Imbalu
odd: label: Local Number
content: HSFA 1985.1.2
name: label: Collection Filmmaker
content: Hawkins, Richard C., 1922-2015
label: Collection Anthropologist
content: Heald, Suzette
label: Collection Creator
content: MacDougall, David
setName: label: See more items in
content: Richard Hawkins Imbalu films
physdesc: label: Extent
content: 1 Videocassette (61 minutes, color sound)
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1967
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: Human Studies Film Archives
objectType: label: Type
content: Archival materials
label: Type
content: Videocassettes
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: Edited film made in association with the University of California, Los Angeles, Ethnographic Film Program documents a male initiation ceremony among the Gisu of the Mt. Elgon region of eastern Uganda. The story of Gisu circumcision emerges through the narrative of two boys who announce their intention to undergo the ordeal of circumcision together. Film provides insight into circumcision as a central social institution which defines adult male identity and the unity of the Gisu as a people. Film includes: discussions among kinsmen of the candidates' fitness, dancing and drumming around the initiates' compounds, animal sacrifice and divination by reading entrails to assess the propitiousness of the event, brewing of millet beer for the ceremony, annointing of initiates with beer yeast, and initiates' seculsion and circumcision by a ritual specialist.