Benin Kingship Rituals / 1963

Until it was conquered by the British in 1897, the city of Benin, in what is now Nigeria, was the centre of a powerful kingdom. Its rulers, the Obas of Benin, were mysterious, secluded figures who spent much of their time in the performance of rituals designed to enhance their power and to ensure the prosperity of their subjects. Many of the art objects for which Benin is famous were used in these rituals, some of which are still performed. This film shows some of the most significant moments in the rituals that take place around the beginning of the new year, including the greatest event of the ritual year, the Igwe Festival, in which the Obas divine powers are strengthened and renewed. The object of worship is the head of the living Oba, the seat of his ritual energy, on which the well-being of the nation is believed to depend on.

Ritual Objects / 2011

Kala Rongo, a convent in the craggy mountains of Nangchen, Tibet, is home to over 300 nuns who receive spiritual and educational training. In Ritual Objects, we come across a group of nuns who demystify the iconic prayer wheel, walk us through the choreography of a customary welcoming procession, and learn how to prepare a torma, or cake offering, for an intricate tantric ceremony. A selection from Peabody Award-winning documentarian Bari Pearlman’s Nangchen Shorts series, the film brings life and action to little- and well-known Tibetan Buddhist sacraments.

Play, Jankunú Play - The Garifuna Wanaragua Ritual of Belize / 2006

The Garifuna are a Central American people of West African and Native American descent. One of their most popular rituals is wanaragua, a three-fold system of masked Christmas processionals commonly called Jankunú. This ritual is a unique blend of African, European, and Native American (Arawak and Carib) art traditions in which social and cultural identities are expressed through music, dance, and costume. As dancers adorn themselves in colorful regalia to mimic past foreign oppressors they symbolically affirm their identity. They perform stylized movements to the accompaniment of drums and social commentary songs composed by men. Descriptions of the three processions and dance styles are interspersed with interviews by Garifuna singers, drummers, dancers, cultural advocates, and scholars on the significance of rituals.

White Lies: Ritual / 2011

A short film released to correspond with the second studio album of the English Indy Rock band, White LIes. Featuring 3 songs from the album "Bad Love", "Holy Ghost", and "Bigger than Us".

Ritual Re-enactment of Childhood Memories / 1976

A complex video piece for 1/2" video thru 4 video decks: Record-Play-Record2-Play2. Performance at Gutman Library, Harvard; 16mm camera by Andrew Harmon. A 2nd camera recorded the 4 monitors. Quad decks were used to record live and delayed sounds.

Marapu, Fire & Ritual / 2021

Marapu, Fire & Ritual is a story that follows Pak Ledi, Poho Maga’s uncle, as he overcomes his family’s tarnished reputation by taking responsibility to fix the past. He believes it is the right timing to conduct a sacred four day ritual to invite the Marapu spirits back into the village. But not everyone agrees to this. Pak Ledi must first unite the village leaders.

The Musgrave Ritual / 1922

An adaptation of a Sherlock Holmes short story starring Eille Norwood.

That Ritual Thing / 2023

Four friends take part in an internet ritual where they gain supernatural abilities, but to keep them they must fight to the death.

Domestication Ritual #1 / 2010

A film by Sam Hamilton

A puro gesto, un ritual de tango / 2015

Breakfast Ritual: Art Must Be Artificial /

Breakfast Ritual presents a speculative glimpse into a post-Anthropocene future in which human civilization as we know it no longer exists. Over breakfast, an AI in the form of a young girl performs a ritual in semblance of Marina Abramović’s seminal work Art Must Be Beautiful, Artist Must Be Beautiful (1975).

the Ritual 2022 /

A group of teens unknowingly invite something sinister

Animal Facts Club Presents: Endangered Rituals / 2018

Animal Facts Club Presents is an educational, artistically innovative short series about science. It blends large-scale sets, puppetry, animation and choreography with documentary segments. Endangered Rituals focuses on the nearly extinct Attwater Prairie Chicken and the critically endangered Houston Toad who both have incredible mating displays.

Vision Quest: A Ritual for Elephant & Castle /

Vision Quest depicts Marcus Coates’ three-year collaboration with a neighbourhood in Elephant & Castle (South London) that is suffering from a violent gentrification scheme. In this period the artist engaged in a shamanic quest to locate animal spirits able of guiding the community. Practising lengthily rites, the artist together with residents, local politicians and a psychedelic doom rock orchestra, appeal to guardian animals to appear in visions or dreams and to guide them in their troubled housing issues.

Ritual Murder: Inside The Stranglers of Bombay / 2018

documentary on the production of Hammer's The Stranglers of Bombay

Durga (A Ritual) / 1986

A filmic meditation of sexuality, loss and rebirth, in which meaning is built through association, repetition and pace. As with Unfolding and Swan this film was made whilst Syed was still a student at University of East London. The film was structured entirely through the process of exploring 16mm printing techniques; the pace of the film being stipulated by the time it took to fade from a saturated dense black to a ghostly white in which the memory of an image more than the actual image is perceived.

RitualNation / 2000

'RitualNation' is a cross-country visit to three unique American communities: the Burning Man in Nevada, the Rainbow Family in Oregon and the Radical Faeries in Tennessee.

El ritual del cine doméstico / 2020

Excerpts from edited home movies that are part of the collection of the Memory Archive of the Cineteca Nacional (National Film Library)

Rituals for a Still Life / 1975

A stunning graphic composition of form and surface, Rituals for a Still Life links Gillette's video and collage work. Here he constructs a series of enigmatic collages that have as their background a television monitor showing his videotapes. Gillette builds a tension between static objects and the moving video images, both in the deliberate ambiguity of scale, and in the way these images flatten the video image. Meditative yet charged, these collages reveal surface abstraction rarely achieved in video.

Ritual na Bahia /

Recorded in February 2020 "Ritual na Bahia" includes the songs 'Abertura', 'Dois Livros', 'Coisas da Bahia', 'Maçã' and 'Saber'. A film by Alexandre Mortagua and Fernanda Liberti.