Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World

rdf:langString Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World

rdf:langString Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World is a 1992 documentary television series of ten one-hour episodes celebrating the lifeways and worldviews of small scale non-technological societies as the last of them face their inevitable accommodation with the 'modern world'. The Western world's desire to remake other societies into its own image robs our modern world of the gifts of other cultures. By exploring the values and different worldviews that hold many tribal societies together, the Millennium series reflects on what the modern world can learn from tribal societies as we all face the challenges of the next millennium: harmony with the natural world and one another, humility and tolerance, and a sense of belonging. Ten years in the making, the Millennium series draws on oral tradition with a bold experiential approach to non-fiction television, mixing first-person storytelling, philosophical inquiry, dramatization and traditional documentary filmmaking. Each episode explores a theme central to the larger question of what it means to be human through personal stories observed, told and enacted by individuals from both the traditional and the modern worlds. Conceived of by Richard Meech, the series was produced and directed by Michael Grant and Richard Meech. In the early 1980's they began to assemble a team of anthropologists and filmmakers to help them realize the ambitious project that included Harvard University anthropologist David Maybury-Lewis, who hosted the series and authored the Millennium companion book of the same name published by Viking Penguin, British producer Adrian Malone, who served as executive producer and head writer, and German film composer Hans Zimmer, who wrote and produced the score for the series. Millennium was supported by numerous sponsors (see below) but the extraordinary vision and financial commitment of Anita Roddick and her husband Gordon Roddick, founders of The Body Shop, formed the cornerstone of that support. The Millennium series premiered in February 1992 on The Global Television Network. It was broadcast nationally on PBS in May 1992 and later on BBC Television. The series was broadcast in numerous other countries in the following years with global viewership approaching 100 million.