Endangered Civilizations

Old Katohara is one of the last surviving "Tousseuh", a title that used to be given by ancient Mandchu emperors to the governor of a province. Katohara remembers his past and the past of his people, the Yis. The Yis are a minority of Caucasian origin: farmers and cattle breeders nowadays, the Yis live in the remote area of the Lian-chan mountains of Sichuan in the southwest of China.

Mr Zhu is a Qiang, one of the oldest minorities in China. A few years back the young Zhu had decided to leave the hills of northern Sichuan to get a better education. A few years later, Zhu was appointed as the Director of Tourism in his own canton. He still has the will to understand and preserve the traditions of his people.

Astride the Polish-Bielorussian border, wooden mosques overhang two small Tatar villages. Built by muslim Tatars who settled in the region at the end of the 17th century, their origins are older and come from Poland invasion by Genghis Khan's hordes in 1241. Even if the contemporary Tatars have been assimilated into the Polish population they still try to preserve some of their traditions.

Khasnan is a civil servant in the city of Khovd, a major town in western Mongolia. He is in charge of keeping track of rabies in the district. The disease is spreading dangerously mostly because of three main animal groups : dogs, marmots and eagles. The trouble for Khasnan is that he is very fond of eagles. He has already trained six of them for hunting. We follow them for a day or two.

Tunga is a provincial girl in town to study journalism. She has to return home because her father has had an accident. We discover life in Mongolia countryside. There is nothing much there except for immense, wide-open spaces where a tiny family yurt looks remote in the middle of this huge nowhere. But this life is too peaceful for Tunga, despite its security.

The Tarahumaras are a proud and free people who have withdrawn to the small, inaccessible villages of Mexico's Sierra Madre. In the "Barranca del Cobre", the Ogre of the legend relates the daily life of these remote villages, the excessive deforestation, the contempt for the half-castes and the whites, and the omnipresence of the Catholic religion that incorporates pagan rites.

In the heart of Indian Mexico in Cuetzalan, a custom has been perpetuated for 1,500 years. It is the Dance of the Voladores, a spectacular ritual in which a bond is established between the sun and mankind. Attached to ropes and with their head downwards, four men leap into the air from atop a one-hundred-foot pole. They describe 13 full circles before they regain the ground.

Many observers wonder how the balinese have managed to survive for the last 500 years in a region where local history is too filled with invasions, colonosation, ethnic conflict, political crises and economic misfortune. Because of a miracle? No way: the balinese have managed to create a society and a way of life which have enabled everyone here to cope with such a permanent chaos.

Bagbas are a brotherhood of soothsayers, the chosen of the gods, who enter into trances during ceremonies and predict the future. They are held in high esteem by the people of northern and western Burkina Faso. Bagbas deal with personal affairs as well as community business in events such as initiation ceremonies, deciding on the location of new crops and "rain making".

The Bolon people, who live in a world of their own in southwestern Burkina Faso, are cut off from the rest of the country's people. Living in wattle-and-daub huts with terraced roofs, this unusual community continues to perpetuate its ancestral traditions through its culture, architecture, religion, music, chants and dances and impressive "masks". They also practice the art of divination.

Under the leadership of Uvea a young Oceanian in search of his origins, discover the traditional cultures and also the new types of maritime culture. The idea is to explore the past in order to gain a clearer understanding of the present. Thousands of years ago Uvea's ancestors who came in successive waves from South East Asia, aboard immense double canoes, gradually colonized the Pacific islands.

The film explores man's relationship with the sea in the Carribean islands; the centuries' old linking factor in this relationship being boats. Beginning with the present day, man's modern and ever-evolving connection with water transport will be examined, followed by a look at the human dimension of boats showing traditional boating methods, cultures and lifestyles that are dying out.