''Nǃai, the Story of a ǃKung Woman'' is a

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

ethnographic Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject ...

filmmaker

John Marshall John Marshall (September 24, 1755July 6, 1835) was an American politician and lawyer who served as the fourth Chief Justice of the United States from 1801 until his death in 1835. He remains the longest-serving chief justice and fourth-longes ...

. The film was first broadcast in 1980 as part of the Odyssey series on PBS and is distributed by

Documentary Educational Resources Documentary Educational Resources (DER) is a US non-profit producer and distributor of film and video in anthropology and ethnology. It was founded in 1968 by independent filmmakers John Marshall and Timothy Asch and is based in Watertown, Massac ...

. It provides a broad overview of Juǀʼhoan life, both past and present, and an intimate portrait of Nǃai, a Juǀʼhoan woman who in 1978 was in her mid-thirties. Nǃai (born 1945) tells her own story, and in so doing, the story of Juǀʼhoan life. Her name is pronounced , with a nasal alveolar click.

The film

Marshall compiled the footage of Nǃai over the course of 27 years. Marshall shot over 353,000 feet of color film during his expeditions into the Nyae-Nyae region. The footage of Nǃai as a young girl, including her wedding ceremonies, was recorded in 1951. "Before the white people came we did what we wanted," Nǃai recalls, describing the life she remembers as a child: following her mother to pick berries, roots, and nuts as the season changed; the division of

giraffe The giraffe is a large African hoofed mammal belonging to the genus ''Giraffa''. It is the tallest living terrestrial animal and the largest ruminant on Earth. Traditionally, giraffes were thought to be one species, '' Giraffa camelopardal ...

meat; the kinds of rain; her resistance to her marriage to ǀGunda at the age of eight; and her changing feelings about her husband when he becomes a healer. As Nǃai speaks, the film presents scenes from the 1950s that show her as a young girl and a young wife. The film contains a scene from the filming of ''

The Gods Must Be Crazy ''The Gods Must Be Crazy'' is a 1980 comedy film written, produced, edited and directed by Jamie Uys. An international co-production of South Africa and Botswana, it is the first film in ''The Gods Must Be Crazy'' series. Set in Southern Africa ...

'', with the actual, revealing words of the Bushmen involved translated.

Anthropological significance

The uniqueness of ''Nǃai'' may lie in its tight integration of ethnography and history. While it portrays the changes in Juǀʼhoan society over thirty years, it never loses sight of the individual, Nǃai. The film is credited with the introduction of the dialogical structure, whereby both the voices of the filmmaker and the subject are woven together to tell the story. It is also credited as the first ethnographic film to recognize the influence of modernity on the ǃKung people.

Awards

* Cine Golden Eagle * American Film Festival, Blue Ribbon * International Film and Television Festival of New York * Grand Prize, Cinema du RjeZ, Paris * News Coverage Festival, Luchon, France

References

* *

External links

* *
Study guide to the film (PDF)
1980 films American documentary films Botswana documentary films Anthropology documentary films Documentary films about women in Africa Films about hunter-gatherers Films set in Botswana Films shot in Botswana 1980 documentary films Women in Botswana 1980s English-language films 1980s American films {{bio-documentary-film-stub