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Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World

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Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World is a series of video programs by Harvard anthropologist David Maybury-Lewis. The 1992 documentary series was presented as 10 video programs, each 60 minutes long, and was released on VHS after being aired on public television. The series was designed to stimulate reflection and inspire a new look at what the modern world can learn from tribal societies as the millennium approached.

Detailed description

The documentary explores the values and different world perspectives that hold many tribal societies together. It presents tribal peoples in the dignity of their own homes and captures their customs and ceremonies with extraordinary photography.

  1. The shock of the other
  2. Strange relations
  3. Mistaken identity
  4. An ecology of mind
  5. The art of living
  6. Touching the timeless
  7. A poor man shames us all
  8. Inventing reality
  9. The tightrope of power
  10. At the threshold

Video production

The series was co-produced by Biniman Productions Limited, Adrian Malone Productions Limited, KCET, and BBC-TV, in association with the Global Television Network, and with the participation of Rogers Telefund and Telefilm Canada. The editors were Michael Todd and Michael Fuller and the music was composed by Hans Zimmer.

There is also a book companion to the videos. It features 11 of the peoples discussed in the video. In it, David Maybury-Lewis argues that the ancient customary wisdom, communal sharing and closeness to nature found in tribal or indigenous societies hold important survival lessons for our modern industrial society steeped in waste, consumerism, ecocide and social rootlessness.


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