Un film sur la relation entre l’anthropologue Rina Sherman et une famille Omuhimba avec qui elle a vécu durant sept ans, filmant et photographiant des aspects de leurs vies quotidienne et rituelle.

A film about the relationship between anthropologist, Rina Sherman and an Omuhimba family with whom she lived for seven years, filming and photographing aspects of their everyday and ritual lives. Halfway through her tenure in the field, Rina Sherman presented a multi-media exhibition, entitled The Ovahimba Years: Work in Progress in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia. A group of young people from the community of Etanga travelled to Windhoek to participate in the exhibition.
The film explores the evolution of this relationship that lead to the exhibition, shows the group of young people discovering the presentation of their cultural heritage at the exhibition, holding performances as part of the programme presented, and shows the resulting discussions and consequences of the exhibition, once everyone is back in Ovahimba country. When Visitors Come is a film about an anthropologist in situ, and evokes several notions central to fieldwork, such as the nature of the bond between the observer and the observed, the observed observer, participant-anthropology and emotion as possible vector or hindrance in fieldwork.

by Rina Sherman
part of the The Ovahimba Years Project
color, 51 min, 2000


Production :
Art Cinématographique Artisanal, Low Tech Film Art.


Film Festivals, Screenings, Awards
April 2004 | Cinéma et anthropologie filmique, Chroniques d’un autre regard, La Cinémathéque de la Danse, Paris, France
* Festival Selection

2002 | National Theatre of Namibia, 2002
* Premiere

October 2000 | 21st Durban International Film Festival
* Festival Selection