"Deep Hearts is set on the flat vastness of the upper Niger.... During the rainy season, the nomadic, cattle-herding Bororo gather on the plains for their Gerewol, a combined tribal reunion, political convention, and theatrical spectacle cum beauty pageant. According to Gardner, the Bororo are fascinated with the (not unwarranted) 'idea of themselves as an exclusive and beautiful people'. Thus, the culmination of the Gerewol is the 'oxtail dance' in which young men...vie to be selected as the androgynous embodiment of Bororo physical perfection.... In preparation for the dance, the participants pluck their beards, paint their faces yellow or red, shadow their eyes and blacken their lips. Then, lined up in sinuous formations, they chant, sway and jump with a kind of entranced languor.... With its extreme angles and billowy compositions, fragmenting close-ups and deep, stretched-out space, Deep Hearts is the most expressionistic ethnographic film I've ever seen." J. Hoberman, Village Voice