Margaret Mead's Festival in the Digital Age

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Saturday, 05 November 2011 05:00

Written by Lynne Shannon

The 35th Annual Margaret Mead Film Festival is being held November 10 - 13, 2011 at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, New York City.

Originally known as the Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival, this is the longest-running showcase for international documentaries in the United States.

The festival was intended not only to give a voice to those who had not had the attention of the world, but also for filmmakers who wanted to make a difference by telling their stories and exposing their own experiences.

Says Ariella Ben-Dov, the Festival‛s creative director, "Every year the Mead Festival introduces audiences to cultures and communities that might otherwise be inaccessible. With filmmakers present at the screenings, the films spotlight the struggle to preserve traditions and cultures against great odds."

One of the highlights is the 35th Anniversary Retrospective, a "celebration of the festival’s most influential features over the past three decades".

Over the years, the topics have ranged from the endangerment of micro-cultures by the onset of progress to overlooked historic footnotes as the experience of European Gypsies during the Holocaust (Porraimos), and to current matters such as a stark look at our food supply (The Future of Food).

The Retrospective presents the following films:

• Trance and Dance in Bali by Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead (1952)
• Les Maitres Fous / The Mad Masters by Jean Rouch (1955)
• N!ai: The Story of a !Kung Woman by John Marshall, Adrienne Miesmer and Sue Cabezas (1980)
• Jero on Jero: A Balinese Trance Séance Observed by Linda Connor, Patsy Asch, Timothy Asch (1980)
• A Wife Among Wives, from David and Judith MacDougall‛s Turkana Conversations Trilogy (1982)
• Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance by Alanis Obomsawin (1993)

The Opening Night film is the New York premiere of Grande Hotel, directed by Lotte Stoops. Located in the West African seaside town of Beira, Mozambique, the once-luxurious hotel is now the haven of thousands of squatters.

The Closing Night film is Flames of God, directed by Meshakai Wolf. The film follows Romani songwriter and poet Muzafer Bislim on his journey from Macedonia to France for the International Biennial of Poets in Paris.

This year, the Mead Festival also presents Dreams of Outer Space, a film series about the human quest to conquer space.

A fitting addition, as this is Native American Heritage Month, is a screening of Skydancer, directed by Katja Esson. The film tells the story behind the iconic Charles C. Ebbets photograph "Lunch atop a Skyscraper," as told by descendants of some of the ironworkers, Native Americans of the Mohawk tribe from Akwesasne Reservation.

Following the screening there will be a live performance by Mohawk musicians Bear Fox and Katsitsionni Fox, along with the film's composer, Robby Baier.

Some of the other films are:

To the Light
directed by Yuanchen Liu
For many families in China, "coal mining has become a principal source of income and the only alternative to factory jobs in distant cities" despite serious, even fatally dangerous conditions.

Memoirs of a Plague
directed by Robert Nugent
The film follows entomologists and sage locals as they track locust invasions in Ethiopia, Egypt and Australia.

Jaguar
directed by Jean Rouch (1967)
The film chronicles the journey of three Nigerian men to Ghana‛s Gold Coast in 1953 in search of a better life. Since the film predates portable sound-sync, Rouch reassembled the film 10 years later and asked the three travelers to add their own narration.

A few films over the years have gone on to receive Academy Award nominations, but that is not the real focus here. This Festival is more hopeful of taking viewers from how-interesting to "What can I do?"

And nowadays, that question has a lot of answers.

For more information, visit www.amnh.org/programs/mead/2011.

Margaret Mead Film Festival
November 10 - 13, 2011

American Museum of Natural History
Central Park West at 77th Street
New York City
212-769-5100

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