UW News

March 29, 2000

Documentaries from around world to be featured at Mead film festival

Fourteen documentary films from around the world will be shown free of charge at the University of Washington’s Henry Art Gallery April 13-16 as the Margaret Mead Traveling Film and Video Festival returns to Seattle. The six programs in the festival will be screened in the Henry’s auditorium, 15th Avenue Northeast and Northeast 41st Street. Admission is on a first-come basis.

The festival, the largest showcase for international documentaries in the United States, was founded in 1977 by the American Museum of Natural History in New York to honor anthropologist Margaret Mead in New York. In 1992, the museum began the traveling series, which came to Seattle for the first time last year.

This year’s subject matter ranges from the spectacular hairstyles of a group of women in New Orleans to how space-age technology provided information to Fulani nomads in Mali about where to move their herds during a severe drought. It also features the story of one man’s passion for “Bollywood” films that drives him to bring movies to remote villages in his native India.

Another documentary, “American Gypsy: A Stranger in Everybody’s Land,” is set, in part, in Spokane. Shot over a five-year period, it focuses on an outspoken Romani (gypsy) leader, Jimmy Marks, who led a civil rights battle against the Spokane police.

“These films offer an audience the experience of being in completely different worlds,” said Carol Hermer, a UW anthropology lecturer who is coordinating the local festival screening. “They offer a window into cultures people would be unlikely to experience in reality. Film gives us a way of expanding our universe and shows the humanity of people everywhere.”

The film festival is being brought to Seattle by the UW’s anthropology department and being sponsored by it and 13 other campus departments and units.
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For more information about the film festival or a festival brochure, contact Hermer at (206) 543-9601 or chermer@u.washington.edu

Seattle Schedule: Traveling Margaret Mead Film Festival

Thursday, April 13, 6 p.m.: “Paradise Bent,” (Samoa), 51 minutes; “Village of Widows” (Canada/Japan), 52 minutes.
Friday, April 14, 6 p.m.: “Made in India,” (India), 92 minutes; “Visitors of the Night,” (China), 32 minutes.
Saturday, April 15, 2 p.m.: “Black and White in Colour,” (Slovakia), 59 minutes; “American Gypsy: A Stranger in Everybody’s Land,” (U.S.), 80 minutes.
Saturday, April 15, 6 p.m.: “Song of the Hamar Herdsman,” (Ethiopia), 44 minutes; “Stoney Knows How,” (U.S.), 29 minutes; “Hairdo,” (U.S.) 5 minutes; “To Walk Naked,” (South Africa), 12 minutes.
Sunday, April 16, 2 p.m.: “The Cow Jumped over the Moon,” (U.S./Germany/Mali), 52 minutes; “Battu’s Bioscope,” (India), 58 minutes.
Sunday, April 16, 6 p.m.: “Servant of the Ancestors,” (Swaziland), 52 minutes; “Women of the Wall,” (Israel), 30 minutes.