Catalog Search Results

Discusses the Egyptian preservation of dead bodies, stories associated with mummies, and mummies from different cultures, including Incan and Sicilian.

Seven college housemates from the 1960s who have drifted apart reunite at the funeral of a friend. Having entered adulthood as non-conformists, most now belong to the establishment. Stunned by the death of their peer, sensing their own mortality and the loss of their innocence, each takes the opportunity to reevaluate his or her life and re-establish their bonds.

Every year, in the colonial city of Antigua, Guatemala, the "sorrowful way" of Good Friday is recreated by a path of colored sawdust and flower petals. Along this road several hundred people take turns carrying a ponderous mahoganybier. Indians from the surrounding countryside come to observe the spectacle of townspeople garbed in Biblical and Roman military uniforms.

Monday's Girls explores the conflict between modern individualism and traditional communities in today's Africa through the eyes of two young Waikiriki women from the Niger delta. Although both come from leading families in the same large island town, Florence looks at the iria women's initiation ceremony as an honor, while Azikiwe, who has lived in the city for ten years, sees it as an indignity. Ngozi Onwurah, director of such feminist classics...

To the Land of Bliss is an intimate portrayal of the Chinese Pure Land Buddhist way of dying and living. In 1998, the filmmaker/anthropologist Wen-jie Qin returned to her home region in Sichuan Province in southwest China to research the post-Mao revival of Buddhism.

"A modern saga that could only have come from South Africa, written in gorgeous prose by the Booker Prize-shortlisted author Damon Galgut. Haunted by an unmet promise, the Swart family loses touch after the death of their matriarch. Adrift, the lives of the three siblings move separately through the uncharted waters of South Africa; Anton, the golden boy who bitterly resents his life's unfulfilled promises; Astrid, whose beauty is her power; and the...

"A vivid look at the ten key people who are maintaining some of the world's oldest and rarest cultural traditions. Eliot Stein has traveled the globe in search of remarkable people who are preserving some of our rarest cultural rites. In Custodians of Wonder: Ancient Customs, Profound Traditions, and the Last People Keeping Them Alive, Stein introduces readers to a man saving the secret ingredient in Japan's 700-year-old original soy sauce recipe....

The Last Rites of the Honourable Mr. Rai is a film about the cremation of a longtime resident of the holy city of Varanasi. This film, made at the request of the Rai family, is possibly the most detailed and respectful study of the Hindu rites of cremation on the sacred banks of the river Ganga at the historic Harish Chandra Ghat. With no invasive narration but with inter-titles and subtitles the film enables the viewer to see, hear and experience...

This documentary is about a group of non-Native women's search for self in "other". The focus is on a specific group of New Age women in Ojai, California who construct a new sweat lodge and perform their own ceremony.

"Grimsby, the newest Auditor in the magical Department of Unorthodox Affairs, finds himself in hot water when he intercepts a friend's case in this fast-paced and thrilling urban fantasy. Against all odds, Grimshaw Griswald Grimsby has become an Auditor, enforcing laws about magic for Boston's Department of Unorthodox Affairs. But Grimsby soon realizes the daily grind of his job is far removed from the glamour he imagined. Overlooked for every exciting...