Director Linda Västrik traveled deep into the lush Congolese rainforest, integrated herself into the pygmy society of the Aka for seven years, and emerged with this piece of artful, humanist anthropology. Besieged by rent-seeking “Owners” on one side and (unbeknown to them) logging companies on the other, the formerly insulated Aka live the only lives they know: men weather bee stings to gather honeycombs from the canopy overhead, an elderly woman recounts the myth of how women discovered men, a “doctor” uses mystical ceremonies to ascertain the true causes of horrible events, and a young woman worries about the prospect of divorce if the child in her womb is stillborn. Forest of the Dancing Spirits is a glimpse into the hard work of cultural self-preservation on the precipice of modernity. (KP) Sponsored by the Mustard Seed.