American Museum of Natural History's Margaret Mead Traveling Film & Video Festival presents highlights of the largest showcase for independent cultural documentaries in the United States.
The full Festival program (six programs) can be rented for $1,600, which includes publicity photographs, preview videos for publicity purposes, and promotional literature. It is also possible to rent a half-package--your choice of any three programs as well as the above mentioned materials--for $800. The presentation format is 3/4" NTSC video. The Traveling Festival can be rented for a weekend marathon or for up to six weeks; bookings can be made from December 1, 1998 until November 1, 1999.
1998-1999 Tour Line-Up
PROGRAM 1
RELOCATING "HOME": NEW DOCUMENTARY FROM TAIWAN
Since martial law was lifted a decade ago, Taiwanese documentary filmmakers have been overturning cinematic conventions to present alternative visions of Taiwan's past, present, and future. These two titles offer insight into this society in transition.
Total Running Time: 150 min.
Passing through My Mother-in-Law's Village (Taiwan)
Hu Tai-Li. 1997. 87 min.
(U.S. Premiere at the 1998 Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival)
Cinematic vignettes document tradition and change in rural Taiwan as the filmmaker revisits the village of her in-laws, also the site of her fieldwork as an anthropologist in the 1970s, before it is razed for the construction of a major highway. This was first documentary in Taiwan to achieve commercial success.
Moon Children (Taiwan)
Wu Yii-Feng. 1990. 63 min.
(NY Premiere at the 1998 Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival)
Wu Kuo-Hwang was fired because he looked like a "ghost." In Taiwan, albinoism often means being ostracized from mainstream society. This keenly sensitive film breaks down commonplace prejudices about albinos and looks at the Taiwanese albino community's efforts to improve its rights and provide a much needed support network by founding the National Albino Association. This work stands as a social and cinematic landmark in Taiwan's communal media efforts.
PROGRAM 2
BORDER CROSSING
The vibrant musical traditions of Cuba and Central America break down social and geographical boundaries.
Total Running Time: 85 min.
Pepino Mango Nance (U.S.)
Gillian Goslinga, Bann Roy. 1997. 10 min.
(NY Premiere at the 1998 Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival)
It's the music of the streets! It's the music of filmmaking! In this exuberant short a young Chicano composer is inspired by the hawker calls of Central American street vendors in Los Angeles to create a composition for string quartet.
Black Tears (Lágrimas Negras) (Cuba)
Sonia Herman Dolz. 1998. 75 min.
(NY Premiere at the 1998 Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival)
A musical portrait of the octogenarian Cuban quintet "La Vieja Trova Santiaguera" ("The Old Troubadours"). While on a six-month tour in Western Europe they perform to adoring crowds and reminisce about what has inspired them throughout the years ‹ song, dance, and love.
PROGRAM 3
RESISTANCE
Innovative portraits chronicle individual and collective resistance to political oppression.
Total Running Time: 127 min.
Lumumba: Death of a Prophet (Democratic Republic of Congo)
Raoul Peck. 1992. 69 min.
Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister elected after Congolese independence in 1960, was assassinated only ten months after taking office. One of the legendary figures of modern African history, he has been described both as a prophet and as the "Elvis Presley of African politics." Using archival films, interviews with Belgian journalists and Lumumba's family members, and his own home movies taken during his childhood in Zaire, Peck masterfully blends the personal and the political to question the process of documentary filmmaking and the relationship between private recollection and public history.
Spudwrench-Kahnawake Man (Canada)
Alanis Obomsawin. 1997. 58 min.
The Mohawk "high steel" workers are legendary for their part in building New York City. This film celebrates these men and the loved ones they were forced to leave at home, their ties to the reservation community, and how that bond was tested during the 1990 territorial dispute between the Mohawk community and the Canadian government.
PROGRAM 4
ONLY THE LONELY
These lyrical and often humorous works offer different perspectives on solitude and memory.
Total Running Time: 122 min.
The Bathhouse (Pirtis) (Lithuania)
Rimantas Gruodis. 1997. 10 min.
(U.S. Premiere at the 1998 Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival)
On alternate days of the week, elderly men and women take refuge in the oldest and last active public bathhouse in Vilnius. In its timeless space, the visitors' musings about the hardships of daily life and an uncertain future are tempered with birch branches and the ritual bath.
Skin's Sorrow (Peaux de Chagrin) (Belgium)
Richard Olivier. 1997. 57 min.
(U.S. Premiere at the 1998 Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival)
Taxidermy has often been associated with traditional museum display; it is also a means to immortalize a beloved pet. This offbeat and poignant film is an exploration of loneliness, loss, and love.
Bread Day (Russia)
Sergei Dvortsevoy. 1998. 55 min.
(U.S. Premiere at the 1998 Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival)
Long takes and stunning cinematography strike a fragile balance between melancholy and humor. Outside St. Petersburg, Russia, in a forgotten, almost abandoned settlement, a dwindling community of pensioners barely manages to eke out an existence. From the director of "Chastie," a Mead Festival favorite.
PROGRAM 5
WOMEN AND TABOO
Four works explore the relationship between women and what is considered taboo.
Total Running Time: 152 min.
So It Doesn't Hurt (Poland)
Marcel Lozinski. 1998. 46 min.
(U.S. Premiere at the 1998 Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival)
In rural Poland in the 1960s a journalist, photographer, and film crew visited the village outcast ‹ a young, single, woman farmer with a penchant for literature. Twenty-three years later, the same film crew makes a return visit. The film also presents a critique of the documentary and journalistic endeavor itself.
Mother of the Tribe (Taiwan)
Chen Jung-Hsien. 1998. 25 min.
(U.S. Premiere at the 1998 Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival)
In 1995, Chi Ah Niang became the first female chieftain to be elected by the Ah-mei people. She faces the daunting task of convincing the conservative elders that the hurricane that destroyed last year's annual harvest had nothing to do with her being a woman.
Under Wraps: A Film about Going with the Flow (Canada/U.S.)
Teresa MacInnes, Penny Wheelwright. 1996. 56 min.
(NY Premiere at the 1998 Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival)
In an era when nothing seems off limits, the topic of menstruation remains taboo. This uncompromising look at Western attitudes towards menstruation includes a challenging critique of the marketing of toxic products, commentary from visual and literary artists who address menstruation in their work, and a visit to the novel Museum of Menstruation.
Dear Dr. Spencer: Abortion in a Small Town (U.S.)
Danielle Renfrew, Beth Seltzer. 1997. 25 min.
(NY Premiere at the 1998 Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival)
At a time when abortion was illegal, women from all over the country sought the services of Dr. Spencer, a small-town doctor in Ashland, PA. Dr. Spencer performed safe and inexpensive abortions for women in need; it is estimated that he performed nearly 40,000 between 1923 and his death in 1969. Remarkably, the community "looked the other way," and didn't interfere despite his defiance of the law.
PROGRAM 6
FROM SAND TO CELLULOID: AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS MEDIA
This series of works by both indigenous and non-indigenous filmmakers examines issues of repatriation and the transmission of cultural heritage.
Total Running Time: 146 min.
Cracks in the Mask (Torres Strait Islands)
Frances Calvert. 1997. 47 min.
(U.S. Premiere at the 1998 Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival)
What is the role of ethnographic museums at the end of the twentieth century? What rights do indigenous communities have to reclaim their material culture? These questions are soberly explored as a community leader from the Torres Strait Islands in northern Australia embarks on a journey to European museums to encounter the ceremonial and everyday objects that were once part of his heritage.
Milerum: Whose Story? (Australia)
Robert Crompton. 1997. 30 min.
(U.S. Premiere at the 1998 Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival)
In the 1930s, Australian anthropologist/linguist Norman Tindale conducted extensive research with indigenous community leader Milerum. The collections yielded by the project are now housed in the South Australian Museum. Six decades later Milerum's great-grandson questions who has the right to these materials, many of which are sacred and not to be seen by "whitefellas," women, or the uninitiated.
Night Patrol (Munga Watingki Patu) (Australia)
Pat Fiske, Valerie Napaljarri Martin. 1997. 30 min.
(U.S. Premiere at the 1998 Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival)
"We don't want to be crying all the time." When alcohol abuse, gasoline sniffing, and domestic violence reach crisis proportions in the Yuendemu community in Australia's Northern Territory, a group of daring indigenous women take control and found their own policing program.
The Dreaming (Australia)
Shane Russell. 1996. 39 min. Animation.
(U.S. Premiere at the 1998 Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival)
These selections are from a thirteen-part series about Australian indigenous artists who collaborate with the "owners" of traditional dreaming stories and render these tales into animation. Such stories form the backbone of Australian indigenous culture, including creation and morality tales.
For more information, please contact: Melanie Kent,
E-mail: kent@amnh.org
Phone: 212-769-5305
Fax: 212-769-5329
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1998-1999 Tour Stops
Antioch College
Yellow Springs, OH
Summer 1999
Tel: 937-767-6633
Boulder Public Library
Boulder, CO
Fall 1999
Tel: 303-441-3197
California State University at Fullerton
Fullerton, CA
Winter 1999
Tel: 714-278-3389
Field Museum of Natural History
Chicago, IL
Winter 1999
Tel: 312-922-9410
National Museum of Natural History/Smithsonian Institution
Washington, D.C.
Spring 1999
Tel: 202-357-1756
Pacific Film Archive, University of California
Berkeley, CA
Nov 1998
Tel: 510-642-1413
Santa Fe Community College
Santa Fe, NM
Fall 1999
Tel: 505-438-1266
Southwest Research Station
Portal, AZ
April 1999
Tel: 520-558-2396
University Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology
Philadelphia, PA
Feb. 1999
Tel: 215-898-4015
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA
Spring 1999
Tel: 213-740-8156
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