Jean Rouch is known to many worldwide as a French anthropologist and innovative filmmaker. Much of his work is linked to the birth of cinéma vérité. However, Rouch's fifty-year involvement with a particular group of people in Niger shines a more personal light on his work - one of friendship and collaboration. Together with this group, Rouch made numerous ethnographic films and developed their own cinematographic style. These films have been termed...

Stambali is a religious ritual in Tunisia, a journey with the rhythm of the "gombri" and "chkackek," traces an individual and collective hypnosis, an annual tribute that the disciples of Sidi Saad pay to their master during an initiatory journey and rite of purification that lasts three days. The camera, video and film follow the rhythm of the possession, dances, and goes into a trance.

Foreman Balla is the self-proclaimed king of a massive construction site. His co-workers stick close to him, like musketeers, as long as he makes sure they are paid. But things stop running smoothly when materials get scarce and two newcomers arrive on the site: Kati, a young engineer, and Werner Horrath, the new Party Secretary. Balla's swaggering, reminiscent of Hollywood gunslingers, melts away as he realizes he is in love with Kati. Arguably the...

"The world's greatest city laid bare!", roars the tagline to London in the raw (1964), a salacious documentary that tours the strip-clubs and underground dives of the still-swinging city. Exploitation maven Arnold Miller combines documentary footage with staged sequences of leering intimacy, showing the skin of belly dancers and strip-teasers once the sun sets, disappearing along with any inhibitions. As the voice-over says, "Eat a little, dance a...

We hear the thoughts of Amy, a girl from a rural area of Senegal who works as a domestic for a well-to-do family in Dakar. She complains about her employer, who continuously criticizes her and gets on her case, and she talks about her dream of one day opening her own eatery. In Dakar, some 150,000 young women work as housekeepers for rich families in Dakar to survive and help their families instead of going to school.

Jarreth Merz, a Swiss-Nigerian actor living in Los Angeles, is summoned to Nigeria to bury his father. Nigerian tradition mandates the eldest child to take charge of a father's burial. Although he accepts the responsibility, he struggles with why he feels morally responsible toward Nigerian tradition and a family whom he hardly knows. Jarreth starts a journey of self-discovery.

This film is the followup of First contact. It traces the fortunes of Joe Leahy, the mixed-race son of Australian explorer Michael Leahy, in his uneasy relationship with his tribal neighbors. Joe built his coffee plantation on land bought from the Ganiga in the mid 1970s. European educated, raised in the highlands of Papua, freed by his mixed race from the entanglements of tribal obligation, Joe leads a Western lifestyle governed by individualism...

Filmmaker Emily Railsback and sommelier Jeremy Quinn provide intimate access to rural family life in the Republic of Georgia as they explore the rebirth of 8,000-year-old winemaking traditions almost lost during the period of Soviet rule. Official Selection at the **Berlin International Film Festival** *"A great introduction to Georgian culture that is as rich and a beautiful as the country itself." - Louis Proyect, **Counterpunch.org*** *"OUR BLOOD...

A first and thorough look at the Mexican celebration of the dead, the sacred days when the souls of the departed return to visit the living. Tracing the Days of the Dead tradition from its roots in Indian culture to its manifestations in contemporary Chicano communities, this unconventional and visually arresting documentary contemplates the loving and sometimes humorous Mexican cultural attitudes toward "that constant companion," death.