LORANG’S WAY

David MacDougall, Judith MacDougall
Austria 1979 | 70 Min. | 16 mm, OmeU

A por­trait of Lorang, the patri­arch of a large home­stead among the semi­no­madic Turkana of north-west­ern Kenya. At the time the film was made, most Turkana (includ­ing Lorang’s own son) saw their way of life con­tin­u­ing unchanged into the future. Lorang, how­ev­er, thought oth­er­wise, for he had been con­script­ed into the King’s African Rifles and seen some­thing of the out­side world. Upon return­ing to Turkana, he had had to strug­gle to catch up to men of his own age in wealth and senior­i­ty. This is a study of a man who has come to see his soci­ety as vul­ner­a­ble und whose tra­di­tion­al role in it has been shaped by that realization.