N!ai, the Story of a !Kung Woman

"This film provides a broad overview of !Kung life, both past and present, and an intimate portrait of N!ai, a !Kung woman who in 1978 was in her mid-thirties. N!ai tells her own story, and in so doing, the story of changes in !Kung 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 !Kung society over thirty years, it never loses sight of the individual, N!ai."

 

CINE Golden Eagle
American Film Festival Blue Ribbon
Cinema du Reel, Grand Prize
International Film & Television Festival, NY, Best Television Documentary
International News Coverage Festival, Grand Prize
RAI, Highest Film Commendation

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See Also:

• Hunting and Gathering
  
  
• and the film The Hunters
  
  
• N!AI: THE STORY OF A !KUNG WOMAN -- RAI
  
  
• Guidelines for the film N!ai, The Story of a !Kung Woman -- Ana Mariella Bacigalupo
  
  
• Feminism in Namibia -- PENDUKA
  
  
• FILMS ON THE SAN OF SOUTHERN AFRICA -- The Working Group of Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa
  
  
• Films and Documentaries by and about Women in Africa -- Institute of International Studies, University of California at Berkeley
  
  
  • International Gender Studies Resources
    
    
• John K. Marshall