About
Women from three separate Ju/'hoan bands have gathered at a mangetti grove at !O to play an intense game in which undertones of social and personal tensions become apparent.
The game itself is simple: women form a semi-circle which moves counter-clockwise as each woman, in turn, runs to the center of the circle where she dances several steps and tosses the melon to the next woman at the proper moment in the song. Men intrude and dance spectacularly and an old woman, N/aoka, goes into a trance-like state. The game begins to disintegrate when N!ai, the wife of the male dancer /Gunda, taunts and teases N/aoka.
N!owa T'ama:The Melon Tossing Game was filmed on a 1957/58 expedition to the Kalahari Desert, led by Laurence K. Marshall and sponsored by the Peabody Museum of Harvard and the Smithsonian Institution.
This film is part of the John Marshall !Kung Collection which includes a total of thirty titles documenting a Ju/hoansi (!Kung) community in Namibia and produced between 1951 and 2002.
This title is available on the !Kung Shorts DVD. This compilation DVD includes a selection of the short sequence films documenting the Ju/hoansi community as Marshall experienced it in the 1950s. This collection combines fourteen of Marshall's short !Kung films onto two DVDs, complete with a full-color booklet containing photos, writings, and additional information about the series.
Disc One:
A Curing Ceremony (bw) (9:00)
A Group of Women (6:00)
A Joking Relationship (3:00)
N!owa T'ama: The Melon Tossing Game (15:00)
N/um Tchai: the Ceremonial Dance of the !Kung Bushmen (bw) (20:00)
Lion Game (5:00)
An Argument about Marriage (18:00)
Men Bathing (14:00)
Disc Two:
Playing with Scorpions (5:00)
A Rite of Passage (15:00)
Debe's Tantrum (9:00)
The Wasp Nest (13:00)
The Meat Fight (14:00)
Baobab Play (8:00)
Orthography Note
The group of people depicted in these films are the Ju/'hoansi, speakers of the Ju/'hoan language. Ju/'hoan is part of the !Kung language group; the term !Kung was previously used by the Marshall family and others to refer to Ju/'hoansi. Although the term is outdated, it has been retained here for the sake of consistency with John Marshall's previously published work. The films and their related printed materials also employ antiquated spellings of names and places. For current Ju/'hoan orthography, please see the Ju/'hoan - English Dictionary, compiled by Patrick Dickens and the Ju/'hoan Peoples Literacy Committee.