Visual Anthropology Films
List activity
264 views
• 0 this weekCreate a new list
List your movie, TV & celebrity picks.
25 titles
- 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.
- DirectorF.W. MurnauStarsAnne ChevalierMatahiHituOn the South Pacific island of Bora Bora, a young couple's love is threatened when the tribal chief declares the girl a sacred virgin.
- DirectorRobert J. FlahertyStarsJoseph BoudreauxLionel Le BlancE. BienvenuThe idyllic life of a young Cajun boy and his pet raccoon is disrupted when the tranquility of the bayou is broken by an oil well drilling near his home.
- DirectorJean RouchStarsJean RouchA documentary short depicting a Hauka ceremony where young workers are possessed by British colonial officers.
- DirectorJean RouchStarsOumarou GandaGambiPetit Touré"I, a Negro" depicts young Nigerien immigrants who left their country to find work in the Ivory Coast, in the Treichville quarter of Abidjan, the capital. These immigrants live in squalor in Treichville, envious of the bordering quarters of The Plateau (the business and industrial district) and the old African quarter of Adjame. The film traces a week in these immigrants' lives, blurring the line between their characters' routines and their own. Every morning, Tarzan, Eddy Constantine and Edward G. Robinson seek work in Treichville in hopes of getting the 20 francs that a bowl of soup costs them. They perform menial jobs as dockers carrying sacks and handy labor shipping supplies to Europe. At night, they drink away their sorrows in bars while dreaming about their idealized lives as their "movie" alter-egos, alternatively as an FBI Agent, a womanizing bachelor, a successful boxer, and even able to stand up to the white colonialists that seduce away their women. These dream-like sequences are shot in a poetic mode. Each day is introduced by an interstitial voice of god omniscient narration from Jean Rouch, providing a universal thematic distance to the movie's events. The film is book-ended by a narration directed at both Petit Jules and the audience from Edward G. Robinson fondly looking back on his childhood in Niger and concluding that his life is worthy of his dreams.
- DirectorEdgar MorinJean RouchStarsAngeloNadine BallotCatherineA documentary about the everyday lives of ordinary Parisians, done in the style of cinéma vérité.
- DirectorChris MarkerStarsAmilcar CabralFlorence DelayArielle DombasleA woman narrates the contemplative writings of a seasoned world traveler, focusing on contemporary Japan.
- DirectorChris MarkerStarsÉtienne BeckerJean NégroniHélène ChatelainThe story of a man forced to explore his memories in the wake of World War III's devastation, told through still images.
- DirectorKaneto ShindôStarsNobuko OtowaTaiji TonoyamaShinji TanakaA family of four are the sole inhabitants of a small island where they struggle each day to irrigate their crops.
- DirectorLuchino ViscontiStarsLuchino ViscontiAntonio PietrangeliAntonio ArcidiaconoIn rural Sicily, the fishermen live at the mercy of the greedy wholesalers. One family risks everything to buy their own boat and operate independently.
- DirectorSergei ParajanovDodo AbashidzeStarsYuri MgoyanSofiko ChiaureliRamaz ChkhikvadzeA talented but poor minstrel is forced to wander throughout the world because of impossibility to be with his true love - a rich merchant's daughter.
- DirectorSatyajit RayStarsKanu BannerjeeKaruna BannerjeeSubir BanerjeeImpoverished priest Harihar Ray, dreaming of a better life for himself and his family, leaves his rural Bengal village in search of work.
- DirectorMetodi AndonovStarsKatya PaskalevaAnton GorchevMilen PenevThe film sends us to the 17th century when Bulgaria was a part of the Ottoman Empire. Four hoodlums break into the house of the shepherd Karaivan, raping and killing his wife in full view of their little girl, Maria. Karaivan decides to take the law into his own hands and becomes enslaved by his violent wish for revenge. He burns their house with his wife's body inside and abandons the gentle life they had shared, choosing instead to take his daughter to live in a rough hut high in the hills. He raises Maria as a boy, training her to fight so that she can kill in cold blood and help her father avenge her mother's murder. Nine years pass before the two locate and kill three of the four perpetrators. At each body they leave a goat horn as the symbol of their revenge. While on a mission to kill the last one at his rich oriental house, Maria becomes the unwitting witness of a love scene and change comes over her. Now, from time to time she secretly dons a beautiful women dress and exults in her newly found femininity. She falls in love with young shepherd and the hate begins to melt from her heart. When Karaivan discovers the change that is taking place in her it is already late. He tries to bring Maria back to him and their life of revenge, with disastrous results.
- DirectorLisandro AlonsoStarsArgentino VargasFrancisco DornezYolanda GalarzaVargas, a 54 year old man, gets out of jail in the prvince of Corrientes, Argentina. Once released, he wants to find his now adult daughter, who lives in a swampy and remote area. To get there, he must cross great distances in a small boat on the rivers, scoring deep into the jungle. Vargas is a quiet and self-contained man. He possesses the restraint of those living close to nature. A deep mystery surrounds him, the people he encounters and the places he goes through, all that taking in the unalterable world he finds almost unchanged after his long years of incarceration.
- DirectorJorge SanjinésStarsMarcelino YanahuayaBenedicta MendozaVicente Verneros SalinasThe reaction of an indigenous community against a group of foreigners who under the guise of development assistance are forcibly sterilizing the peasant women.
- DirectorPedro CostaStarsVanda DuarteNuno VazMariya LipkinaA suicidal young woman gives her newborn child up to his deadbeat father in the Fontainhas slums of Lisbon.
- DirectorPedro CostaStarsVenturaVanda DuarteBeatriz DuarteWith the destruction of Fontainhas nearly complete, the old man Ventura wanders around a bleak housing project and the ruins of the slums, meeting with his kids and old friends.
- DirectorPedro CostaStarsVenturaVitalina VarelaTito Furtado"The time is now, a numbing and timeless present of hospital stays, bureaucratic questioning, and wandering through remembered spaces... and suddenly it is also then, the mid '70s and the time of Portugal's Carnation Revolution, when Ventura got into a knife fight with his friend Joaquim." This is the synopsis from the press notes. The film is a sequel of sorts to Costa's "Colossal Youth" with Ventura again playing himself.
- DirectorPedro CostaStarsVanda DuarteLena DuarteZita DuarteThe film follows the daily life of Vanda Duarte, a heroin addict in Lisbon, and the community she lives in.
- DirectorRithy PanhStarsPeng PhanMom SothChhim NalineIn Cambodian refugee camps, when children are asked where rice comes from, they answer, "from UN lorries". They have never seen a rice field. One day, these children will have to learn to live in Cambodia, i.e., they will have to learn to cultivate, to plough, to work the land. Rice people tries to share this way of life, to demonstrate the fragile equilibrium on which it lies and the freedom it represents.
- DirectorMerian C. CooperErnest B. SchoedsackStarsMerian C. CooperErnest B. SchoedsackMarguerite HarrisonThe struggles of a hardscrabble Iranian nomadic tribe as they journey through bleak country to reach the grasslands that will save their livestock.
- DirectorLuis BuñuelStarsAbel JacquinAlexandre O'NeillA surrealist film, a pseudo-documentary portrait of Las Hurdes, a remote region of Spain where civilisation has barely developed, showing how the local peasants try to survive without even the most basic utilities and skills.
- DirectorFlora GomesStarsDulcenia BidjanqueDjuco BodjanDadu CisseDone in the style of an African folk tale, this film, a collaboration between European and African countries, is said to be among the most elaborate, high tech film in African film. Exquisitely photographed and filled with archetypal figures to create a poetic look at nature's revenge against those who would exploit her. It is set in the forest village of Amanha Lundju, a place where the birth of children is celebrated by the planting of a tree. The trees are considered spiritual twins. But for every tree planted, the rapacious state destroys many more for firewood and lumber.
- DirectorTamara KotevskaLjubomir StefanovStarsHatidze MuratovaNazife MuratovaHussein SamThe last female bee-hunter in Europe must save the bees and return the natural balance in Honeyland, when a family of nomadic beekeepers invade her land and threaten her livelihood.