Movies: Ritual

Shadows of Light combines the loud and soft tones of life. The centerpiece is an Austrian mountain pasture where the summer solstice is celebrated with international artists and where tradition and zeitgeist are not contradictory....

Dr. Neal Goodman enables terminal patients' right to die through the practice of mercy killing via his one-of-a-kind device. But when he sets out to fulfill a mother's request to euthanize her 'terminally-ill' daughter, he discovers that his procedur...

Five Japanese carpenters came to Boston that summer to reconstruct a Kyoto silkweaver's 150 year old townhouse that had been packed in crates and shipped to Boston Children's Museum. This first-hand observation of traditional tools and woodworking te...

Sacred explores cultural and religious ritual as it relates to life’s cycles: birth, adolescence, marriage, aging and other key passages of life....

In a quest to rediscover the spiritual values of his own people, an African filmmaker from the Gourmantche tribe of Burkina Faso visits an Aboriginal band, the Atikamekw of northern Quebec. The resulting documentary is a dialogue between those who di...

Kit and his two best friends have been raised by a forest-dwelling cult on the outskirts of society. As they come of age and are brought closer into the cult’s fold, Kit alone is bothered by the cruelty of its rituals. After stumbling upon a mother a...

A twisted tale of two unemployed graduates who embark on a journey to make it in a world where you need more than what you have to get what you want....

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A testimony to the performance of ritual dances. Although they were performed only during the so-called “unbaptized days”, the 12 days between Christmas and Epiphany in the Orthodox Christianity, these dances are associated by some researchers with t...

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After her mother’s death, Sarah lives isolated with her aunt. One night, she confesses experiencing the feeling of a presence, something malicious and relentless....

An unsuspecting man engages in a satanic orgy of blood....

“Bored in Heaven” follows New Years celebrations in Putian, Fujian, Southeast China. An experiential project based on 20 years of research by Kenneth Dean and Zheng Zhenman, this film illustrates the growing intensity of local traditions, as rural vi...

A young woman's story of possession and healing in rural Rajasthan...

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A novice teenage witch attempts to woo the love of her life with a love potion, but when things spiral out of control, more twisted measures are taken to win her heart....

A collection of videos that spotlight all kinds of terror "tragedies", not limited to psychic phenomena such as fights, violence, and passing by. It captures many horrors that occur close to human beings, such as "black money finance" where the wife'...

In the same vein as Meri's other documentations, this one takes advantage of the glasnost policy to discuss the social and ecologic impact of the Russian oil industry on the natives and the lands they inhabit....

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