Comparative Religion
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Backbone of the World
Set amid the majestic splendor of the northern Rockies, this innovative and inspiring documentary interweaves two compelling parallel stories: film director George Burdeau’s journey home to live and work on the Blackfeet Reservation, and his tribe’s determined struggle to protect its sacred lands and forge a new identity.
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Between Two Worlds: A Japanese Pilgrimage
For centuries, pilgrims have come to the Japanese island of Shikoku to trace the 1,000-mile route known as the “Pilgrimage to the 88 Sacred Places of Shikoku,” a journey believed to have been first undertaken by Kobo Daishi, founder of Buddhism’s Shingon sect in the ninth century.
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Carnival in Q’eros
This groundbreaking documentary, by renowned filmmaker and musician John Cohen, shows the remarkable Carnival celebrations — never before seen by outsiders — of a remote community of Indians high in the Peruvian Andes.
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Celebrating Semana Santa: Change, Conflict, and Continuity in Rural Honduras
This "superb, thought-provoking" ethnographic documentary explores the vitality and controversies surrounding a remarkable syncretic religious ceremony held in neighboring remote villages in rural Honduras during the Easter Holy Week.
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Choqela: Only Interpretation
This provocative and profound film documents the Choqela ceremony, an agricultural ritual and song of the Aymara Indians of Peru. By offering several different translations of the proceedings, the film acknowledges the problems of interpretation as an inherent dilemma of anthropology.
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Dance With the Wodaabes
This widely acclaimed and visually stunning ethnographic documentary explores, from the point of view of its participants, the complex cultural significance of one of Africa’s most spectacular but frequently misunderstood and sensationalized ritual celebrations.
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Destination: Tourism
This thought-provoking documentary explores the complex, interconnected effects of tourism, globalization, culture, philanthropy, and religion in Bodh Gaya, the world’s most popular destination of Buddhist pilgrimage.
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Festive Land: Carnaval in Bahia
This perceptive and engaging documentary examines one of the largest and most extraordinary popular celebrations in the world, the week-long Carnaval that brings more than two million people to the streets of Salvador, the capital of Bahia, in northeastern Brazil.
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The Five Suns: A Sacred History of Mexico
This much-honored animated film employs authentic pre-Columbian Aztec iconography to depict the most important creation myths and sacred stories of the Aztecs and other Nahuatl-speaking peoples of ancient central Mexico.
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Food for Body and Spirit
The Tao of cooking and eating — the Way to health and well-being! This film investigates the impact of religious influences on Chinese culture and cuisine.
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Ganges: River to Heaven
This extraordinary documentary explores with unparalleled intimacy one of the most cherished of Hindu religious aspirations: to die in the city of Varanasi, on the banks of the sacred Ganges, in the faith that dying here assures liberation from the cycle of earthly life.
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The Great Ceremony to Straighten the World
Caught between the seduction of prosperity and the threat of cultural disintegration, the people of Bali engage in ceremonies. Through them, the Balinese attempt to maintain balance with God, nature, and one another, and also to turn the recent prosperity from the booming tourist trade into a way of invigorating their culture.
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The Great Gathering
This remarkable documentary provides a rare and fascinating study of the history, meaning, and diverse participants of the Maha Kumbha Mela, a spectacular Hindu sacred festival held every twelve years on the banks of the Ganges in India.
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The High Lonesome Sound
This classic documentary, by renowned filmmaker John Cohen, evocatively illustrates how music and religion help the rural poor of Appalachia maintain their dignity and traditions in the face of change and hardship.
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Homeland
Shot over the course of several years, this rich and engaging documentary weaves together the stories of four Lakota Indian families from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.
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In Beauty I Walk: The Navajo Way to Harmony
Set amid the stunning environs of Arizona’s rugged Canyon de Chelly, this fascinating documentary explores traditional Navajo Indian spiritual practices and thought.
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Indelible Lalita
This intimate, poignant, and thought-provoking documentary relates the remarkable story of an Indian woman, Lalita Bharvani, who completely loses her skin pigment as she migrates from Bombay to Montreal. Now 60 and appearing to be White, Lalita copes with her changing identity even as her body is painfully transformed by ovarian cancer, breast cancer, and heart failure. In telling Lalita’s story, the film incisively explores the intersection of racial, national, age, and gender identities in the globalized world.
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Kahyangan: The Balinese Journey of the Soul
This remarkable documentary explores the full cycle of Balinese death rituals that support and protect the soul’s journey in its endless cycle of life, death, and rebirth.
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Kamakha Through Prayerful Eyes
This "finely crafted, lyrical exploration of a sacred site" creatively captures the complexity and mystery surrounding Kamakhya Temple, an ancient place of fertility worship in India’s northeastern state of Assam. This temple is unique among Hindu temples of the Devi (the Goddess) in that it enshrines no image of Her.
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Kawitan: Creating Childhood in Bali
This informative documentary systematically examines the key Balinese early-life ceremonies at every social level in South Bali.
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Keep Her Under Control: Law’s Patriarchy in India
This provocative documentary, which explores the role of women in a Muslim-dominated village in Rajasthan, in northern India, is original, compelling, and instructive, and it is sure to stimulate discussion and analysis in any course that studies gender roles, Islam, India, or cultural anthropology.
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Mas Fever: Inside Trinidad Carnival
Carnival in the New World is a synthesis of European elements — Christian traditions and the masquerade — and African elements — primarily music and dance. In Trinidad, Carnival is a colorful, exuberant celebration of national focus and pride.
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The Myth of the Buddha’s Birthplace
This fascinating and thought-provoking documentary explores the process by which a modern myth is created. The film illustrates how the people in a small village in eastern India have come to believe that the Buddha was born in their village, despite ample evidence to the contrary.
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The People Today: Closing the Circle
Filmed on the Couer d’Alene and Flathead reservations in Idaho and Montana, this unusual documentary explores the impact of Christian missionaries on the Native peoples of the northwestern Plateau and examines the ongoing tensions and dialogue between Christianity and traditional religious practices.
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The Peyote Road: Ancient Religion in Contemporary Crisis
This widely acclaimed, landmark documentary was instrumental in the campaign to have Congress overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1990 "Smith" decision, which denied the protection of the First Amendment to the traditional sacramental use of peyote by Indian people.
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The Pilgrimage to the Sanctuary of the Lord of Qoyllur Rit’i: The Walk Experience
Once a year in the Cuzco region of Peru, the former center of the Inca empire, some 50,000 pilgrims flock to the highest sanctuary of the world to participate in the largest pilgrimage of the Andean region.
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Popol Vuh: The Creation Myth of the Maya
This much-honored animated film employs authentic imagery from ancient Maya ceramics to create a riveting depiction of the Popol Vuh, the Maya creation myth and the foundation of most Native American religious, philosophical, and ethical beliefs.
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Popol Vuh: The Creation Myth of the Maya (Spanish Version)
This much-honored animated film employs authentic imagery from ancient Maya ceramics to create a riveting depiction of the Popol Vuh, the Maya creation myth and the foundation of most Native American religious, philosophical, and ethical beliefs. This is the Spanish-language version.
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The Pornography of Everyday Life
This trenchant and provocative documentary essay incorporates more than 200 powerful images from advertising, ancient myth, contemporary art, and popular culture to demonstrate how pornography (defined as the sexualized domination, degradation, and objectification of women and girls and social groups who are put in the demeaned feminine role) is in reality a prevalent mainstream worldview.
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Q’eros: The Shape of Survival
This classic documentary, by renowned filmmaker John Cohen, provides a multifaceted exploration of the way of life of the Q’eros Indians of Peru, who have lived in the Andes for more than 3,000 years.
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Radical Disciple: The Story of Father Pfleger
Regarded as a hero by many and a renegade by some in the Catholic Church hierarchy, Michael Pfleger, longtime pastor of Chicago’s St. Sabina parish, has consistently used the power of his pulpit to battle social inequity and engage in high profile campaigns to end drug-dealing, prostitution, and the exploitation of the poor by liquor and tobacco companies.
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The Red Road to Sobriety
The contemporary Native American Sobriety Movement is flourishing throughout the Indian communities of North America. This vital social movement combines ancient spiritual traditions with modern medical approaches to substance abuse recovery.
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The Red Road to Sobriety Video Talking Circle
The contemporary Native American Sobriety Movement is flourishing throughout the Indian communities of North America. This vital social movement combines ancient spiritual traditions with modern medical approaches to substance abuse recovery. One of these traditions is the "talking circle."
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The Reincarnation of Khensur Rinpoche
This utterly fascinating and compelling film follows the search of Choenzey, a 47-year-old Tibetan monk who lives in exile in a Buddhist monastery in southern India, to find the reincarnation of his deceased master, Khensur Rinpoche. Choenzey’s search and eventual discovery is of an impish but gentle four-year-old who is recognized by the Dalai Lama to be the looked-for reincarnation.
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Sand Painting: Sacred Art of Tibet
In this beautifully photographed and fascinating documentary, Tibetan monks from the Dalai Lama’s personal monastery, Namgyal, create the mandala of Kalachakra, the most sacred of all Buddhist sand paintings.
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Sanpachando: St. Pacho Is for the Revelers
This exceptional and engaging documentary is an important contribution to the growing body of work on the African Diaspora and Latin America. It perceptively explores the intertwined cultural, religious, political, and afro-ethnic meanings of a vibrant festival honoring St. Francis of Assisi in Quibdo, Choco, on the northwest Pacific coast of Colombia.
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A Seat at the Table: Struggling for American Indian Religious Freedom
Professor Huston Smith is widely regarded as the most eloquent and accessible contemporary authority on the history of religions. In this thought-provoking documentary he is featured in dialogues with eight American Indian leaders.
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Some Na Ceremonies
The Na people (also known as Moso) of southwest China are best known in the West for their matrilineal kinship system. Western representations of Na culture usually overlook the significance of religion, a central aspect in the lives of Na people. This richly detailed documentary, created by two Na filmmakers and produced by an American anthropologist, consists of five short pieces that capture important Na ceremonies.
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A Stranger in My Native Land
This profound, poetic, and ultimately immensely sad documentary may be the first of its kind about Tibet — a vivid personal account of loss and disappointment as an exile discovers his country for the first time.
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Taksu: Music in the Life of Bali
This sensitive documentary is an American musician’s unique portrait of Balinese life, art, and spirituality.
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The Thread of Karma
In 1991, filmmakers Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam made "The Reincarnation of Khensur Rinpoche," which followed the search of a Tibetan monk, named Choenzey, to find the reincarnation of his recently deceased master, Khensur Rinpoche. Sixteen years later, the directors revisit the reincarnation at Drepung Monastery in South India, where he has been brought up within the age-old traditions of Tibetan Buddhist monastic life.
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The Trials of Telo Rinpoche
This absorbing documentary portrait tells the amazing story of Telo Rinpoche, a.k.a. Eddie Ombadykow, a 21-year-old American from Philadelphia whose favorite band is The Smashing Pumpkins. He is also a Buddhist monk who was brought up in a Tibetan monastery in India from the age of seven and who was recognized by the Dalai Lama as an important reincarnate lama, or spiritual master.
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Trobriand Cricket: An Ingenious Response to Colonialism (Digitally Remastered Version)
One of the world’s best-known and most honored ethnographic films, this classic documentary depicts the many modifications made by Trobriand Islanders, in Papua New Guinea, to the traditional British game of cricket.
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Voices of the Orishas
This innovative ethnographic documentary demonstrates the survival and strength of the Yoruba cultural and religious heritage in the contemporary life of Caribbean African-Hispanics.
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Wiping the Tears of Seven Generations
In December 1990, 300 Lakota Sioux horseback riders rode 250 miles, in two weeks, through bitter, below-zero winter weather, to commemorate the lives lost at the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890.
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Your Humble Serpent: The Wisdom of Reuben Snake
Reuben Snake was a unique and compelling American Indian leader, visionary, and activist. Filled with rich and revealing examples of his storytelling prowess, this inspiring biographical portrait explores his life and philosophy and examines his provocative views on ecology, sacredness, intuitive thinking, and "the rebrowning of America."
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