Localfilms is a grassroots production company that partners with international humanitarian organizations to empower communities through film. Filmmaker Peter Jordan provides children and adults with the equipment and knowledge to make their own movies, which have examined from a local perspective issues of gender, education, famine, illness, and community. To date, Localfilms has collaborated with communities in Kenya, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Tanzania, Botswana, and Zimbabwe and screened at conferences in Asia, Europe, and America and in villages throughout Africa. You can view many Localfilms in their entirety on this website. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or requests.


Remembering the Cow

Tanzania, dvd-rom, 2006
dir. Peter Jordan

Among the cattle herding Maasai people of northern Tanzania, a one thousand year old tradition is being lost.

With the spread of Swahili-based formal education, Maasai children are growing up for the first time without knowing the language of their ancestors. And the untenability of a nomadic pastoralist livelihood, in the face of severe drought and land privitization, is causing children to lose respect for the ways of their parents.

In an attempt to unite formal education with Maasai tradition, the songs, stories, riddles, and games that used to constitute a Maasai child's cattle rearing education are being documented. The vast findings of this research will form the basis of an innovative new early childhood curriculum that strengthens Maasai tradition while planning for the future.

Produced in partnership with Monduli Pastoralist Development Initiatives (Tanzania).