About the Film
The Last Dance is an observational documentary about the Watha tribe of galana Kenya.
Traditionally the Watha are hunter gatherers. Presently they are caught in a changing world of population increase and modernisation. In the face of rapid change, their mastery of the environment and legendary hunting skills have become less and less relevant. Disenfranchised their staple way of life was outlawed immediately following Kenya's blanket hunting ban in 1974 and again before that with the founding of Tsavo East National Park in 1948. They now struggle to determine their destiny and retain their identity.
This film will document this mysterious tribe's culture which has been little understood even by neighbouring peoples for centuries.
The Watha of Galana currently live a teetering existence of subsistence farming, subsistence poaching and commercial ivory poaching.
The film will revolve mostly around a central family, belonging to the Elder Badiva Kiribai Wario. It will explore their history, traditional intertribal economics, folk traditions and intricacies of their culture.
It will document their incredible survival methods and bushcraft skills, which include bush medicine, gathering and of course the tracking of game animals for which they are renowned to the brink of being mythicised.
The film will also explore a central controversial issue: the now illegal hunting of elephants, a protected and rapidly declining species undergoing a decimation across the African continent.
Traditionally the Watha are hunter gatherers. Presently they are caught in a changing world of population increase and modernisation. In the face of rapid change, their mastery of the environment and legendary hunting skills have become less and less relevant. Disenfranchised their staple way of life was outlawed immediately following Kenya's blanket hunting ban in 1974 and again before that with the founding of Tsavo East National Park in 1948. They now struggle to determine their destiny and retain their identity.
This film will document this mysterious tribe's culture which has been little understood even by neighbouring peoples for centuries.
The Watha of Galana currently live a teetering existence of subsistence farming, subsistence poaching and commercial ivory poaching.
The film will revolve mostly around a central family, belonging to the Elder Badiva Kiribai Wario. It will explore their history, traditional intertribal economics, folk traditions and intricacies of their culture.
It will document their incredible survival methods and bushcraft skills, which include bush medicine, gathering and of course the tracking of game animals for which they are renowned to the brink of being mythicised.
The film will also explore a central controversial issue: the now illegal hunting of elephants, a protected and rapidly declining species undergoing a decimation across the African continent.
