Ethnographic Film Movies

Estonia's first ethnographic film. Made by Johannes Pääsuke in 1913 on his expedition to Setomaa, the South-Eastern region in Estonia.

Remember the culture clash in THE GODS MUST BE CRAZY? This time it's real. One of the most ancient cultures on our planet is undergoing a major...

AMIN portrays Qashqai musician Amin Aghaie, a young modern nomad and his family who despite facing steep financial, cultural and political obstacles...

A unique 'direct cinema' feature length documentary (no narration or interviews) originally filmed in the Spring of 1970 and concluded during the...

On the night of 3 August 1996 a school of striped dolphins ran ashore near the village of Tuo on Ngasinue/Fenualoa Island in the Reef Islands...

This anthropological documentary introduces the Yezidis, a little-known minority of Northern Iraq, and follows the tour of their most sacred object,...

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...

The Greek shadow puppetry began 130 years ago. A student of Greek shadow puppetry travels to China, where shadow puppetry began over 2000 years ago....

Beauty and the Beast: Comparing Two Igbo Masquerades By Herbert M. Cole

An ethnographic film that tells the story of the mask makers and dancers during the festival of the Virgen del Carmen in Paukartambo, Cuzco. The...

A collage of daily life in Aq Kupruk builds from the single voice that calls the townspeople to prayer, the brisk exchange of the baazar, communal...

An ethnographic film by Milovan Gavazzi, the founder of Croatian ethnology. The films displays a practice that was already a rarity at the time.

At dawn a nomad caravan descends on Aq Kupruk from the foothills of the Hindu Kush. In their camp, and in commerce with the townspeople, the Maldar...

Rye, a photographer, and Chris, a political science student, are in their final year of college, and have lived together in the same house for three...

After his father dies, law student Adolfo (Jorge Marchand), returns to his native village in the South of Bolivia, where he falls in love with...

Traversing 700,000 square kilometers over 700 days, the filmmakers bring the stories of five people who crisscross the Yellow River to perform their...

The Reef Islands Ethnographic Film Project was started in 1994 by the two anthropologists, Jens Pinholt and Peter I. Crawford, and village...

What is an ethnographic film? Can there even be one? This film is an attempt— or, as we have come to call it, a "botched baby"— of trying...