Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival 2003

11/6/03 to 11/21/03

The New Boys, November 6

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Past Films

The New Boys
Thursday, November 6 7:30 pm
David MacDougall's ongoing saga of boys at the Doon School, training ground for India's elite. The famed ethnographer captures everyday problems like homesickness and rivalry as compelling mini-dramas.
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Football, Iranian Style
Friday, November 7 7:30 pm
Iranian soccer stars have attained the status of secular saints, as athletes, models of piety and morality, and ambassadors to an otherwise hostile world. With Jay Rosenblatt's short I Used to Be a Filmmaker.
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The Day I Will Never Forget
Thursday, November 13 7:30 pm
Acclaimed director Kim Longinotto's unblinking look at the practice of female circumcision in Kenya-why it continues after being outlawed, and the brave girls who defy their elders.
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Thunder in Guyana
Friday, November 14 7:30 pm
How did a Chicago grandmother become the Eva Peron of Guyana? An extraordinary woman's life, and a complex history of her adopted homeland. Screening with The Queen Mother: in Benin, a director returns from living in Europe and begins to explore the lives of women in his own village, including his mother, now queen.
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My Flesh and Blood
Thursday, November 20 7:30 pm
Susan Tom, adoptive mother of eleven special-needs kids, is a protagonist both heroic and ordinary in Jonathan Karsh's captivating year-in-the-life portrait. Compare her struggle to that of a rural Chinese family trying to keep a beloved son alive in Wellspring, also on the program.
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The Lost Reels of Pancho Villa
Friday, November 21 7:30 pm
The legendary Mexican military leader "went Hollywood" in 1914! Gregorio Rocha looks for the footage, and finds everything but. With It's Not My Memory of It, on the parallel world of the CIA, and Bill Morrison's short The Mesmerist, this program explores the illusive truth of the image.
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Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival 2003

11/6/03 to 11/21/03

"The Mead" is a lively and world-renowned annual festival of documentary film featuring ethnographic, personal, and experimental works from around the globe. A curator at the American Museum of Natural History for many years, the anthropologist and well-known public figure Margaret Mead championed the use of film in the social sciences. It is therefore fitting that the museum's film festival be named after her. Founded in 1977, the year before Mead's death, the festival takes place every fall at the museum in New York, then travels to venues across the country. It has stopped at the Pacific Film Archive since 1992.

But those who know Margaret Mead's own films of the 1930s should not expect that kind of work here. The festival is eclectic and includes contemporary films and videos with a wide array of styles, origins, and subject matter. This year's selection includes new work by veteran visual anthropologist David MacDougall, feminist documentarian Kim Longinotto, and local filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt, as well as videos from Iran, Benin, and Mexico. The topics range from alternative ways of dealing with disability in California to Guyanese politics, from soccer in Iran to an elite boarding school in India. As a unique opportunity to experience the world as seen through a broad assortment of documentary lenses, "the Mead" is unparalleled.

Irina Leimbacher

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This series is presented under the auspices of the American Museum of Natural History's Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival, New York. PFA wishes to thank Elaine Charnov, Melanie Kent, Sarah Walker, and Tamar Goelman. The series is presented in association with the course Ethnographic Film, taught by Irina Leimbacher in the Department of Anthropology, UC Berkeley.

Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival 2003

11/6/03 to 11/21/03

Past Films

The New Boys

Football, Iranian Style

The Day I Will Never Forget

Thunder in Guyana

My Flesh and Blood

The Lost Reels of Pancho Villa