ABSTRACT
These lines were written in the Niger Republic in 1978, during rare moments of respite in a struggle to film, in a sometimes brutal landscape of thorn, sand, and violent storms, inexhaustible men and women celebrating their own beauty in song and dance. The struggle resulted in the completion of a film called Deep Hearts, a journal containing the following brief notations, and a group of illustrative still photographs. The film, about the Borroro, who are nomadic herders, looks at a contest called gerewol, in which young male dancers are judged as to which of them best exemplifies Borroro ideals of beauty, grace, and manliness.
