By Staff Reporter
WINDHOEK
A documentary film on the Ovahimba people, “Keep the Dance Alive”, by Rina Sherman will be premiered at a major American film and video festival in New York on Sunday November 11.
“A rare privilege it was to have shared the lives of the Ovahimba people. I would not forfeit it for anything else. It has transformed my spirit. What in discourse is referred to as dance and music representation, constitutes a dense and complex imaginary universe in the culture of the Ovahimba, a people, like many others in Africa, which live artistic and spiritual expressions as seamless transitions from one moment of life to the next. In this sense my work with the Ovahimba forms part of contemporary expression and thought,” said filmmaker, Rina Sherman.
The film, giving a singular vision of Ovahimba music, dance and spirit possession, was produced by her over a period of seven years in Namibia and Angola.
“The film shows unique footage of how dance and spirit possession is integrated into everyday life from infancy to death and thereafter in the lives of the Ovahimba people of north-western Namibia and south-western Angola,” she said.
“Keep the Dance Alive” is part of “The Ovahimba Year”, a long-term multi disciplinary ethnographic study of the Ovahimba and other Otjiherero language speaking peoples of north-western Namibia and south-western Angola.