The Art of the living

United Kingdom, 1992

Film
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Episode number 5 of Series “Millennium: tribal wisdom and the modern world”.
While western society relegates aesthetics to specialists, in tribal cultures, where they have no word for ‘art’ or ‘artist’, views of life and death are traditionally expressed in everyday dances, clothes, sculptures and paintings. In this episode, travel with program narrator, David Maybury- Lewis to the Wodaabe tribe of Niger and the Dogon peoples of Mali to witness the ways they celebrate life and death with acts of beauty and grace. Meet an HIV positive Canadian artist who shows us his way of connecting his art to the meaning of life and death.

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Collection

In ACMI's collection

Credits

co-producer

Michael Grant

Richard Meech

production company

Biniman Productions

Duration

01:00:00:00

Production places
United Kingdom
Production dates
1992

Appears in

Millennium: tribal wisdom and the modern world

Group of items

Millennium: tribal wisdom and the modern world

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Collection metadata

ACMI Identifier

325399

Language

English

Subject categories

Anthropology, Ethnology, Exploration & Travel → Village communities - Africa

Crafts & Visual Arts → Aesthetics

Crafts & Visual Arts → Art and society

Sound/audio

Sound

Colour

Colour

Holdings

VHS; Access Print (Section 1)

Please note: this archive is an ongoing body of work. Sometimes the credit information (director, year etc) isn’t available so these fields may be left blank; we are progressively filling these in with further research.

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If you would like to cite this item, please use the following template: {{cite web |url=https://acmi.net.au/works/82949--the-art-of-the-living/ |title=The Art of the living |author=Australian Centre for the Moving Image |access-date=8 July 2025 |publisher=Australian Centre for the Moving Image}}