Les Seigneurs de la forêt

Documentary about the inhabitants, both human and animal, of the Belgian Congo. Released in 1958.

Hope Has A Name

In urban America, the bush of Africa, the war zone of the Congo, and in closed nations there are women who are living outside their own cultures, society, and comfort level to care for orphans, build schools, liberate addicts, feed the poor, and love the broken. These ordinary women are reaching into hopeless situations of people and creating hope.

The Enclave

Commissioned for the Irish representation at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013, The Enclave is an immersive, six-screen video art installation by Irish contemporary artist Richard Mosse. Partly inspired by Joseph Conrad’s modernist literary masterpiece Heart of Darkness, the visceral and moving work was filmed in the Democratic Republic of Congo using 16mm colour infra-red film, which captures otherwise invisible parts of the spectrum. The resulting imagery in Mosse’s work is hallucinatory and dream-like with the usual greens of jungle and forest replaced by shimmering violet. The Enclave depicts a complicated, strife-ridden place in a way that reflects its complexity, using a strategy of beauty and transfixion to combat the wider invisibility of a conflict that has claimed so many.

De dansande andarnas skog

“In the beginning, women lived apart, unaware of the existence of men. Until one day, when the first woman, Toli, who was brave and adventurous traveled deep into the forest. Toli discovered solitary creatures with big muscles who knew how to climb trees and harvest wild honey. When Toli tasted their honey, she thought they should all live together….” That is how one of the creation stories of the Aka people from the tropical rainforest of the Congo Basin goes. Akaya, Kengole, Dibota and their friends and family are hunters-gatherers (and also great story-tellers) who guide us through their world. They explain their origins, myths, and the very spiritual meaning of life.

Innerer Kongo

Wolfram, a Saliva do Lobo

The darkness of the mine, invaded by the miners' light, by the noisy machines and the permanent and intense smell of ore in the air, leads us to an environment in which time and space become confused. A documentary film at Panasqueiras' Mine, between 2008/09. A reality captured by an eye-observer which does not interfere, but follows the compost that grows from the earth and is decomposed by man-machine.

The Hunters

An ethnographic film that documents the efforts of four !Kung men (also known as Ju/'hoansi or Bushmen) to hunt a giraffe in the Kalahari Desert of Namibia. The footage was shot by John Marshall during a Smithsonian-Harvard Peabody sponsored expedition in 1952–53. In addition to the giraffe hunt, the film shows other aspects of !Kung life at that time, including family relationships, socializing and storytelling, and the hard work of gathering plant foods and hunting for small game.

Folia no Morro

An ethnographic documentary following the Folia de Reis party that is celebrated every year at Morro de Santa Marta on Rio de Janeiro.

Congo

An experimental ethnographic documentary that criticizes the colonizer view of anthropology.

Chroniques d'un village tzotzil

A documentary about the daily life of a native Tzotzil community in southern Mexico, shot over a period of eight years.

Funeral Chants from the Georgian Caucasus

A short film set in the mountainous province of Svaneti, documents the performance of polyphonic men’s funerary laments common to the region.

Congo, My Precious

The Democratic Republic of Congo in Africa is one of the world’s most resource-rich countries. A wide range of rare minerals can be found here in abundance, all commanding high prices in world commodity markets. Diamonds for jewellery, tantalum, tungsten and gold for electronics; uranium used in power generation and weaponry and many others. Congo has copious deposits of raw materials that are in high demand internationally but remains one of the poorest countries in the world. For our translator, Bernard Kalume Buleri, his country’s history of turmoil is very personal; like most Congolese people, he and his family fell victim to the unending mineral based power struggle. Born in the year of his country’s independence, he has lived through war and seen his homeland torn apart by violent looting and greed. His story is a damning testament, illustrating how nature’s bounty, instead of being a blessing, becomes a deadly curse.

Naked Spaces: Living Is Round

Shot with stunning elegance and clarity, NAKED SPACES explores the rhythm and ritual of life in the rural environments of six West African countries (Mauritania, Mali, Burkino Faso, Togo, Benin and Senegal). The nonlinear structure of NAKED SPACES challenges the traditions of ethnographic filmmaking, while sensuous sights and sounds lead the viewer on a poetic journey to the most inaccessible parts of the African continent: the private interaction of people in their living spaces.

Africa Addio

A documentary about the end of the colonial era in Africa, portraying acts of animal poaching, violence, executions, and tribal slaughter.

Asante Market Women

As retailers, wholesalers, and negotiators, Asante women of Ghana dominate the huge Kumasi Central Market amid the laughter, argument, colour and music. The crew of this `Disappearing World' film have jumped into the fray, explored, and tried to explain the complexities of the market and its traders. As the film was to be about women traders, an all female film crew was selected and the rapport between the two groups of women is remarkable. The relationship was no doubt all the stronger because the anthropologist acting as advisor to the crew, Charlotte Boaitey, is herself an Asante. The people open up for the interviewers telling them about their lives as traders, about differences between men and women, in their perception of their society and also about marriage.

Congo: A Journey to the Heart of Africa

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a vast, mineral rich country the size of Western Europe. Alastair Leithead takes an epic journey from the Atlantic Ocean to the far reaches of the Congo river to explore how history has shaped the Congo of today and uncover the lesser told stories of this beautiful, if troubled country. In the largest rainforest outside of the Amazon he comes face to face with its gorillas and hunts with pygmies, he travels into the heart of the Ebola outbreak with United Nations peacekeepers, and explores the cobalt mines which will drive our electric cars of the future.

Choqela: Only Interpretation

This provocative and profound film documents the Choqela ceremony, an agricultural ritual and song of the Aymara Indians of Peru. By offering several different translations of the proceedings, the film acknowledges the problems of interpretation as an inherent dilemma of anthropology.

Machete Gillette... Mama

"With characteristic wit and rigor, experimental filmmaker Larry Gottheim here applies his impressionistic editing style to footage collected during his travels in the Dominican Republic. Gottheim’s formal emphasis on repetition and fissures between sound and image resonates here as a mode of sociological reflection (with the fragmentary montage mirroring elements of ritual while also destabilizing the ethnographic gaze). A largely overlooked antecedent to the contemporary blending of avant-garde and ethnographic filmmaking, MACHETTE GILLETTE… MAMA still poses a potent challenge to documentary convention." - Max Goldberg

Kwaheri

Early Mondo film featuring primitive rituals, animals being butchered, unusual birth defects, and a legit trepanation scene.

Él Es Dios

About the "concheros", dancers in México City that keep aztec traditions alive.