CHILDREN’S MAGICAL DEATH

Year1974 Duration7 min. DirectorTimothy Asch, Napoleon Chagnon
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. This film is included on the Yanomamo series, a huge project filmed bay the end of 60’s and the beginning of 70’s which has become a classic of visual anthropology.

Timothy Asch, Napoleon Chagnon

Timothy Asch produced more than fifty ethnographic films about the Yanomamo Indians of Venezuela, transhumant herders in Afghanistan, and the Balinese, the Rotinese, and Ata Tana 'Ai of eastern Indonesia. Asch's career as an ethnographic filmmaker began in the middle 1960s. He saw film as a powerful tool to educate and was one of the earliest proponents of educational reform and encouraged the use of film in the classroom.  In 1968, Asch, along with John Marshall, founded Documentary Educational Research, a non-profit organization, to produce, distribute, and promote the use of ethnographic and documentary films. During the 1980's Tim Asch was a pivotal figure in the international scene building the foundation for the establishment of visual anthropology and ethnographic film programs in China, Europe and Africa.
Napoleon Chagnon is best known for his long-term ethnographic field work among the Yanomamö, his contributions to evolutionary theory in cultural anthropology, and to the study of warfare.  He is one of the early pioneers of the fields of sociobiology and human behavioral ecology. Chagnon is well known for his ethnography, Yanomamö: The Fierce People (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1968) which is commonly used as a text in university level introductory anthropology classes, making it the all-time bestselling anthropological text. His life's work has made him both a celebrated figure and a lightning rod for controversy and criticism.
Timothy Asch filmography
Dodoth Morning (1973)
Yanomamo: A Multidisciplinary Study (1968)
The Feast (1970)
The Ax Fight (1975)
The Sons of Haji Omar (1978)
A Balinese Trance Séance (1979)
The Medium is the Masseuse: A Balines Massage (1983)
Releasing the Spirits (1990)
A Celebration of Origins (1992)
Napoleon Chagnon filmography
The Ax Fight (1975)
Children's Magical Death
(1974)
Magical Death
(1988)
A Man Called Bee: A Study of the Yanomamo
(1974)
Yanomamo Of the Orinoco
(1987)

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Promoted by
Gobierno de Navarra
Organized by
NICDO
With the aid of
Con la financiación del Gobierno de España. Instituto de la Cinematografía y las Artes Audiovisuales Acción Cultural Española Plan de Recuperación, Transformación y Resiliencia Financiado por la Unión Europea. NexGenerationEU
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