Last night my son (age 9) and I went to see The Story of the Weeping Camel. It was a beautiful little film, and full of music.

"Springtime in the Gobi Desert, South Mongolia. A family of nomads assists in the births of their camel herd. One of the camels has a difficult delivery, and when her rare white calf is born she rejects it, refusing it the milk it needs to survive. In accordance with an ancient ritual, the shepherds summon a musician from a far-off village to perform a magical ceremony - the calf's last hope..."

There is not only the music of the ritual - the climax of the movie - but the singing of the great-grandmother as she embraces a ewe while she nurses her lamb, the lullaby the mother sings her little girl to sleep with, and as a finale, the after-supper singing session with their guests, where the younger son is praised for his solo song and everyone finishes up with a good sing-along. And then there's the music of the wind and the amazing sounds of the camels...

The movie was conceived and co-directed as a Munich Film School final project in documentary film-making by Byambasuren Davaa, a Mongolian woman, and Luigi Falorni (also cinematographer). They were inspired by the early films of Robert J. Flaherty, of "Nanook of the North" and "Man of Aran". They had a story in mind, but worked with a real family of nomads to tell it, without written dialogue.

We recommend it, if you can find it near you, or look for it when it comes to tape or disc.

The related National Geographic Society website (they were in on distribution) is here.

~ Becky in Tucson