Images, instrumental music, song, interviews and narrative provide clues in the search for a lost song, its history, and its argument for cultural retention between aspects of African and African-American culture.
A young boy and his distant ancestor engage in parallel quests to understand their destinies and to know the meaning of their names. In so doing, Keita makes the case for an "Afrocentric" education, where African tradition, not an imported Western curricula is the necessary starting point for African development.
The conflict between modern individualism and traditional society is seen through the eyes of two young Niger Delta women involved in a five-week long women's initiation ceremony.
This film, the first from the Central African Republic, takes us inside the world of the 'pygmies' or more properly BaAka. A well-intentioned school reformer, disgusted by the corruption in his country, attempts to bring modern learning to what appear to him as the last remaining 'noble savages.' But these superbly adapted rain forest hunter gatherers want none of his knowledge.
A gender-bending farce set among the cliff-dwelling 18th century Dogon people, makes serious points about the status of women in Africa. It shows how ancient mythology can still shed light on modern issues.
Without plot or narration, this mesmerizing documentary records the dehumanizing monotony of a day in the life of women chipping rocks by hand in a Tanzanian quarry while discovering the communal warmth and joy that defies this spirit-breaking labor.
This retelling of an ancient fable about a mute, memory-less orphan, renamed "God's Gift" by the grateful village which adopts him demonstrates the continuing relevance of traditional African values such as hospitality and communal child rearing.
Across Africa, a belief in witchcraft continues to terrorize women: the denunciation, brutal beating, the banishment to an unknown village without family or friends. Witches in Exile is the first film to tell their story and the story of the human rights struggle to find a solution to a practice deeply embedded in tradition and gender economics.
This story of a village family caught up in the transformation of an agrarian, subsistence economy into an industrialized commodity economy explores the impact of the change from an oral tradition to a mass media based society where information is pre-packaged and sold.
