Children's Magical Death
Pretending to be shamans, a group of young boys imitates their fathers, blowing ashes into each other's noses and chanting to the hekura spirits.
Yanomamo: A Multidisciplinary Study
This film illustrates the field techniques used by a multidisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Michigan in collaboration with their Venezuelan colleagues. The expedition shown here included specialists in human genetics, serology,...
Arrow Game
A group of boys engages in an arrow fight in the village clearing. They shoot blunt arrows, practicing their aim and learning to dodge the shots.
A Man Called "Bee": Studying The Yanomamo
This is one of the few ethnographic films in which the anthropologist appears as one of the subjects, and as such it is a lively introduction to the nature of fieldwork. Napoleon Chagnon, who lived among the Yanomamo for 36 months over a period of e...
Firewood
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. The wood is loaded into a basket an...
Climbing the Peach Palm
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 h...
The Feast
Yanomamo feasts are ceremonial, social, economic, and political events. They are occasions for men to adorn their bodies with paint and feathers, to display their strength in dance and ritualized aggression; for trading partnerships to be establishe...
The Ax Fight
The Ax Fight was restored by the National Film Preservation Foundation.
A fight broke out in Mishimishimabowei-teri on the second day of Chagnon and Asch's stay in this village in 1971. The conflict developed between the villagers of Mishimishimabo...