Nai The Story of a Kung Woman (1980)

This film provides a broad overview of Juhoan life both past and present and an intimate portrait of Nai a Juhoan woman who in 1978 was in her midthirties Nai tells her own story and in so doing the story of Juhoan life over a thirty year period Before the white people came we did what we wanted Nai recalls describing the life she remembers as a child following her mother to pick berries roots and nuts as the season changed the division of giraffe meat the kinds of rain her resistance to her marriage to Gunda at the age of eight and her changing feelings about her husband when he becomes a healer As Nai speaks the film presents scenes from the 1950s that show her as a young girl and a young wife The uniqueness of Nai may lie in its tight integration of ethnography and history While it portrays the changes in Juhoan society over thirty years it never loses sight of the individual Nai