In the Portuguese village of Senhora Aparecida, an industrial area near Oporto, the annual festival that takes place every 15th of August is being prepared. The biers that reach fifteen meters high and which are carried by 70 men are being erected and decorated.

This documentary shows an ancient, sacred Apache ritual that has never before been filmed. The Sunrise Ceremony, which marks the passage from adolescence to adulthood for young Apache women, is disappearing under the pressures of cultural assimilation.

Faced with a drought that endangers the continuity of their people, Masai elders are convinced that they have been cursed by the Red God -- the God of Vengeance. Following the death of the war chief, a group of adolescents must now cross over to adulthood, forced to quickly form a new generation of inexperienced but brave warriors. The young men must bring back the mane of a legendary lion, which appears at every critical period of Masai history to...

"From the internationally best-selling author of Fatherland and the Cicero Trilogy--a chilling and dark new thriller unlike anything Robert Harris has done before. 1468. A young priest, Christopher Fairfax, arrives in a remote Exmoor village to conduct the funeral of his predecessor. The land around is strewn with ancient artifacts--coins, fragments of glass, human bones--which the old parson used to collect. Did his obsession with the past lead...

"Focuses on the dance styles and history of the Northern Plains Indians. Lakota elders, scholars and others share stories of the many dances that are still performed at pow wows (wacipi) today. The program features footage of pow wows all over the state, and explores how dance has evolved over the years, as well as the important role of the drum"--Container.

Filmed between 1991 and 1997, Taki Kudo, Shamanic Medium of Tsugaru documents the final years of the charismatic Ms. Taki Kudo, a medium, healer and fortune teller. Every year she comes to Japan's sacred Mt. Osorozan, home of the Akakura grand shrine, where the mediums draw chopsticks for the best places to set up their booths.

Cremation rites are the most elaborate rites of passage performed by Balinese householders. Poor families may wait years before accumulating enough resources to cremate their dead, who are buried in the meantime. In 1978 many more cremations than usual were carried out because of the great purification cermony, Eka Dasa Rudra, held at Bali's main temple, Besakih, in 1979. Religious officials recommended that all Balinese cleanse the island by cremating...

In the sixteenth century Portuguese Catholic missionaries introduced Christianity to Japan. The religion flourished for about fifty years, but by 1614 the Tokugawa government issued an edict that outlawed Christianity and expelled the missionaries from Japan. About 150,000 believers went underground and continued to practice their religion in secret.

Shot in 24 countries across six continents, this film, without narration or dialogue, presents a visual spectacle emphasizing religious ritual as well as addressing the human condition and the idea of humanity vis-�a-vis nature.

For 200 years groups of Lahu have been migrating from southwestern China into the highlands of Southeast Asia's "Golden Triangle" region.Though they share much with other migrants in the ethnic patchwork of the region, the Lahu maintain a vigorous sense of themselves as a distinct people. New Years is their prime time for celebrating what it means to be Lahu.