John Kennedy Marshall (November 12, 1932 – April 22, 2005) was an American anthropologist and acclaimed documentary filmmaker best known for his work in Namibia recording the lives of the Ju/'hoansi (also called the !Kung Bushmen).
Marshall first traveled to the Kalahari Desert and met the Ju/'hoansi of the Nyae Nyae area in 1949 on a trip initiated by his father. Throughout the 1950s and 1960's members of the Marshall family returned to the Kalahari Desert numerous times to conduct an ethnographic study of the Ju/'hoansi. From 1950-1958 Marshall filmed the hunting and gathering life of the Ju/'hoansi. His first edited film, The Hunters, was released in 1957 and was an almost instant classic of ethnographic film.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Marshall produced many short films about the Ju/'hoansi of Nyae Nyae and pursued other film projects in the United States. He was the cinematographer and co-director for Fred Wiseman's first documentary film, Titicut Follies. In 1968-1969, he shot, edited and directed the ground-breaking Pittsburgh Police series of short films. In 1968, Marshall and Tim Asch founded Documentary Educational Resources, a non-profit organization dedicated to facilitating the use of cross-cultural documentaries in the classroom.
For thousands of years Ju/'hoansi have lived in the Nyae Nyae region in northeastern Namibia. In the 1950s, most Ju/'hoansi had been exterminated or were dispossessed by white colonists and black farmers, but in Nyae Nyae Ju/'hoansi were still the only per ...
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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 pe ...
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Jean Rouch filmed this loving and humorous portrait of anthropologist and filmmaker Margaret Mead in September 1977 while he was a guest of the first Margaret Mead Film Festival. As both a friend and colleague, Rouch reveals a glimpse of the legendary Mead ...
Watch NowThe once thriving industrial town of Haverhill, Massachusetts on the Merrimack River now resembles, in the words of one of the film's subjects, "a ghost town where you expect to see tumbleweeds come rolling down Main Street." This film examines a dying ind ...
Watch NowChildren and teenagers throw sticks, berries, and leaves at each other from perches in a large baobab tree. ...
Watch NowIn this film, an argument arises between two bands when an antelope killed by a hunter from one band is found and distributed by a man from another band. The film illustrates conflict mediation in traditional Ju/'hoan society and the Ju/'hoan leaders' abil ...
Watch NowIn Nyae Nyae, water often remains in open pans. Sometimes if the rains have been heavy, water stays in these pans, like small lakes, all year. In this film five Ju/'hoan men visit Nama pan. /Ti!kay washes the clothes he acquired on his trip to rescue his b ...
Watch NowPolice search for drugs in a house where they arrest a group of boys who return from a basketball game and are accused of having a loud party and sniffing glue. ...
Watch NowPolicemen intervene when a woman calls to complain that her boyfriend stole forty dollars. The argument soon escalates as the man refuses to admit that he took any money, and the woman, losing her temper, crashes a glass window and cuts her hand. The polic ...
Watch NowThis film consists of sequences from the Pittsburgh Police footage intercut with a panel discussion moderated by Professor James Vorenberg of Harvard Law School. Community organizers, police, students and lawyers discussed the issues raised by four sequenc ...
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This film focuses on a black burglary suspect who, during interrogation by police offers his services as an "undercover" informant - providing the police will suppress his charge. ...
Watch NowA customer tries to explain to police why he feels he has been cheated out of an exhaust system by a garage owner. ...
Watch NowThis film consists of several sequences related to arrests after street fights involving policemen, and discussions of the incidents by the police in cars and at the station. ...
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This film treats the problem of "loitering." In a number of sequences, police warn youths, police administrators discuss enforcement of loitering laws, officers are insulted, and several youths are arrested. ...
Watch NowBetween 1950 and 1958, John Marshall made four expeditions to film the Ju/'hoansi (a group of !Kung Bushmen) of the Nyae Nyae region of Namibia (then South West Africa). During this time, Marshall shot over 300,000 feet of 16mm film (157 hours). He later p ...
Watch NowIn this film a five-year-old named Debe refuses to let his mother Di!ai go gathering without him. Di!ai appeals to her daughter N!ai to entertain the child but Debe resists. In the end Di!ai leaves with Debe on her back. This is a companion film to The Was ...
Watch NowThis film, shot in 1952-53, documents the scarification ceremony called "marking" which was traditionally held for Ju/'hoan boys after they had killed their first large animal. Here, /Ti!kay, a boy of thirteen, shoots his first wildebeest with an arrow. /T ...
Watch NowFollows police patrol cars 901 and 904 as they ply the streets of Pittsburgh, responding to diverse situations. ...
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This film, shot in 1955, focuses on a small band of /Gwi San living in the arid landscape of the central Kalahari Desert in present-day Botswana. ...
Watch NowIn each scene, police respond to a different domestic abuse calls. ...
Watch NowAn unemployed woman who has been living in her car is questioned by the police. They offer her advice and finally take her to the Salvation Army. ...
Watch NowWomen from three separate Ju/'hoan bands have gathered at a mangetti grove at !O to play an intense game in which under-tones of social and personal tensions become apparent. ...
Watch Now/Gunda, a young man (who later marries N!ai), pretends to be a lion. He is "hunted" and "killed" by a group of boys. ...
Watch NowAn installment in the Pittsburgh Police series. A number of short sequences show some of the events and people in the daily lives of several policemen: their intervention in domestic quarrels, the handling of a hit-and-run case, the approaches taken toward ...
Watch NowSha//ge, a very young woman about to have her first child, falls ill, probably with malaria. /Ti!kay, a relative and healer, enters a mild trance, without the stimulus of dancing, in an attempt to cure her. Sha//ge lives but the baby is stillborn. ...
Watch NowTchai is the word used by Ju/'hoansi to describe getting together to dance and sing; n/um can be translated as medicine, or supernatural potency. In the 1950's, when this film was shot, Ju/'hoansi gathered for "medicine dances" often, usually at night, and ...
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A stark and graphic portrayal of the conditions that existed at the State Prison for the Criminally Insane at Bridgewater, Massachusetts, and documents the various ways the inmates are treated by the guards, social workers, and psychiatrists. ...
Watch NowThis film depicts a moment of flirtation between N!ai, the young wife of /Gunda, and her great-uncle /Ti!kay. The two share a "joking relationship," a Ju/'hoan kin relationship which provides opportunities for casual intimacy, emotional release, and suppor ...
Watch NowJu/'hoan women often share an intimate sociability and spend many hours together discussing their lives, enjoying each other's company and children. In this short film, Ju/'hoan women rest, talk and nurse their babies while lying in the shade of a baobab t ...
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An ethnographic film that documents the efforts of four !Kung men (also known as Ju/'hoansi or Bushmen) to hunt a giraffe in the Kalahari Desert of Namibia. The footage was shot by John Marshall during a Smithsonian-Harvard Peabody sponsored expedition in ...
Watch NowAn ethnographic film that documents the efforts of four !Kung men (also known as Ju/'hoansi or Bushmen) to hunt a giraffe in the Kalahari Desert of Namibia. The footage was shot by John Marshall during a Smithsonian-Harvard Peabody sponsored expedition in ...
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