Russian filmmaker Vadim Vitovtsev traveled to the Central African Republic to shoot this documentary on Bayaka pygmies, a tribe struggling to keep its structure together in the face of outside cultural encroachment. At the film’s center is a family that works together and with its community in the gathering of food, captured in an extraordinary segment in which tribal members scale a tree and extract honeycombs while carefully keeping the unhappy bees at a distance with smoke. The segment was shot with cameras attached to the Bayaka climbers who ascend the tree without tools and carefully lower the honeycombs to the ground in a basket made from leaves and twigs (the view from the treetops is stunning). But not everyone is eager to maintain the ways of the past, and another major element here involves a young Bayaka’s journey into a neighboring town, which ultimately brings the music and protocol of the wider world into this small, tradition-bound society. The introduction of paper currency into the Bayaka world has also created a confusion among the elders, many of whom are baffled by the value put on the small strips of colorful paper. A compelling and insightful look at the contemporary struggle between old and new African societies, this is recommended. Aud: C, P. (P. Hall)
Small People, Big Trees
(2018) 45 min. DVD: $350. DRA. Grasshopper Film. PPR. Volume 34, Issue 3
Small People, Big Trees
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