Tabu (1931), People of the Wind (1976), Kon-Tiki (1951), Embrace of the Serpent (2015), The Man from Earth (2007), Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale (2000), The Gleaners and I (2000), Nanook of the North (1922) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Anthropology movies.
Storyline: On the island of Bora Bora, the islanders welcome Tabu (Hitu), a messenger from the chief who has come to declare the island's virgin successor. Tabu names the beautiful young Reri (Anna Chevalier), unaware that she has a lover, Matahi (Matahi). Despite Tabu's claim that if a man touches Reri, it will mean death for him, Matahi follows Tabu as he leaves the island, and kidnaps Reri. Enduring numerous hardships, the couple arrives at another island -- but find that Tabu's curse has followed them.
Plot Keywords: silent film, black and white film, romance, tragedy, colonialism, forbidden love, cultural clash ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: There are two hundred miles of raging rivers and dangerous mountains to cross. There are no towns, no roads, no bridges. There is no turning back. The Bakhtiari migration is one of the most hazardous tests of human endurance known to mankind. Every year, 500,000 men, women and children - along with one million animals - struggle for eight grueling weeks to scale the massive Zagros Mountains in Iran - a range which is as high as the Alps and as broad as Switzerland - to reach their summer pastures. The film's astonishing widescreen photography and brilliantly recorded soundtrack take the viewer out onto the dangerous precipices of the Zardeh Kuh mountain and into the icy waters of the Cholbar River.—Fiona Kelleghan <fkelleghan@aol.com>
Plot Keywords: documentary, culture, iran, tradition, survival, migration, family ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: "Kon-Tiki" was the name of a wooden raft used by six Scandinavian scientists, led by Thor Heyerdahl, to make a 101-day journey from South America to the Polynesian Islands. The purpose of the expedition was to prove Heyerdal's theory that the Polynesian Islands were populated from the east---specifically Peru---rather than from the west (Asia)as had been the theory for hundreds of years. Heyerdahl made a study of the winds and tides in the Pacific, and by simulating conditions as closely as possible to those he theorized the Peruvians encountered, set out on the voyage.—Les Adams <longhorn1939@suddenlink.net>
Plot Keywords: adventure, documentary, norway, history, ocean, survival, culture ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: The story of the relationship between Karamakate, an Amazonian shaman and last survivor of his people, and two scientists who work together over the course of forty years to search the Amazon for a sacred healing plant.
Plot Keywords: adventure, drama, history, amazon, colonialism, expedition, indigenous culture ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: An impromptu goodbye party for Professor John Oldman becomes a mysterious interrogation after the retiring scholar reveals to his colleagues he has a longer and stranger past than they can imagine.
Plot Keywords: science fiction, philosophy, independent film, low budget, history, mystery, suspense ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: This documentary tells the tale of Tobias Schneebaum, a gay Jewish New York painter who traveled to New Guinea and Peru in 1955, soon eschewing his western ways, living as a cannibal and tribesman. The camera follows Schneebaum at age 78, as he returns to the jungle.
Plot Keywords: documentary, travel, cannibalism, adventure, survival, memoir, exotic ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: An intimate, picaresque inquiry into French life as lived by the country's poor and its provident, as well as by the film's own director, Agnes Varda. The aesthetic, political and moral point of departure for Varda are gleaners, those individuals who pick at already-reaped fields for the odd potato, the leftover turnip.—Anonymous
Plot Keywords: documentary, french cinema, social issues, poverty, environmentalism, sustainability, agriculture ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Documents one year in the life of Nanook, an Eskimo (Inuit), and his family. Describes the trading, hunting, fishing and migrations of a group barely touched by industrial technology. Nanook of the North was widely shown and praised as the first full-length, anthropological documentary in cinematographic history.—<xaviermartin@hotmail.com>
Plot Keywords: documentary, silent film, arctic, expedition, survival, nature, hunting ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: In 1994, a group of scientists discovered a cave in Southern France perfectly preserved for over 20,000 years and containing the earliest known human paintings. Knowing the cultural significance that the Chauvet Cave holds, the French government immediately cut-off all access to it, save a few archaeologists and paleontologists. But documentary filmmaker, Werner Herzog, has been given limited access, and now we get to go inside examining beautiful artwork created by our ancient ancestors around 32,000 years ago. He asks questions to various historians and scientists about what these humans would have been like and trying to build a bridge from the past to the present.—napierslogs
Plot Keywords: documentary, france, archaeology, art history, cultural heritage, natural history, exploration ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: More than 20 years ago, Dr. Jane Goodall, now 75, decided to give up her career as a primatologist, as well as her private life, in order to devote all her energy to saving our endangered planet. Since then she's been spending 300 days a year scouring the globe on her mission to spread hope for future generations. She has taken on the responsibilities of a UN Messenger of Peace, and has been honored with countless awards. In Jane's Journey, we accompany her on her travels across several continents, and receive unprecedented access to her intense and exciting past. From her childhood home in Bournemouth, England, we embark to Gombe National Park on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, in Tanzania, her second home. It's where she began her groundbreaking research nearly half a century ago, and she still returns every year to enjoy the company of the chimpanzees that made her the internationally recognized activist so loved and deeply respected.This documentary offers an intimate portrait of the private person behind the world-famous icon, possibly the most fascinating woman of our time, whose scientific breakthroughs are considered to be among the most important of the past 100 years.—Palm Springs Internation Film Festival
Plot Keywords: documentary, biography, environmental, nature, animal conservation, africa, science ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: In this blend of documentary and fictional narrative from pioneering filmmaker Robert Flaherty, the everyday trials of life on Ireland's unforgiving Aran Islands are captured with attention to naturalistic beauty and historical detail.
Plot Keywords: documentary, ireland, 1930s, black and white, survival, nature, silent film ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: A trio wanders the cliffs of an Outer Hebridean island and encounters a gravestone at the edge of a precipice; it reads, "Peter Manson ... gone over." One man in the trio knows the story of the gravestone and tells it to the others... It is ten years earlier, and the way of life on the island is dying; steam trawlers from the mainland threaten its survival as a fishing port. Peter Manson, one of the community's leaders, resists evacuating to the mainland, though his son Robbie is about to leave the island himself. Meanwhile, Robbie's twin sister plans to marry his best friend, Andrew Gray. Andrew and Robbie argue over evacuation and decide to settle the matter by racing to the top of a cliff. Ruth is terrified: she may lose them both. The race ends in tragedy, which tears apart the families of Manson and Gray. Times passes and Ruth reveals she is pregnant with an illegitimate child. This promises to bring the two families back together, but not before desperation hits the islanders. Evacuation is inevitable. And so is one last tragedy.—sspurli
Plot Keywords: adventure, drama, history, british film, black and white, 1930s, scotland ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: A Sho in the Kalahari desert encounters technology for the first time--in the shape of a Coke bottle. He takes it back to his people, and they use it for many tasks. The people start to fight over it, so he decides to return it to the God--where he thinks it came from. Meanwhile, we are introduced to a school teacher assigned to a small village, a despotic revolutionary, and a clumsy biologist.
Plot Keywords: comedy, adventure, africa, culture clash, absurdity, satire, indie film ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: The Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl crossed the Pacific Ocean in a balsawood raft in 1947, together with five men, to prove that South Americans back in pre-Columbian times could have crossed the ocean and settled on Polynesian islands. After financing the trips with loans and donations, they set off on an epic 101-day-long trip across 8000 kilometers, while the world was waiting for the result of the trip. The film tells about the origin of the idea, the preparations, and the events on the trip. The "Kon-Tiki" was named after the Inca sun god, Viracocha, and "Kon-Tiki" is an old name for this god. Heyerdahl filmed the expedition, which later became the Academy Award winning documentary in 1951, and he wrote a book about the expedition that was translated into 70 languages and sold more than 50 millions copies around the world. Heyerdahl believed that people from South America could have settled Polynesia in pre-Columbian times, although most anthropologists now believe they did not...
Plot Keywords: adventure, history, biography, expedition, true story, norway, ocean ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: A look at one year in the life of four babies from around the world, from Mongolia to Namibia to San Francisco to Tokyo.
Plot Keywords: documentary, growth, family, cultural differences, parenting, no dialogue, childhood ...
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