The Art of the living

United Kingdom, 1992

Film
Please note

Sorry, we don't have images or video for this item.

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.

Content notification

Our collection comprises over 40,000 moving image works, acquired and catalogued between the 1940s and early 2000s. As a result, some items may reflect outdated, offensive and possibly harmful views and opinions. ACMI is working to identify and redress such usages.

Learn more about our collection and our collection policy here. If you come across harmful content on our website that you would like to report, let us know.

How to watch

This work has not been digitised and is currently unavailable to view online. It may be possible for approved reseachers to view onsite at ACMI.

Learn more about accessing our collection

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

Explore

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.

Cite this work on Wikipedia

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=22 June 2025 |publisher=Australian Centre for the Moving Image}}