko Jacklyn KhungaSongwe 'Chatwa' NyimbiriJake WilsonA character driven ethnographic survey of a tiny village in Northern Malawi. Intimate dramas unfold in the lives of four villagers who are all members of the local soccer team.
- DirectorFrances H. FlahertyRobert J. FlahertyStarsTa'avaleFa'amgaseT'ugaitaFilmmaker Robert J. Flaherty presents a docufictional account of a family living in a Samoan village in the early 1920s.
- DirectorWerner HerzogDmitry VasyukovStarsWerner HerzogGennady SolovievAnatoly BlumeiA documentary depicting the life and work of the trappers of Bakhtia, a village in the heart of the Siberian Taiga, where daily life has changed little in over a century.
- DirectorBrook Silva-BragaStarsBrahimBridgeteHowaIn Kenyan offices and Malian farms, in Moroccan tea houses and Nigerian huts normal people of various backgrounds go about their day. For them, life in the developing world isn't about desperate squalor or improbable triumph; it's a complex, imperfect existence at odds with the stunning pictures beamed out from African safaris or the sad stories written to spur donations to Western aid groups. On a single day at the messy juncture of tradition and modernity, six people from different geographic and cultural backgrounds describe six versions of the African story.
- StarsMichael PalinThe Dalai LamaMichael Palin travels the Himalaya mountain region.
- DirectorEdward A. BurgerA journey exploring the practices of Chinese hermits living in the Zhongnan Mountains.
- DirectorJames ReedJames MorganAn award-winning documentary about Rohani, an 80-year-old hunter who dives on a single breath descending to great depths for several minutes. Set against the spectacular backdrop of the Togian Islands of Indonesia.
- DirectorShaahin CheyeneStarsGerardo AldanaSantiago Ortelas AumeintoElena AvilaSerpent and The Sun Tales Of An Aztec Apprentice Tachi is 21 and has lived below the poverty line all of his life. He is a member of the Revolutionary Zapatista Collectivein Mexico City . He is searching for his roots. Ehe is a 52nd generation Aztec medicine man and traditional healer (Curandero). Through a series of extraordinary circumstances the two meet. Tachi's life is changed forever. Extraordinary and inventive, The Serpent and the Sun was filmed on a month long journey through Mexico . This riveting "Hybrid Documentary" explores the roots of an Aztec medicine man and his apprentice while trekking through the mountains of rural Mexico . This powerful visual feast combines dreamlike panoramic landscapes with memorable characters and their heart warming stories while tracing the adventures of this unlikely duo as they travel throughout rural Mexico on a journey of epic proportions.
- DirectorSarah C. SifersFate of the Lhapa is a feature-length documentary about the last three Tibetan shamans living in a Tibetan refugee camp in Nepal. Each lhapa requested that their story be filmed. Their fear was that the next heir might not appear until after their own deaths. Subsequently, with no lhapa alive to mentor the children, the documentary would be used to transmit the knowledge to the next generation. Their tales of nomadic childhoods, shamanic callings and apprenticeships, cosmologies of disease and treatments, and of their flight from Tibet during the Chinese occupation in the late 1950s is be juxtaposed with images of present-day life in the camp, current healing practices and shared concerns of the future and the fate of their tradition.
- DirectorMarie Clémence Andriamonta-PaesCesar PaesStarsAmbarazafyAvimareArthur BesyVenerable storytellers recount for the camera and their listeners the founding myths of Malagasy culture.
- StarsJean-Pierre DutilleuxChuck RileyTribal Journeys is Jean-Pierre Dutilleux's voyage into the heart of the most isolated and remote corners of the world from the Amazon to the jungles of Papua, New Guinea.
- DirectorByambasuren DavaaStarsUrna Chahar-TugchiHicheengui SambuuChimed DolgorA promise, an old, destroyed horse head violin and a song believed lost lead the singer Urna back to Outer Mongolia. Her grandmother was forced to destroy her once loved violin in the tumult of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. The ancient song of the Mongols, "The Two Horses of Genghis Khan", was engraved on the violin's neck. Only the violin's neck and head survived the cultural storm. Now it is time to fulfill the promise that Urna made to her grandmother. Arrived in Ulan Bator, Urna brings the still intact parts of the violin - head and neck - to Hicheengui, a renowned maker of horse head violins, who will build a new body for the old instrument in the coming weeks. Then, Urna leaves for the interior to look there for the song's missing verses. But she will be disappointed. None of the people whom she meets on the way appears to still know the old melody of the Mongols.
- DirectorRehad DesaiStarsDawid KruiperRoy SesanaSouth African filmmaker Rehad Desai details the lose-lose situation facing the San Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert
- DirectorAngus MacQueenDocuments first contact with members of a previously isolated tribe called the Txapanawa on the bank of the Envira River in the village of Simpatia in Brazil. The Anthropologist is José Carlos Meirelles.
- DirectorHeidi BrandenburgMathew OrzelStarsAlberto PizangoAlan GarcíaAruwihtu PizankuAn indigenous environmental activist takes on the large businesses that are destroying the Amazon.
- DirectorRobin AndersonBob ConnollyStarsJoe Leahy
- DirectorJohn MarshallAdrienne MiesmerThis film provides a broad overview of !Kung life, both past and present, and an intimate portrait of N!ai, a !Kung woman who in 1978 was in her mid-thirties.
- DirectorGary KildeaJerry LeachA documentary on how Papua New Guinea's have modified and incorporated their culture in the British game of Cricket.
- DirectorRobert J. FlahertyStarsAllakariallakAlice NevalingaCunayouIn this silent predecessor to the modern documentary, film-maker Robert J. Flaherty spends one year following the lives of Nanook and his family, Inuits living in the Arctic Circle.
- DirectorRobert J. FlahertyStarsColman 'Tiger' KingMaggie DirraneMichael DirraneIn this blend of documentary and fictional narrative from pioneering filmmaker Robert Flaherty, the everyday trials of life on Ireland's unforgiving Aran Islands are captured with attention to naturalistic beauty and historical detail.
- DirectorMikhail KalatozovStory of distant mountainous region in Georgia that depicts folklore, lifestyle and daily routines of Svani people, focuses on the scarcity of salt in Svaneti region. Rich with documentary value, the movie also served for Soviet propaganda.
- DirectorHollie FiferAn indigenous community in Papua New Guinea is forced to fight back before they are cruelly evicted from their land in favor of a five star tourist hotel.
- DirectorUlrike OttingerTaiga is an eight-hour documentary directed and photographed by Ulrike Ottinger. It focuses on the life and rituals of nomadic peoples in Northern Mongolia, specifically the Darkhad nomads and the Sojon Urinjanghai.
- DirectorSean FineAndrea NixStarsDominicNancyRoseThree children living in a displacement camp in northern Uganda compete in their country's national music and dance festival.
- DirectorAnthony HowarthStarsJames MasonShusha GuppyAnthony HowarthThere are two hundred miles of raging rivers and dangerous mountains to cross. There are no towns, no roads, no bridges. There is no turning back. The Bakhtiari migration is one of the most hazardous tests of human endurance known to mankind. Every year, 500,000 men, women and children - along with one million animals - struggle for eight grueling weeks to scale the massive Zagros Mountains in Iran - a range which is as high as the Alps and as broad as Switzerland - to reach their summer pastures. The film's astonishing widescreen photography and brilliantly recorded soundtrack take the viewer out onto the dangerous precipices of the Zardeh Kuh mountain and into the icy waters of the Cholbar River.
- StarsLes HiddinsSurvival expert Les Hiddins shares his vast knowledge of bush tucker and outback crafts. Set in country written off by early explorers as "uninhabitable," the Bush Tucker Man has spent years talking with and learning from the people who have successfully lived here for thousands of years, the Australian Aborigines. Each program is filled with examples of foods, survival techniques and ancient medicines, interwoven with Les' insights into the nature of the land itself. And what a country. "Bush Tucker Man" features some of Australia's most breathtaking landscapes, from tropical rainforests to deserts to vast wetlands teeming with life.
- DirectorEszter CsekeAndrás S. TakácsTime travel has started with the Erbore tribe living in Ethiopia. It is also called ,,the land of mosquitoes" During days spent with the tribe Eszter and Andras they were eating, drinking, hunting, harvesting with the Erbore to understand how they can live with their ancient traditions. Eszter and Andras learn from members of the tribe what it means to be a woman and a man among the Erbore. Especially that a woman was giving birth to a child without a doctor in a hut, and the child has been given the name 'Eszter'...