Tawai: A Voice from the Forest

Bruce is able to convey a meaningful and thought provoking documentary that not only stems from the heart but challenges our value systems. The sadness that is evoked by witnessing the slow demise of a Hunter Gatherer tribe from the forests of Borneo in Malaysia is very moving. Bruce captures their emotion and shows us the simplicity in which they live their daily lives, in where time stands still and is not merely a western construct but a way of life. According to Bruce, it is the closest experience he has had of living in an egalitarian society. No one tells anyone what to do, there is no ego and if anyone succumbs to one, they soon realise their folly and correct themselves or face the repercussions of not fitting in. Balance is restored and the tribe go about their business as before. Sounds like a plan for the future, if only we could get over our selfishness and greed.

This should be forcibly shown to everyone. If we force people to sit through the drudgery that is school, or work, THIS is far more important and enlightening than any science or math class. Anyone saying this viewpoint is naive obviously knows nothing of the world they live in - they simply exist in the paradigm, relying on others to tell them where they live and what space they occupy. You can tell that these people and anyone like them have a FAR DEEPER understanding of the natural world, which goes beyond what science can tell you, especially from these people who are really actors themselves like Degrasse Tyson. Science has convoluted this truth into bits and pieces, material things which they have convinced you that you need. The problem is that, because someone actually shows respect, they are disrespected. Unfortunately these people will also not take up arms to defend themselves, thus they are unjustly forced out of their homes because people need to eat chocolate and wash with fancy soaps. Globalisation IS a problem because we have gotten away from the truth of how the world works, in favor of manipulating it, trying to solve problems with more problems, ultimately only leading up to a reliance on government and useless human beings who have zero interest in actually positively building up the world around them. But to each their own - despite the fact that NONE of us are given a choice - we are FORCED into this god forsaken corrupt commercial and material lifestyle which does nothing but generate trash and waste, including out of the bodies of the people themselves (i.e. people are trash).

In my view, this is a movie that should be screened in schools all over the world. I truly believe that it speaks to a deep yearning and void that modern society is struggling to pin down and relieve.

I watched the movie when it first came out in 2017, now, after watching again (8 years later), I find its message even more pressing and relevant --leadership, plurality of thought and beliefs, nature as the host of life-- are all things that this life-changing journey will head anyone into. A true hint towards the light at the end of the tunnel.

Thanks to all the people involved for making this movie!

This documentary is not bad per se. The drone flights are a bit of an overkill and the shaky handheld frames are just the way they are. But that is not the main critic. The way Bruce Parry tries to explain the world and its downward spiral towards globalization and claiming to have found a safe haven in a few simple cultures. However, the mentioned cultures in this documentary would also not be sustainable once blown up to continental or even global scale. There would simply not be enough environmental space for billions of people living the same life-style. Bruce Parry keeps on repeating the same mantra over and over again like if he had found the key to all problems of our civilization.

Hypocritical at best.

3/10: Not really worth your while.

I wasn't expecting to come out from seeing the film with a sense of being lost....lost because of the way we are losing this world, of what we are doing to our planet, to each other. It is as if human beings have forgotten the connection to earth, to grounding, and how we just are making life so complicated for ourselves. I loved the simplicity of the tribe, with no-one in charge and everyone is equal, a novel idea to us in the west with our cut throat ideas. I have recently held an exhibition called Home/Beit, asking Palestinians where or what Home is to them, one of the responses we had from a Bedouin elder was about a tree, it has roots and if those roots aren't planted in deep enough soil it will never thrive. We just don't have our roots planted deeply enough within nature to thrive fully. One of my comments I said during today's q and a, was that this should be showed everywhere, especially in schools. To me it is a must see. I am left with a sense of yearning for something I can't quite put my finger on, but what I do know is that I have to make changes in my life to have a knock on effect for people I will probably never ever meet, but possibly share some form of DNA with. Like Bruce, I had that connection of 'oneness' in India, it was quite overwhelming and profound...life can never be the same after that. Thank you for this film.