Ethnic Films/Videotapes

Recommended Video Tapes: If you like cultural anthropology, you will enjoy these tapes. They are all commercial videos, but they contain sufficiently authentic ethnographic information or atmosphere to be worth watching (as opposed to total ethnographic rip-offs, such as The Gods Must be Crazy and The Emerald Forest). They are the next best thing to going there. Besides, they have lots of sex, violence, humor, and soap, all the things we Americans love in our media. Most are subtitled. They are all available at local video stores in Las Vegas, but you may have to shop around. I obtained many of them at Major Video, Tower Video, Video Park, and The Wherehouse.

1. A Taxing Woman* (comedy on tax collection in Japan)
   
2. A Taxing Woman Returns* (Japan; relentless female tax collector pursues organized criminals)
   
3. Black and White in Color* (French colonials in West Africa)
   
4. Black Orpheus** (carnival and candomble voodoo in Rio DeJaneiro)
   
5. Bye Bye Brazil* (traveling circus in Brazil)
   
6. Countryman* (Jamaican Reggae, creole, voodoo, kung fu! not great art, but good atmosphere)
   
7. Cry Freedom** (South Africa)
   
8. Dodes Kaden* (surrealistic commentary on poverty in Japan)
   
9. Eat a Bowl of Tea** (Chinese immigrants to New York in 1930s)
   
10. Eat, Drink, Man, Woman** (Chinese in Taiwan; master cook and three daughters)
    
11. El Norte** (refugees from Guatemala)
    
12. Farewell My Concubine* (China in 1920s; must be seen and heard to be believed)
    
13. Joy Luck Club** (Chinese in San Francisco; harassment of bride and groom)
    
14. Kitchen Toto** (Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya)
    
15. Letter to Brezhnev (working class girls in Liverpool, England)
    
16. Los Olvidados** (Poverty in Mexico)
    
17. My Beautiful Launderette* (Pakistanis in England)
    
18. Powwow Highway** (a modern American Indian vision quest)
    
19. Raise the Red Lanterns* (Chinese; poor woman becomes third wife of rich man)
    
20. Ran** (famous Japanese epic)
    
21. Red Sorgum** (rape and murder in rural China)
    
22. Romero** (death squads, Catholicism, El Salvador)
    
23. Salaam Bombay** (orphans and outcastes in Bombay; Gandesh, the elephant god, patron of orphans)
    
24. Street of Shame* (Japanese prostitutes)
    
25. Erendira* (Brazilian; based on book 100 Years of Solitude; surrealism)
    
26. Sugarcane Alley** (Caribbean plantation culture)
    
27. Tampopo** (Japanese noodle cook; comedy)
    
28. The Fringe Dwellers** (Modern aboriginals in Australia move to town)
    
29. The Funeral* (situation comedy based on Japanese funeral)
    
30. Tokyo Pop** (Japanese)
    
31. Tokyo Story* (generation gap in Japan)
    
32. Where the Green Ants Dream* (industrial progress meets aboriginals in Australia)
    
33. White Mischief* (colonial culture in Kenya)
    
34. Yol* (Turkish political oppression)