Ethnic minority villages blend life, art
17:00 17/03/2009

     

A slice of life in ethnic minority villages has come to the big screen as part of a programme of short films run at the Ha Noi Cinematheque which wraps up today.

The seven community-based videos showcase the lives of Chinese and Vietnamese ethnic minority communities, who directly took part in the filmmaking.

Indigenous people from Viet Nam and China’s Yunnan, in partnership with researchers and ethno-videographers, produced documentary videos that reflect their unique cultural perspectives and explore a new community-centred approach to filmmaking.

The three year project, aimed to encourage dialogue and cultural understanding across borders, was shot by five Chinese communities, including Tibetan, Qing Miao, Dahua Miao, Mosuo, Hani, and the Thai and Dao ethnic groups in Viet Nam.

We, the Thai People

 

(35 minutes), told by members of the Thai community living in Ha Noi, explores issues of migration. After Viet Nam’s victory at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, responding to government policy, a group of Thai officials from northwest Viet Nam were relocated to work in Viet Nam’s capital. Gradually the Thai community in Ha Noi grew; wives followed husbands from their village to the city, Thai students moved here for their studies.

The film reflects their identity as Thai people in an urban setting and addresses the balance of keeping true to tradition and adapting to new ways. Filmmakers travelled to the diaspora of this same community in the US.

The film Nhay Boi Festival in Tham Ve Village describes the Nhay Boi festival. Every year, on the evening of the Lunar New Year festival and the 15th of the first and seventh lunar months, most men and boys from the Dao ao dai ethnic group gather at the homes of prestigious shamans in the village to learn the practice Nhay Boi (jumping shaman-diviners). However, not many people understand this tradition which at one time was considered superstitious.

The film looks at the question of why Dao people learn Nhay Boi and the process of becoming a shaman – the value of divination and what will happen to it in the future. As villager Ban Van Dai says, villagers keep these traditions in order to be Dao people. Eighteen villages took part in the documentary.

Four other films talk about the lives of ethnic minorities in China. The film What Shall We Do? Change of Luoshui Village talks about the effects 20 years of tourism development have had on the community.

The film Soul of the Maize presents the traditional custom of swidden cultivation and annual traditional Gwatangpa Festival of the Ha Nhi people from Man Jia Jiao village. The film Funeral Rites of Qing Miao in Lannidong Village at Wenshan talks about the effects of China’s open policy on ethnic traditions. The film Our Jiabi Village shows the life of farmers in Jiabi village in Tibet. The eighth film A Day of Happy Games follows the story of how the docu-film project came to be, from beginning to end.

The project gives volume to the voice of the ethnic minorities involved, says project consultant Nguyen Van Huy. The subjects of the documentaries were involved in the filmmaking process from start to finish and dictated the direction of the film.

Wendy Erd, who took part in the filmmaking techniques of the project says: "The most important thing is listen to the inhabitants and not do what you had imagined you would do in your head."

The film crew for each community included an ethnology researcher (who also worked as a community facilitator) and an inhabitant from the village who received training from the crew.

 

Source : vietnamnet.vn