Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival

[Dita]

The annual Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival is the longest-running, premiere showcase for international documentaries in the United States. The Festival was founded by the American Museum of Natural History in 1977, in honor of pioneering anthropologist Margaret Mead on her seventy-fifth birthday and her fiftieth year at the Museum. A film festival represented an especially appropriate form with which to celebrate Mead’s life, as she was one of the first anthropologists to recognize the significance of film for fieldwork. The Festival is devoted to Mead’s goal of using media to engage the public in lively cultural debate, and is committed to using independent, non-fiction media to explore issues of cultural practice, social justice and the nature of media representation. Each year the Festival features a broad spectrum of work, both in form and subject matter, from indigenous community media to animation, from issues surrounding land rights to cultural identity, and includes internationally recognized artists as well as first-time filmmakers. The Festival is distinguished by its outstanding selection of titles, which tackle diverse and challenging subjects and represent a range of issues and perspectives. In curating the Festival, programmers consider the strongest submissions as well as regional and topical diversity. Featured program themes have included such topics as the representation of Roma (“Gypsies”), religious expression, body art, national screenings, as well as a number of special events (roundtables, performances, social events for Festival attendees and filmmakers, etc.), offering forums for in-depth and spirited discussion among independent filmmakers, topical specialists, and the general public. Collaborations with film, cultural, and academic organizations additionally promote films across broad audiences and generate community participation.


To further the Festival’s community and educational outreach efforts, the Margaret Mead Traveling Film & Video Festival was established in 1992. Each year a selection of titles from that year’s Mead Festival travels to universities, community centers, museums, festivals and public libraries throughout the United States and abroad, providing communities with access to films they might otherwise not have the opportunity to see. Nationally, the Traveling Festival has been hosted by venues of ranging from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, Massachusetts), to the Pacific Film Archive (University of California, Berkeley), to the Boulder Public Library (Boulder, Colorado). International sites include the Jakarta International Film Festival (Jakarta, Indonesia), Mediawave (Gyor, Hungary), Real Life on Film (Sydney, Australia), the National Institute of Advanced Studies (Bangalore, India), and media workshops in Argentina, Brazil and Chile.