The playful side of Yanomamo life is shown on a day during the rainy season when women and children of the village play a game of tug-of-war.

This documentary was filmed during three months on the Yamal Peninsula in West Siberia, where the Nenets have been herding reindeer for about a thousand years.

Brujo is an exploration of shamanism and curing among the Mazatec Indians of Oaxaca, Mexico, and among two groups of Maya Indians in southern Mexico and Guatemala. The film is divided into three sequences. The first, filmed in Chichicastenango (Guatemala), shows Diego, a shaman, cure a woman on whom a spell has been cast. The cure takes place partly in a church and partly in the mountains, where a sacrificed chicken is used to bring back the ailing...

The strenuousness of women's work is revealed as a woman patiently chops a large log for firewood one evening, enough to last one day. Her two children play nearby, and she occasionally stops to nurse the younger.

An Aymara family plants potatoes, prepares and eats a meal, and discusses the religious and astronomical forces that control their destiny. The stark routine of this typical planting day contrasts with thecomplexity of their beliefs.

On the southern shores of Lake Chambri (Middle Sepik River) live 1500 Pondo-speaking villagers. The Chambris trade fish, mosquito nets and baskets for sago, pottery, and other goods.

For these villagers, giving birth is a family affair; while a young girl is in labor, the birth attendant, mother and mother-in-law alternate between lending a hand and story telling.

In the eastern highlands of Papua New Guinea, French anthropologist Maurice Godelier invites five of his Baruya friends and informants to his house to discuss Baruya kinship and rules of marriage. As Godelier poses questions, the kinship rules that provide the cohesive fabric of Baruya culture are brought to life.

The Sheep Eaters relied heavily on the plants they could gather for medicinal and edible uses, often cooking food in a unique soapstone vessel.

In March 2004, one of the world's last voluntarily isolated groups of hunter-gatherers walked out of the forest in northern Paraguay, fleeing ranchers' bulldozers. They formed a new village with their more settled relatives, where they confronted the complexities of learning how to become "Ayoreo Indians" and more critically, how to survive in a rapidly changing world.