Film Center Gets a $167,000 Grant To Make Movie on Primitive Tribe

The Harvard Film Center has received a $167,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to make a film on nomadic tribes in Niger and neighboring Nigeria for the U.S. Government.

The film is the third of a trilogy planned by the Peabody Museum on the three types of primitive societies: hunting and gathering, agricultural, and nomadic-pastoral.

Before Erosion

The museum commissioned the films to record primitive societies before they are eroded by the modernization process, Robert G. Gardner '48, director of the Center said yesterday.

Gardner and three assistants will go to Nigeria next October to study the daily life of the Fulani, a tribe of nomadic sheep herders.

The group will examine the tribe's values, its worries, its ambitions, and its concept of self-identity. "We want to find out what gives them satisfaction living in a harsh landscape doing such arduous tasks," Gardner said.

Gardner emphasized that the success of his study depends on the group being accepted as part of the tribe. To do this they will spend six months wandering across the semi-desert plains of Nigeria with a band of fifteen to twenty Fulani. They will eat Fulani food, dress according to tribal custom, and probably even herd sheep.

The film will take three and a half years to complete, and will be distributed to American high schools and colleges for the study of anthropology.