Each "work" in this collection is a set of documentary-style videos in mp4 (m4v) format. The initial (2023) set of works is as follows: "farming and plant gathering (Mali mp4)", "construction and boatbuilding (Mali mp4)", "fishing (Mali mp4)", "food and beverage preparation (Mali mp4)", metalwork and woodwork (Mali mp4)", "cultural events (Mali mp4)", "firearms and gunpowder (Mali mp4)", "pottery (Mali mp4)", and "weaving and dyeing (Mali mp4)". Funding: National Science Foundation, Documenting Endangered Languages program. The readme's for each work give further details. Additional works with new videos may be added in the future.
See also the Deep Blue Data collections "Burkina Faso documentary videos" and "Central Mali documentary videos". The latter contains Mali videos archived in 2018.
Short documentary videos of practical activities and cultural events of Dogon, Fulbe, Songhay, and Bangande ethnic groups of eastern Central Mali. The videos were byproducts of linguistic research on the local language. They are presented here in three formats: wmv, avi, and either qt or mov. See the "readme" files in each work for a summary of the videos in it. and The footage was shot with various digital cameras. The oldest videos (2010 and one or two from 2011) were edited using iMovie. The later videos were edited using AVS editing software. Several of the 2010 videos, referred to as "compilations," are simple sequences of short clips that combine to illustrate a complex activity such as extracting oil from nuts. The later videos are in more flowing documentary form with overlaid titles in English. In some cases, vocabulary from the relevant native language is included in the titles.
