Margaret Mead Traveling Film Festival in Houston Mar 23, 2012 12:00 AM

The Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival is the longest-running showcase for international documentaries in the United States, encompassing a broad spectrum of work, from indigenous community media to experimental nonfiction. The Festival is distinguished by its outstanding selection of titles, which tackle diverse and challenging subjects, representing a range of issues and perspectives, and by the forums for discussion with filmmakers and speakers. The Festival was founded by the American Museum of Natural History in 1977, in honor of pioneering anthropologist Margaret Mead on her seventy-fifth birthday and her fiftieth year at the Museum. A film festival represented an especially apt form with which to celebrate Mead's life, as she was one of the first anthropologists to recognize the significance of film for fieldwork. From 1936 to 1938, working among the Balinese with Gregory Bateson and cinematographer Jane Belo, Mead produced "Trance and Dance in Bali," "Learning to Dance in Bali," and "Karba's First Years." She also produced films that examined child rearing from a cross-cultural perspective, including "Bathing Babies in Three Cultures." The Festival occasionally screens Mead's films. For a schedule of the films to be screened during this year's festival, please visit http://www.ricecinema.rice.edu