Nǃai, the Story of a ǃKung Woman

Nǃai, the Story of a ǃKung Woman is a documentary film by ethnographic filmmaker John Marshall.

The film was first broadcast in 1980 as part of the Odyssey series on PBS and is distributed by Documentary Educational Resources.

"Before the white people came we did what we wanted," Nǃai recalls, describing the life she remembers as a child: following her mother to pick berries, roots, and nuts as the season changed; the division of giraffe meat; the kinds of rain; her resistance to her marriage to ǀGunda at the age of eight; and her changing feelings about her husband when he becomes a healer.

While it portrays the changes in Juǀʼhoan society over thirty years, it never loses sight of the individual, Nǃai.

The film is credited with the introduction of the dialogical structure, whereby both the voices of the filmmaker and the subject are woven together to tell the story.