Traditional storytelling encapsulates the founding myths of a culture, giving them an efficacious voice, while actively revising them for the contemporary listener. Angano...Angano... makes savvy use of this irony as it pursues the oral tradition of Malagasy culture. Myths are recounted by avid storytellers who are self-consciously linked to their ancestral chronicles: these yarn-pullers view the tradition with reverence, yet offer their own topical embellishments in full bluster. The myths, based on the fundamentals of rural life-the land and the people who inhabit it-are wildly told, annotated, and sometimes questioned. "It's not me telling lies, but people of long ago-and that's how they heard it as well," says one wry fabulist. Lushly photographed, this quietly innovative documentary offers evocative glimpses of Malagasy life as complement rather than explanation for the stories. The act of storytelling itself is the bounty, the "ear's inheritance." -Steve Seid