Drums of Winter (1988)

Original title

Uksuum Cauyai: The Drums of Winter

Directed by

Sarah Elder, Leonard Kamerling

Genre

documentary film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 30m

Rating

5.5 of 10 from 4 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This documentary records the traditional dances and potlatch ceremonies of the Yup'ik people in an Alaskan village. It shows a community reflecting on its cultural practices as they fade due to outside influences. The film was made with direct input from the people it portrays, allowing them to speak for themselves.

observationalcontemplativepoignantintimateauthenticrestrainedculturalnostalgic

What happens

Uksuum Cauyai: Drums of Winter, also referred to only as Drums of Winter, is a 1988 ethnographic documentary on the culture of the Yup'ik Eskimo people in Emmonak, Alaska, a village on the shore of the Bering Sea. The film follows the Yup'ik people in an attempt to capture what remains of their traditional dances and the potlatch ceremony. There is an atmosphere of a people losing touch with its traditions after many years of religious and government intervention. The film was produced through a "community-collaborative process" in which the subjects of the documentary had significant input as to the film's content and presentation. As a result, the film features conversations with individual Yup'ik in place of "the voice-over commentary by an unseen narrator that destroys the cinematic integrity of so many so-called ethnographic films". Drums of Winter won awards at a number of film festivals, including the American Film Festival in 1989, the International Ethnographic Film Festival in 1990, the Alaska International Film Festival in 1995, the Festival of the Native Americas in 1996, and the Margaret Mead Film Festival in 2000. In 2006, Drums of Winter was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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• I Am Yup'ik (2016)
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• Ika Hands (1988)
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