Anthropology Professor and Chair Peter Biella has studied the Massai people of Africa for 33 years through writing, film and photography. His latest documentary, The Chairman and the Lions, won First Prize in the 2013 EtnoFILM Festival in Croatia in March and the Jury’s Choice Award in the Zanzibar International Film Festival in July.
In The Chairman and the Lions, the Maasai leader of a Tanzanian village battles many lions that threaten his community—shyster lawyers, land grabbers, migration and lack of education. Chairman Frank Ikoyo provides a glimpse into the current world of Maasai—burdened with problems that traditional practices cannot overcome. Ikoyo advocates education as a key to village self-determination, despite the fact that it can produce “educated criminals.” The film depicts Ikoyo’s duties as chairman, persuading women to send daughters to school, interrogating spies in a lawsuit and eliciting the help of a renowned elder to train young warriors in the art of lion hunting.
Dan Chein (B.A., Anthropology, ’11), served as the film’s co-editor and plans to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in the Cinema Department next year.
Director of SF State’s Visual Anthropology program, Biella is past president of the Society for Visual Anthropology and occasional editor of Visual Anthropology Review. His Yanomamo Interactive: The Ax Fight on CD-ROM made a significant contribution to interactive ethnography. Other hypermedia works include Words from the Heart and Maasai Interactive. Biella has produced films in the United States, Egypt, Costa Rica, Peru, Romania and Haiti. His most recent films are collaborations with Tanzania Maasai. Using a Freirian approach in the production of “trigger films,” his Maasai Migrants Series stimulates shared learning about HIV and migration through post-screening discussions let by a Maasai facilitator.
Biella earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from SF State, studying with John Collier Jr., a founder of the visual anthropology field. Biella earned his doctorate in cultural anthropology from Temple University.