documentaries - SW China 2015

(1) ... release of Some Na Ceremonies<http://www.berkeleymedia.com/films/some_na_ceremonies>, a

31-minute film I developed in collaboration with two Na filmmakers, Onci Archei and Ruheng Duoji. Also the founders of the Moso Folk Museum, they

are from Luoshui Village next to Lugu Lake in southwest China, and we collaborated on a media training project and film festival in 2005-2006.

Some Na Ceremonies is a rather unique film because it opens with a short excerpt from that film festival to frame that this is a living,

contemporary place where people are actively engaged in and thinking about representations, then it moves to four ceremonies that map onto

people's ideas of what would be more 'traditional.' These four ceremonies, all filmed and edited by Archei and Duoji over a period of several years, include chanting by Daba ritual specialists, funerary activities, ritualized dancing, and participation from family members and villagers involved in the ceremonies. You can get a sense of what they look like from this trailer, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCbt2b7qx_w

The DVD is divided into five chapters (one for each ceremony) so that educators could either show the entire 31-minute film in class, or show

one or more of the ceremonies as relevant. There is no droning narrative voice, a deliberate choice meant to give more immediacy to the sensory

aspects of the ceremony and make viewers work to decipher what they are seeing. Each ceremony has a somewhat different approach to subtitled

translation and explanatory text: one ceremony has both, one has only translation but no explanation, one has explanation but no translation,

and the final ceremony is unmediated by explanation or translation. The result is that the film can provoke some very interesting reflection and

discussion from students. A study guide is available as well to help guide that discussion and provide further background on Na communities

 [Tami Blumenfield at Furman College]

(2) There's another relatively new film, Mosuo Sisters, that offers a neat >perspective of two young women from a Yongning village.

>http://itvs.org/films/mosuo-sisters  Much of the rhetoric, again, is ....

(3)  video 'A Chinese Tribe That Empowers Women' produced by ABC Australia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoTrARDa8BU.  This is

another one 'Tisese: A Documentary on Three Mosuo Women' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjqBAZfhuT0.