The playful side of Yanomamo life is shown on a day during the rainy season when women and children of the village play a game of tug-of-war.

This documentary was filmed during three months on the Yamal Peninsula in West Siberia, where the Nenets have been herding reindeer for about a thousand years.

Brujo is an exploration of shamanism and curing among the Mazatec Indians of Oaxaca, Mexico, and among two groups of Maya Indians in southern Mexico and Guatemala. The film is divided into three sequences. The first, filmed in Chichicastenango (Guatemala), shows Diego, a shaman, cure a woman on whom a spell has been cast. The cure takes place partly in a church and partly in the mountains, where a sacrificed chicken is used to bring back the ailing...

An Aymara family plants potatoes, prepares and eats a meal, and discusses the religious and astronomical forces that control their destiny. The stark routine of this typical planting day contrasts with thecomplexity of their beliefs.

The ingenuity of Yanomamo technology is revealed in the climbing frame used to scale the spiny trunk of the peach palm tree. Here a young man collects the fruit for his in-laws by means of two frames, each constructed of two crisscrossed poles. As he perches on one frame, he raises (or lowers) the other, onto which he carefully steps, continuing in this manner up (or down) the entire tree.

For these villagers, giving birth is a family affair; while a young girl is in labor, the birth attendant, mother and mother-in-law alternate between lending a hand and story telling.

The strenuousness of women's work is revealed as a woman patiently chops a large log for firewood one evening, enough to last one day. Her two children play nearby, and she occasionally stops to nurse the younger.

Our Lives In Our Hands examines the traditional Native American craft of split ash basketmaking as a means of economic and cultural survival for Aroostook Micmac Indians of northern Maine. This documentary of rural off-reservation Indian artisans aims to break down stereotypical images.

Beginning with the arrival by canoe of a TV and VCR in their village, The Spirit of TV documents the emotions and thoughts of the Waiãpi as they first encounter their own recorded images and those of others. Viewing news broadcasts and videos of other Brazilian native peoples, the Waiãpi see the power of images to facilitate memory preservation and political awareness.

The Sheep Eaters relied heavily on the plants they could gather for medicinal and edible uses, often cooking food in a unique soapstone vessel.