Royal Anthropological Institute (Firm)

A Tigrean farmer and his wife, who host pilgrims to a festival at the Gundagundo monastery, have gained the biblical names Abraham and Sarah. We see Sarah and other women prepare food and drink for the pilgrims, while Abraham and other men erect a shelter. At dawn dozens of pilgrims descend the steep escarpment, eventually arriving at Gundagundo where celebrations are in full swing. We witness highlights of the festival, and the pilgrims' return to...

This film portrays an unexpected encounter between an old Tzotzil man, who is going blind, and his granddaughter, who does not remember her childhood well. The granddaughter, having grown up in the city estranged from her grandparents, returns to visit her grandfather’s village. While he weaves a traditional hat, the threads of family history unwind and are rewoven. In between silences and unspoken words, the renewed possibility of understanding...

THE WOMEN WEAVERS OF ASSAM focuses on the craft, labour and the everyday lives of a group of women weavers in India’s northeastern state of Assam. The weavers belong to a non-profit collective called Tezpur District Mahila Samiti (TDMS), which was founded a century ago by women activists and Gandhian freedom fighters of Assam. The TDMS weavers preserve traditional motifs and methods of Assamese weaving, which have been declining since the introduction...

Dancing Grass captures the communal harvesting of teff among Tigreans of Northern Ethiopia. Teff, an ancient indigenous grain, is central to the livelihood of smallholder farmers and may be called the 'cereal core' of Ethiopian national food identity. A local elder provides the commentary for the sequence of events that unfold in the homestead, fields and neighbourhood of the author's eldest brother and family: the cutting of the 'dancing grass';...

In a temple dedicated to Hanuman in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, a priest flouts convention by marrying couples who are shunned elsewhere: mostly those who have eloped from families who disapprove of their union, but also, even more controversially, same-sex couples. A portrait of a staggeringly progressive and liberal institution, that counters the conservatism and orthodoxy found elsewhere in India’s religious communities.

A powerful mother-daughter drama is at the centre of this film. Rooted in disagreement—both personal and political—the film follows the consequences of a war that leaves them with an impossible choice. When a peace agreement between the FARC rebel movement and the Colombian government looks as though it will put an end to half a century of conflict, 30-year-old Yira visits her mother in Colombia after spending 10 years in exile in Cuba. Yira has...

Filmmaker Kaira's childhood friend Shawa moved as a young widow with two sons to her present home in search of good land. Here she met Garombe and had four more children. We get close to each family member in scenes of daily life, starting with children milking cows at dawn. After taking grain by donkey to a distant flourmill, Shawa and daughters brew beer, which the sons drink when plowing the field. We learn how Shawa trained oxen to plow, and Garombe...

Our bodies are semi-permeable. All over the world, stories are being told about heroes who magically “close” their bodies, so as to become invincible. This film follows one such story, as it is told in Santo Amaro, Bahia (Brazil). Besouro Mangangà was a capoeira player, a black hero, who had closed his body. No bullets, no knives or daggers could pierce his skin. Bahian men explain how “closing the body” makes sense in their precarious and...

Human bodies don’t simply disappear. They were kidnapped, buried, broken into pieces. But they are also searched for, recovered and if forensic experts achieve the unlikely, reconstructed as persons. These only return to their homes if they are identified as dead. An audiovisual journey through Mexico’s landscapes of disappearance, between mass graves and fragments, affected families and forensic anthropologists. In search for the human that remains,...