Television’s ubiquitous nature shows in the sixties and seventies perpetuated a myth of rural Africa as a modern-day Eden where great beasts roamed free across remote, empty plains. But as one environmental advocate in this film puts it, if the photographers had turned their cameras around, audiences would have seen small communities of people living amongst these magnificent creatures. Members of Africa’s Maasai and Himba tribes are finding themselves at a crossroads. Some see the lucrative potential of self-run wildlife tourism, while other local residents perceive game management as a remnant of Western colonialism at odds with their need to make a living ranching and farming. In the words of one bemused villager, if you need to kill an antelope to survive, you must get permission “from a committee of white men.” If you expect a dry, educational video, brace yourself instead for a complex, provocative journey from Kenya’s rolling grasslands to Namibia’s mountainous deserts in a film that’s bursting with life, color, controversy, and hope.  TW