RIVERS OF SAND
Production: UK, 1974
Director: Robert Gardner
Category: Ethno-Documentary
An ethnographic investigation of the enigmatic Hamar tribes of Ethiopia, focusing in on the oppression of women within the tribal system, and skirting “mondo” territory with some of its depictions of bloody rituals of life and death. Gardner looks on objectively, whilst managing to convey the disturbing “otherness” of these isolated native people. Gardner was most renowned for his previous documentary Dead Birds (1965), a stunning film about the Dani people of New Guinea, who exist in a neolithic culture of perpetual and vicious intertribal warfare and revenge in order to appease the cannibal ghosts of their forebears.
Posted by Captain Nightshade