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About
A Far Country tells the story of the Marshall family's encounter with a group of Ju/hoansi "Bushmen" in the Kalahari Desert. In 1951, the Marshall family set out to document the life of the Bushmen of the Kalahari. After a week of hard travel in desert-adapted vehicles, they met Toma Tsamkxao and his Ju/'hoan band in Nyae Nyae. In their own words, Toma's extended family describes how they survive by gathering bush foods and hunting game. Thus begins a relationship between the Ju/'hoansi and the Marshalls that will last over half a century.
About A Kalahari Family
A Kalahari Family is a five-part, six-hour series documenting 50 years in the lives of the Ju/'hoansi of southern Africa, from 1951 to 2000. These once independent hunter-gatherers experience dispossession, confinement to a homeland, and the chaos of war. Then as hope for Namibian independence and the end of apartheid grows, Ju/'hoansi fight to establish farming communities and reclaim their traditional lands. Through depiction of their efforts of the Ju/hoansi to participate as farmers in the contemporary economy and advocate for their rights to do so, the series challenges stereotypes of primitive and unchanging "bushmen."
The five films in the series are:
Subjects:
Indigenous Studies:
Regions:
Keywords:
- Kalahari
- Bushmen
- Hunting and Gathering
- Filmmaking
- Giraffe Hunting
- Hunting Techniques
- Gathering Techniques
- Bow and Arrow
- Poison Arrow
- Tracking
- Daily Life
- Kalahari Desert
- Nyae Nyae Region
- Marriage
- Water Access
- Herero Farmers
- Family Ties
- History
- Colonialism
- Genocide
- War
- Apartied Rule
- South Africa
- Forced Labor
- Death
- Infant Mortality
- Tribe
- Tribal Reservations
- Healers
- Trances
- Pig Hunting
- Hierarcy
- Distribution of Meat
- Lion Hunting
- Wildabeast Hunting
- Ritual Scarring
- Youth Life
- Elder Life
- CUlture Change
- Diamond Mines
- Ranchers
- Oppression
- Marginalization
- Isolation
- Memory
- Ju/'Hoansi
Credits
Series Exhibition History
Best Environmental TV Series, FICA - International Festival of Environmental Film & Video, Brazil, 2003
Special Prize: Homage to the Films of John Marshall; Bilan du Film Ethnographique, Paris, 2003
Grand Jury Award (Best in World Cinema), DC Independent Film Festival, Washington DC, 2003
Basil Wright Film Prize, RAI Ethnographic Film Festival, England, 2003
Beeld Voor Beeld, Ethnographic Film Festival, Amsterdam, 2003
Jury Award, Athens Film Festival, 2003
Best Film - Jury Award, XII International Festival of Ethnographical Films, Nuoro, Italy, 2004
Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA, 2002
Northeastern Anthropological Association Film Festival, Burlington, Vermont, 2003
Planet In Focus Film Festival, Toronto, Canada, 2003
Margaret Mead International Film Festival, NYC, 2002
Sithengi International Film Festival, Capetown, SA, 2002
African Film Festival, Seattle, 2003
Boston Premiere, Museum of Fine Arts, 2003
Archaeology Channel Film Festival, Oregon, 2003
University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 2003
UCLA, Los Angeles, California, 2003
ICAES Film Festival, Florence, Italy, 2003
International Environmental Film Festival, Turkey, 2003
Moondance Film Festival, Seahorse Award, 2003
5th Encounters South African International Documentary Festival, 2003
17th Parnu International Film Festival, Estonia, 2003
Environmental Anthropology Prize, CineEco Festival, Portugal, 2003 Documentary & Ethnographic Film Festival of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 2003
Harvard Film Archive, Cambridge, MA, 2004
Göttingen International Film Festival, Germany, 2004
International Society of Ethnobiology International Congress, University of Kent, UK, 2004
Zimbabwe International Film Festival, 2004
Featured Filmmaker, Astra Film Festival, Romania, 2004
Interuniversity Ethnographic Film Festival of Montreal, 2005
Environmental Film Festival of Accra, Ghana, 2005
Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival, Greece, 2005
Ecocinema Festival, Athens, Greece, 2005