N!ai, the Story of a !Kung Woman

N!ai, the Story of a !Kung Woman
Directed by	John Marshall
Narrated by	John Marshall
Distributed by	Documentary Educational Resources
Release date(s)	1980
Running time	59 min.
Country	U.S.A.
Language	English

N!ai, the Story of a !Kung Woman is a film by ethnographic filmmaker John Marshall.

The film was first broadcast in 1980 as part of the Odyssey series on PBS and is distributed by Documentary Educational Resources. It provides a broad overview of Ju/'hoan life, both past and present, and an intimate portrait of N!ai, a Ju/'hoan woman who in 1978 was in her mid-thirties. N!ai tells her own story, and in so doing, the story of Ju/'hoan life over a thirty year period.

"Before the white people came we did what we wanted," N!ai recalls, describing the life she remembers as a child: following her mother to pick berries, roots, and nuts as the season changed; the division of giraffe meat; the kinds of rain; her resistance to her marriage to /Gunda at the age of eight; and her changing feelings about her husband when he becomes a healer. As N!ai speaks, the film presents scenes from 1950s that show her as a young girl and a young wife.

The uniqueness of N!ai may lie in its tight integration of ethnography and history. While it portrays the changes in Ju/'hoan society over thirty years, it never loses sight of the individual, N!ai.

The film contains a scene from the filming of The Gods Must Be Crazy, with the actual, revealing words of the Bushmen involved translated.

References

• "John Marshall: Nai, the Story of a !Kung Woman". www.der.org. http://der.org/films/nai-kung-woman.html. Retrieved 2007-02-15. 

• Apley, Alice; Tames, David. "Remembering John Marshall". New England Film. http://www.nefilm.com/news/archives/05june/marshall.htm. Retrieved 2007-03-21. 

External links

• N!ai, the Story of a !Kung Woman at the Internet Movie Database