N!ai, The Story of a !Kung Woman (1981)
59m
Running Time
May 3, 1981Release Date
N!ai, The Story of a !Kung Woman (1981)
59m
Running Time
May 3, 1981Release Date
Plot.
This film provides a broad overview of Ju/'hoan life, both past and present, and an intimate portrait of N!ai, a Ju/'hoan woman who in 1978 was in her mid-thirties. N!ai tells her own story, and in so doing, the story of Ju/'hoan life over a thirty year period. "Before the white people came we did what we wanted," N!ai recalls, describing the life she remembers as a child: following her mother to pick berries, roots, and nuts as the season changed; the division of giraffe meat; the kinds of rain; her resistance to her marriage to /Gunda at the age of eight; and her changing feelings about her husband when he becomes a healer. As N!ai speaks, the film presents scenes from the 1950's that show her as a young girl and a young wife. The uniqueness of N!ai may lie in its tight integration of ethnography and history. While it portrays the changes in Ju/'hoan society over thirty years, it never loses sight of the individual, N!ai.
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Wiki.
Nǃai, the Story of a ǃKung Woman is a documentary film by ethnographic filmmaker John Marshall.
The film was first broadcast in 1980 as part of the Odyssey series on PBS and is distributed by Documentary Educational Resources. It provides a broad overview of Juǀʼhoan life, both past and present, and an intimate portrait of Nǃai, a Juǀʼhoan woman who in 1978 was in her mid-thirties. Nǃai (born 1945) tells her own story, and in so doing, the story of Juǀʼhoan life. Her name is pronounced [ᵑǃa.i], with a nasal alveolar click.