Travel Web Dir - Travel Directory » Show YouTube video
The Magic of the Dinka
The Dinka
The Magic of the Dinka short documentary is a film of approximately 12 minutes. We intend to change the script into a first person narration and use a young Sudanese woman to read the narration. It is essential that everything in this film is 100% true including the accent of the narrator and the original Sudanese soundtrack.
Amongst the Dinka's, which is the largest tribe in Africa, we find two young people. A young man called Kadi and a girl called Nyankor. Kadi wants to buy Nyankor so she can be his first wife. But marriage in the Dinka world is expensive and complicated. The Dinka's are selling their daughters getting cows as payment. The women in South Sudan are the most expensive in the world. A girl can be sold for over 100 cows, each cow worth over $400, with the Sudanese average income of less than $2 per day. Women are an expensive and cherished commodity. But some Dinka's have over 100 wives. Each wife's has her own house, land and animals spread over a large area, her husband spends his life walking from one wife's homes to another in order to produce as many children, especially as many girls as possible.
For months are bride to be Nyankor's family has been traveling from one cattle camp to another to negotiate the largest number of cows possible. Cows are their valuate, and the more cows one has the higher position a Dinka has in society.
Dinka's are known as being the tallest and most elegant people in the world. They have their own ideas about beauty. Dinka women remove 6 of their front teeth so they can spit as far as possible, and decorate their face and body with scars and the ash from burnt out cowpats.
In this short film we will be looking up at the Dinka culture not down. The Dinka do not have a written language, so history is passed on from generation to generation through story telling. This will be the style of the narration in this short film. We will follow a day in the life in this unique culture.
The strength of this short film is in the use of film and 50% still pictures. We will also use an original film music score, and a poetic narration.
