People in the Bush

A portrait of daily life and work in an African village. Seemingly untouched by colonial influences, the inhabitants are entirely self-sufficient. Ethnologist Gulla Pfeffer and cameraman Friedrich Dalsheim found the village of the Ewe people in the interior of Togo, which was a German colony until 1914. Work in the fields, hunting, preparing meals, weaving, pottery, dancing, and religious rites govern the life of a community whose most modern convenience is a telephone of tin cans and a string. Original speech recordings, everyday sounds, and orchestra music are concentrated into an ethnographic, documentary study, with drums, songs, and ecstatic dances culminating in a “finale furioso”. (Berlinale)