Movies: Anthropology

Saint Anthony, Abbot of the Desert, protector of animals, is a central figure in the Italian countryside, where fortune depends on the health of the animals. To heal his donkey, Antonio asks the village priest to bless the sick animal. Faced with his...

Thanassakis, a 13-year-old boy, is staying with his grandparents in the Greek village of Ano Ravenia, while his parents stay with his younger brother in Zurich, Switzerland. It was filmed during three periods: winter in the village, summer in the vil...

Men and women in the Horn of Africa and adjiacent regions of the Middle East tell stories of their relationships and contacts with demons and spirits in their life and culture....

Raised in one of the most violent outskirts of Fortaleza, the Cruz brothers had their lives shaped by music to the point that their parents turned the house where they live into a school....

Native Mexican people grouped in front of the camera....

Explores the historical and contemporary significance of salt, detailing its extraction from the earth and oceans, its role in food preservation, livestock nutrition, and its various industrial uses. The film highlights how salt has shaped human civi...

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A documentary on the influential anthropologist Margaret Mead. Using never-before-seen archival footage, stills, interviews and dramatic re-creations, it shows the journey of how Mead became a scientist, adventurer and international celebrity. As a t...

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Short documentary about the traditions, lives and culture of the Qadiri tariqa of Iran's Kurdistan...

Ju/'hoan women often share an intimate sociability and spend many hours together discussing their lives, enjoying each other's company and children. In this short film, Ju/'hoan women rest, talk and nurse their babies while lying in the shade of a ba...

A documentary about the histoy and linguistic ties of the Finno-Ugric, and Samoyedic peoples. Speakers of the Kamassian, Nenets, Khanty, Komi, Mari, and Karelian languages were filmed in their everyday settings in the late 1960s and early 1970s. T...

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Explores the themes of trance and dance in the rituals and religion of Bali. The famous Kris Dance is performed....

A deep dive into contemporary Brazilian music. Guided by the composer, anthropologist and ethnomusicologist Kilza Setti and the Hésperides Música das Américas nucleus, the documentary takes us to a world where contemporary music, the Guarani and Timb...

The director’s grandparents Wilhelmine, an Austrian Catholic, and Bernard, a Jewish Czechoslovakian communist, have always been part of her life, although she never met them in person. Her uncle Hermann lives in what was once their house, with their ...

Marianne Lehmann, born in Switzerland in 1936, married a Haitian and moved to Port-au-Prince in 1957. Fascinated by voodoo cult objects, she began with buying them to avoid their scattering abroad. Over the years it became the largest collection in t...

A dark and magical visit to the fabled Parisian address Rue Fontaine 42. This was the residence of André Breton, the mastermind of surrealism, who surrounded himself with an impressive collection of modern, Western art and ethnographic objects from O...

The subject is two grotesque-looking human beings who are sitting on the deck of a ship. The two weird individuals sit cross-legged and do the bidding of a man in oriental costume. The point of the film seems to be directed at the fact that the bone ...