Rituals of the World

When a person dies, or to celebrate a harvest or important visit, The Baining tribesmen go to make masks that represent the spirit of the forest which their ancestors have seen in caves in the jungle. A great fire is lit in the village. Dancers wearing the masks come and dance around the fire and jump on the embers to show they are more powerful than nature, stronger than the flames.

Anthropologist Anne-Sylvie Malbrancke goes to meet Jenny, a young Peruvian who has crossed the whole country to ask the sacred lakes to heal her health problem. For more than 700 years, shamans have drawn their power to heal from the Huaringas, sacred lagoons located on the border of Peru and Ecuador.

In the heart of the Amazon rainforests of Brazil, the Sateré-Mawé people have a rite of passage to adulthood where a show of bravery turns boys into men. According to tribe members, this painful initiation prepares the young men for life and proves they are capable of fulfilling their reproduction obligations.

The tattooing practiced in Samoa is not comparable to the fashionable trend in Europe. In Samoa, tattooing is above all a rite signifying that the individual belongs to a group, and it is extremely painful. The more painful it is, the more Stivi approaches the state of a real, accomplished man.

Every year in Jacmel, on the south coast of Haiti, festivities take on an intensity that is not found elsewhere. The Haitians do not depict dream-like characters in their parades, but instead monsters or specters. This is a way for them to deal with the difficulties of the past, and also those of the present.

Colored powder breaks down the barriers between people. Since Antiquity, to mark the spring equinox, the whole of India celebrates Holi, the festival of colors. During this celebration, Indians of all castes throw colored powder in the faces of those they meet.