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The Intersection
« Will Republicans Attack Climate Preparedness Measures Even at the Cost of National Security?
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Ikland–A New Film By Cevin Soling & David Hilbert

by Chris Mooney

While I was at MIT and living in Cambridge, MA, I met many talented and fascinating people, among them filmmaker and musician Cevin Soling (perhaps most famous forĀ Boris the Dog and The War on Kids) and filmmaker and movie editor David Hilbert.

Now, they’ve collaborated on a great new film that you should know about. It’s called Ikland, and subtitled, “A Film About the Worst People in the World.” That’s ironic: The Ik are a tribe in northern Uganda who were famously described in anthropologist Colin Turnbull’s 1972 influential book The Mountain People. Only, Soling argues that in his negative depiction of the Ik, Turnbull got it very wrong.

So Soling and his crew venture into Uganda–a very dangerous trip–to try to meet the tribe that Turnbull criticized–and the result is this film. Here’s the trailer:

I particularly like the unusual filmic style, which you can see in the trailer–black background with many scenes unfolding in multiple windows. It adds a very cool and different quality–if I only hadn’t quit film studies back in college I could probably say something more profound about it.

Bottom line is, check out Ikland. In the end, the film might be best described as a unique attempt to repeat a famous scientific experiment (Turnbull’s)–one that, in the testing, comes up with a very different outcome.

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June 6th, 2011 12:16 PM
in Culture | 2 comments | RSS feed | Trackback >

2 Responses to “Ikland–A New Film By Cevin Soling & David Hilbert”

  1. 1.   Karen Says:
    June 6th, 2011 at 1:51 pm

    One reason I read this blog is findings out about this type of work. Thank you!

  2. 2.   Ikland: Some Sample Clips | The Intersection | Discover Magazine Says:
    June 8th, 2011 at 9:52 am

    [...] already praised the film Ikland, but I wanted to embed some sample videos to show how charming the film is, even as [...]





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      Chris Mooney is host of the Point of Inquiry podcast and the author of three books, The Republican War on Science, Storm World, and Unscientific America. He was recently seen on MSNBC's "The Last Word" discussing "The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science," and recently wrote for The American Prospect magazine about how the reality-based community is moving to the left.

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