The Melon Tossing Game
From the !Kung series
by John Marshall
color, 15 min, 1970
institutional price includes public performance rights
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Women from three separate Ju/'hoan bands have gathered at a mangetti grove at !O to play an intense game in which under-tones of social and personal tensions become apparent. The game itself is simple: women form a semi-circle which moves counter-clockwise as each woman, in turn, runs to the center of the circle where she dances several steps and tosses the melon to the next woman at the proper moment in the song. Men intrude and dance spectacularly and an old woman, N/aoka, goes into a trance-like state. The game begins to disintegrate when N!ai, the wife of the male dancer /Gunda, taunts and teases N/aoka.
Other films in the series:
- An Argument about Marriage
- Baobab Play
- Bitter Melons
- Children Throw Toy Assegais
- A Curing Ceremony
- Debe's Tantrum
- First Film
- A Group of Women
- The Hunters
- A Joking Relationship
- A Kalahari Family
- !Kung Bushmen Hunting Equipment
- The !Kung San: Traditional Life
- The !Kung San: Resettlement
- Lion Game
- The Meat Fight
- Men Bathing
- N!ai, The Story of a !Kung Woman
- N/um Tchai: the Ceremonial Dance of the !Kung Bushmen
- Playing with Scorpions
- Pull Ourselves Up or Die Out
- A Rite of Passage
- To Hold Our Own Ground: A Field Report
- Tug-Of-War, Bushmen
- The Wasp Nest