Triton Films
Broadcast TV and Film Programs
Title: Genre: Production: Keywords: Spirits of
the VoyagePersonal Documentary 88 minutes, Color, Stereo, 1996 Micronesian islands, Lamotrek, Yap, traditional navigation, cultural revival, indigenous education, rite of passage, magic Lamotrek: Heritage of an Island Cultural
Documentary27 minutes, Color, Sound, 1988 Micronesian island, Lamotrek,
traditional arts and skills, magicGypsies:
The Other AmericansEthnographic Documentary 50 minutes, Color and B/W Sepia, Sound, 1975 Gypsy (Rom) social life and customs, Los Angeles, survival skills, acculturation Gypsy Wedding Ethnographic
Documentary12 minutes, Color, Sound,
1980Gypsy (Rom) wedding
customs, Los Angeles
Educational Research Videos
Note: These educational research videos are of non-broadcast television quality and generally are only suitable for academic or research purposes.
Title: Genre: Production: Keywords: Gypsies:
Out TakesEthnographic Footage 45 minutes, Color and B/W, 1994 Gypsy (Rom) social life and customs, Los Angeles Rom Wedding Ethnographic Footage 60 minutes, Color, 1985 Gypsy (Rom) wedding customs, Los Angeles Lamotrek Atoll:
Research Film Footage of a Traditional Carolinian SocietyEthnographic Footage 196 minutes, Color and B/W, Sound and Silent, 1983 Micronesian island, Lamotrek, oral history, social life and customs, arts and skills, ethnographic study Met Poraus?
(What's the News?)Part of a Series
[Micronesian Transitions]
Social Documentary45 minutes, Color, Sound, 1983 Micronesian island, Truk (Chuuk), use of mass media, modes of communication study: print, audio, visual. USDA Needy Family Food Program in Truk Part of a Series
[Micronesian Transitions]
Social Documentary32 minutes, B/W, Sound, 1979 Micronesian island, Truk (Chuuk), USDA government project Changes in Truk Part of a Series
[Micronesian Transitions]
Social Documentary30 minutes, B/W, Sound, 1979 Micronesian island,
Truk (Chuuk), prohibition of alcohol, youth clubs, airportMwan Mwich Part of a Series
[Micronesian Transitions]
Social Documentary18 minutes, B/W, Sound,
1979Micronesian island, Truk, (Chuuk), dance styles Early Foreign Contacts in Micronesia 1521-1885 Part of a Series
[Micronesian Transitions]
Social Documentary30 minutes, B/W, Sound, 1978 Micronesian islands, history Nothing to Do, Nowhere to Go Part of a Series
[Micronesian Transitions]
Social Documentary55 minutes, B/W, Sound, 1977 Micronesian island, Truk (Chuuk), youth problems, alcohol abuse, suicide Echoes of an Island Personal Documentary 16 minutes, Color, Sound,
1979Micronesian island, Lamotrek,
social life and customs
Pacific Milk RunU.S. Navy Documentary 18 minutes, B/W, Sound, n.d. Documentary footage of air combat missions in Micronesia during WWII
Some Inspiration
By
Margaret Mead
(1971)"The controversy about ethnographic films, films made about preliterate or folk peoples which depict their original life styles goes on and on. Should the ethnologist learn filmmaking or should the filmmaker learn ethnology? Is it possible for the same expedition to take films of scientific usefulness and also make a film that is an artistic production? Do anthropologists know what they are doing with film, as film, and not merely as an adjunct to the written word? Programmatic dicta of this sort abound, complete with retrospective references to Robert Flaherty, yet extraordinarily little reference to the rest of the work that has been done, to the highly developed uses of film in comparative studies of kinetics and choreometrics, as Ray Birdwhistell and Alan Loax have shown, or to the kinds of analysis made possible by the films of interpersonal behavior that Gregory Bateson took over thirty years ago, and the methods now being developed in experimental video by Albert Scheflen and Joseph Schaeffer. And meanwhile, the people about whom such magnificent films can be made are losing their old cultures, forgetting how to dance, abandoning the costumes that fitted so spectacularly with the way they moved and spoke. Once lost, these cultures will be gone irretrievably, lost to their descendants, and lost to the rest of the world. Neither print nor tape can ever capture the essence of a culture, only film can do this, and yet it is film for which we have hardly any resources for training and for the necessary field work and post-field work processing. If we saw someone standing beside a deep lake, letting priceless, finely wrought ancient Cretan and Egyptian and Incan ornaments slip one by one into the water, there would be an outcry. But these precious records of ways of life developed through thousands of years are being let go with hardly a murmur from the surrounding world."
"More Smoke than Fire: An introduction" Film Comment 7(1): 34. Copyright © Film Comment Publishing Company 1971. Reprinted by Permission.