Sound
Spiritual
[vid] ROBERT NORTON Vocal Harmonics
Film
[2003] The Story of the Weeping Camel.
When a Mongolian nomadic family's newest camel colt is rejected by its
mother, a musician is needed for a ritual to change her mind.
Set in contemporary Mongolia, the film explores the interwoven destinies of a
family of herders and the animals they raise in their desert home, specifically
a vulnerable baby camel who cries for the attentions of its mother. Without its
mother’s milk, the little camel will not survive, so, in accordance with an
ancient ritual, a musician is summoned from a far-off village to perform a
ceremony that is meant to coax the mother into nursing her baby. While trying to
bring the mother and baby camel together, the children of the family are exposed
to long-standing tradition as well as modern day concepts for the very first
time, including such worldly fascinations as television.
Apart from reuniting parent with child, legend has it that the ritual has the
miraculous side effect of causing the mother to weep. Exploring a distant and
exotic culture in which tradition, myth and family unity (both human and animal)
are essential elements of daily life, The Story of the Weeping Camel is a window
into a different way of living and the universal terrain of the heart.
Shot in the Gobi desert, the film combines unstaged, unrehearsed sequences with
carefully prepared recreations of authentic experience, blending the best of
fiction and documentary techniques in order to capture for the first time in a
dramatic feature an all-but-vanished way of life.