Each summer for the past one hundred years, local residents on an otherwise tranquil block in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn turn their lives upside down for two weeks in order to host the reenactment of a centuries-old religious pageant. The annual feast of San Paulino di Nola has its roots in an archaic fertility rite with exotic pagan undertones. Italians from the Campanese village of Nola, who emigrated to Williamsburg in the 1880's, brought...

After a family tragedy, a young American couple joins some friends at a midsummer festival in a remote Swedish village. But, what begins as a carefree summer holiday takes a sinister turn when the insular villagers invite their guests to partake in festivities that grow increasingly unnerving and viscerally disturbing.

In the Footsteps of Taytacha follows a group of Quechua-speaking musicians and dancers as they leave their remote villages high in the Andes Mountains of Peru and join thousands of other highlanders on the annual religious pilgrimage to the sacred peaks of Qoyllur-Rití. Quollur-Rití, the largest and most important religious ritual in the southern Andes, occurs only five days out of the year and involves walking both day and night in terrain over...

Carnival time is big in this small Spanish town in Andalusia. Appropriately described by a local as a 'newspaper', the carnival is a time of dressing up and coming together. The men compose 'spicy' songs about local affairs and sing their social criticisms of national events.

Barunga, in the Northern Territory, hosts an annual festival of Aboriginal sport and culture. In 1988, 200 years after the British flag was raised in Sydney, the festival took on a special meaning. Prime Minister Bob Hawke was invited to attend and the Festival organisers had high expectations of a political outcome. Wenten Rubuntja, Chairman of the Central Land Council, Galarrwuy Yunupingu, Chairman of the Northern Land Council, John Ah Kit, Director,...

"Love comes home for the challah-days in this sparkling romance. Snow is falling, holiday lights are twinkling, and Abby Cohen is pissed. For one thing, her most annoying customer, Seth, has been coming into her café every morning with his sunshiny attitude, determined to break down her carefully constructed emotional walls. And, as the only Jew on the tourism board of her Vermont town, Abby's been charged with planning their fledgling Hanukkah festival....

The Feast of the Blessed Sacrament is a four-day extravaganza that attracts crowds of up to 200,000 to the city of New Bedford, Massachusetts. This documentary film takes viewers on a journey from the excitement of the modern feast to the very roots of the Catholic celebration on the beautiful Portuguese island of Madeira.

Every morning, Kris Pulaski wakes up in hell. In the 1990s she was lead guitarist of Dürt Würk, a heavy-metal band on the brink of breakout success until lead singer Terry Hunt embarked on a solo career and rocketed to stardom, leaving his bandmates to rot in obscurity.Now Kris works as night manager of a Best Western; she's tired, broke, and unhappy. One day everything changes--a shocking act of violence turns her life upside down, and she begins...

Discusses the significance of some of the harvest festivals around the world and describes how they are celebrated.