The Vanishing People
A rare glimpse into the lives of the Onge — one of the last Negrito hunting-gathering tribes on Earth — on their remote island home in the Bay of Bengal, now threatened with extinction.
About the Film
The film captures the Onge people's traditional skills — fishing, building dugout boats, surviving on their own terms within the forests of Little Andaman. Only the third film ever made on this tribe, and likely the only one to have been broadcast.
Beyond observing daily life, the documentary provides evidence of the damage wrought by government policies and illegal logging in what had been declared a tribal reserve as far back as 1957. It is a film about resilience, about a way of life that predates the modern world by tens of thousands of years, and about what happens when that world arrives uninvited.
Screenings & Features
Mumbai International Film Festival
January 1998 — World Premiere
Labocine — Issue Being An Island, 2021