Disappearing World

Capture a rare insight into Afghani society and culture that is especially important to understanding the Afghanistan conflict in post 9/11 America.

Afghan Exodus
When Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan, approximately one million Afghans, including Kirghiz, Hazara, and Pathans, fled over the borders into neighboring countries. But the Pathans were eager to take back their homeland, even if it meant confronting Soviet jet fighters and tanks.
(52 Minutes)
Anthropologists: Akbar Ahmed and Remy Dor (52 Minutes)
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Khyber Pass
The Pakistani army now patrols the Khyber Pass region, where 17,000 British soldiers, women, and children were massacred by the Pathans in 1842, and there is still constant conflict with Pathans who live on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. (60 Minutes)
Anthropologists: Akbar Ahmed and Louis Dupree
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The Pathans
Bound by a common language, heritage, and religion, the Pathans do not acknowledge the geographical boundary between Pakistan and Afghanistan that divides their people. Their code of conduct is based on personal honor and revenge, and they accept no imposed leadership — as the Soviet invaders of Afghanistan discovered. (52 Minutes)
Anthropologist: Akbar Ahmed
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The Kirghiz of Afghanistan
Describes the life of the Kirghiz, a culture native to a remote corner of Afghanistan and unchanged since the Middle Ages. Survival depended completely on the favor of the Khans, feudal lords who claimed descent from the legendary Genghis Khan. (60 Minutes)
Anthropologist: Nazif Shahrani
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Masai Manhood
Masai warriors of East Africa live on the fringes of society. They are not permitted to marry and are excluded from tribal decision making. This program focuses on the lives of these young men until the time of the eunoto, a dramatic four-day ceremony that marks their transition from warrior to elder. (53 Minutes)
Anthropologist: Melissa Llewelyn-Davies
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Masai Women
The Masai are animal herders in the East African Rift Valley. This program looks at the women of the tribe — from childhood through marriage to old age — and their role in a completely male-dominated society. (52 Minutes)
Anthropologist: Melissa Llewelyn-Davies
Blue Ribbon winner, American Film Festival
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The Mende
This village portrait of some 260 Mende people who live in the forest of Sierra Leone shows successful citizens and unlucky ones, clowns and gossips, happy households and divided ones. The Mende recognize the constant presence of a supernatural world that affects farming, fishing, and all other aspects of their daily routine. (51 Minutes)
Anthropologist: Mariane Ferme
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The Mursi: The Land Is Bad
Because of a series of natural and manmade disasters, the Mursi of the Omo Valley in southwestern Ethiopia believe that the very land on which they live is turning against them. Despite this, the Mursi remain faithful to old ways and traditions, herding cattle and cultivating sorghum even as the Omo River's flood level continues to drop. (52 Minutes)
Anthropologist: David Turton
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The Tuareg
Life has changed drastically for the Tuareg of the Algerian desert since slavery, the economic basis of their society, was abolished in 1962. The Tuareg carry on their traditions and customs to maintain prestige, but the schools are teaching their children about the world outside the desert. (60 Minutes)
Anthropologist: Jeremy Keenan
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Inside China: Living with the Revolution
Uses firsthand accounts to create a unique portrait of life in China, which is home to a quarter of the world's population. Shows the effects on two families, the Dings and the Zhus, who live near Wuxi in southwest China, of the social and political changes taking place in their country.
(52 Minutes)
Anthropologist: Barbara Hazard
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The Meo
Before the Vietnam War, the Meo of Indochina grew maize and opium, and lived in villages with their extended families. When the war shattered their peaceful existence, most males fourteen years of age and over joined the fighting while tens of thousands of other Meo fled to refugee camps. (53 Minutes)
Anthropologist: Jacques Lemoine
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We Are All Neighbors: Bosnia
In a Muslim / Catholic village near Sarajevo, rumors fly and suspicions spread. When Catholic Croats assert control, Muslim businesses are attacked, villagers arrested and harassed, and homes threatened. Three weeks later, neighbors who had been close friends for fifty years no longer speak to each other and the peaceful coexistence between Croats and Muslims disintegrates into mutual distrust and fear. (52 Minutes)
Anthropologist: Tone Bringa
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Cakchiquel Maya of San Antonio Palopo
The Tunecos of San Antonio Palopo speak Cakchiquel, one of more than twenty Mayan languages still extant in Guatemala. As development encroaches, these people must decide whether the loss of their culture is too high a price to pay for incorporation into the world beyond their lakeside village. (52 Minutes)
Anthropologist: Tracy Bachrach Ehlers
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Carnaval Bahia
Presents the music and dance in northern Brazil's Bahia during Carnaval, a five-day pre-Lenten celebration that precedes Shrove Tuesday. Festival participants divide into groups, each trying to outdo the other in producing spectacular floats, dazzling costumes, and exuberant displays.
(50 Minutes)
Anthropologist: Peter Fry
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The Kayapo
Documents how dramatically life changed for the Kayapo after 1982, when thousands of outsiders invaded the tribe's Amazonian rain forest following the discovery of gold on their land. The fiercely independent Kayapo were forced to become "businesspeople" or see their traditional way of life destroyed. (53 Minutes)
Anthropologist: Terry Turner
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The Kayapo: Out of the Forest
The destruction of Brazil's Amazonian rain forest now threatens the existence of its native peoples. The Kayapo Indians have gained international recognition for their bold political resistance and for the reassertion of their traditional cultural identity. (53 Minutes)
Anthropologist: Terry Turner
Blue Ribbon winner at the American Film Festival
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The Whale Hunters of Lamalera
The Lamaholot, who inhabit an Indonesian island, hunt sperm whale with forged iron harpoons ten hours a day, six days a week, eight months a year. But their way of life is jeopardized by the scarcity of their prey, and they are leaving their island village of Lamalera to seek more profitable work elsewhere. (52 Minutes)
Anthropologist: Robert Barnes
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The Eskimos of Pond Inlet
The Inuits (Eskimos) of Pond Inlet, a new village built by the Canadian government on Baffin Island, talk about their lives, their land, and the changes forced upon them by the encroaching culture of the "powerful and frightening" whites, who hire them as laborers and place their children in government schools. (52 Minutes)
Anthropologist: Hugh Brody
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The Kawelka: Ongka's Big Moka
In Papua New Guinea, status is earned by giving things away rather than by acquiring them. This program explores the moka, a ceremony in which people, sometimes whole tribes, give gifts to members of other tribes. The larger the gift, the greater the victory over the recipient.
(52 Minutes)
Anthropologist: Andrew Strathern
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The Trobriand Islanders of Papua New Guinea
Examines the society that inhabits the Trobriand Islands off the eastern tip of Papua New Guinea, showing the complex balance of male authority and female wealth as well as the magic and sorcery that pervades everyday life. Examines two events in particular: distribution of a woman's estate after her death and the celebration following a yam harvest. (52 Minutes)
Anthropologist: Annette B. Weiner
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