Movies: Traditional culture

On the shores of Jeju Island, a fierce group of South Korean divers fight to save their vanishing culture from looming threats....

After discovering that his father is at death's door, Mr. Miyagi sets out to Japan, to see him with Daniel. Upon arriving, Miyagi must confront an old rival. Meanwhile, Daniel encounters a new love, and some new enemies....

After committing a crime for which he is likely to be jailed, a Yolngu teenager convinces two of his childhood friends to join him on a journey from North East Arnhem Land to Darwin to seek help from a tribal leader....

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A Batak family plans to perform Mangokal Holi — a ceremony to honor ancestors. However, chaos erupts when their great grandfather's skeleton is suddenly lost....

Eastern Cape, South Africa. A lonely factory worker, Xolani, takes time off his job to assist during an annual Xhosa circumcision initiation into manhood. In a remote mountain camp that is off limits to women, young men, painted in white ochre, recup...

Buddhist monk and photographer Matthieu Picard as he returns to the Asian country in the Himalayas where he spent a decade after seven years away, revisiting breathtaking landscapes and experiencing local traditions....

Celebrates 30 years of televised specials by The National Geographic Society....

A youngster begins to understand the wisdom hidden within legendary whaler-man Tall 12's sea shanty songs in the whaling town of Barrouallie, St. Vincent, a place where men still wrestle with the creatures of the deep for survival. Against a backdrop...

In a world where farming is mechanized and farm animals are fed with products coming from across the globe, a young shepherd is trying to keep his practice sustainable by using ancestral ways to raise his flock....

A New Yorker journeys to the jungle in the Darien Gap of Panama to reconnect with an indigenous tribe he met and photographed 20 years ago. Their reunion highlights the profound power of photos and the human connection that transcends cultural barrie...

At an altitude of 4500 meters, on the highest plateaus of Karnak in the Himalayan région of Ladakh, in a lunar setting where the sky blends with the mineral immensity, director Marianne Chaud filmed the movements of these last nomads. Immersed for mo...

A provocative and poetic exploration of how the British people have seen their own land through more than a century of cinema. A hallucinated journey of immense beauty and brutality. A kaleidoscopic essay on how magic and madness have linked human be...

Does Europe also have its own animistic heritage, like Pachamama in South America and Shinto in Japan? If so, which one? In the Misty Lands, i.e. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, a sacred fire is lit on the winter solstice to celebrate the return of th...

A girl celebrates her 16th birthday with a Umhlonyane....

In Peruvian Amazonia, for the first time in many years, a Shipibo–Konibo community prepare to perform the Aneshiati ceremony: a time of dance, song, festive clothing, and drink—including the sacred tea ayahuasca....

During the Cultural Revolution in China in the late 20th century, ethnic Manchu people were persecuted and forced to give up such cultural traditions as the shaman dance (tiao tchin, meaning "spirit-jumping" or "god's dance"). However, on Changbai Mo...

In Edo-era Japan, a ukiyo-e artist languishes in his master’s shadow. Creatively stifled, he finds consolation in the company of a prostitute, and becomes entangled in a love triangle. A mystery emerges involving two portraits and the sudden disappea...

A 15-year-old boy goes on a hiking trip with his estranged grandfather, and overcomes the grief of losing his parents on a mountain above the clouds....

"Monday's Girls" explores the conflict between modern individualism and traditional communities in today's Africa through the eyes of two young Waikiriki women from the Niger delta. Although both come from leading families in the same large island to...