Henry Carter Hull

A small film crew tracks a Kazak family in Xinjiang, China's western-most province, from spring to winter. Unlike the people of Kazakstan, who grew into a nation of farmers and workers, the Kazaks retained their nomadic life and a close bond with nature.

The documentary follows Yuri Vella, writer and social activist of the Forest Nenets living in West-Siberia. To give his grandchildren proper education in their natural environment and teach them reindeer herding skills, he establishes an elementary school in his winter camp.

Close Encounters of No Kind follows the Rabari, camel and sheep herders of Saurastra, India. Their nomadic lifestyle requires them to move herds of sheep and camels across the Saurastrian landscape to seek grazing and water. This practice has been going on for hundreds of years and during that time the Rabari have developed close working relationships with many groups and deeply adverse relations with other groups.

The shooting of this peasant chronicle in the Gruyère region of Switzerland lasted a whole year, from July 1989 to July 1990. A year of work and festivities in the family of Conrad and Louise Bapst, their children and grandchildren who live in La Roche (canton of Fribourg).

"On a winter day north of the Arctic Circle, nine-year-old Elsa--daughter of S̀mi reindeer herders--sees a man brutally kill her beloved reindeer calf and threaten her into silence. When her father takes her to report the crime, local police tell them that there is nothing they can do about these "stolen" animals. Killings like these are classified as theft in the reports that continue to pile up, uninvestigated. But reindeer are not just the S̀mi's...

In the midst of a traditional herding territory, a growing town and a new road encroach upon a once-isolated desert people. The complexities brought about by this modernization are shown as two fathers and their sons confront difficult choices between old ways and new.

Traces the history of the Eveny people in northeast Siberia, focusing on how the culture's social relationships are formed through an intense partnership with reindeer as they migrate over the swamps, ice sheets, and mountain peaks that make up the world's coldest inhabited region.