Every other year, in a scouting camp on the east coast of America, the Vohra Families Reunion takes place. During the three days of this event, participants gather from all over North America to meet distant relatives, make new acquaintances, and celebrate their shared origins in the Charotar region in Gujarat, west India.

The film ‘Everybody needs a tribe’ shows how a community - a ‘tribe’, as participants say - is created as well as challenged during this event. The organisers are reaching the age of retirement and hope that a new generation will take over their tasks. Will young people be motivated to keep organising it in the future?

‘Everybody needs a tribe’ (2019) has been produced, filmed, and edited by Sanderien Verstappen in conversation with members of the Muslim Vohra Association of America (since 2019: Vohra Association of North America). An article about the film has been published in HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory (2024).

Screenings

‘Everybody needs a tribe’ is released for academic and educational purposes. If you would like to organise a screening, please send an email.
* 30 June 2021, Vienna (online). Lecture with screening during the CREOLE Master Intensive Programme, organised by the University of Vienna and University Poznan, Poland.
* 25 March, 2020, Lucerne (online). Lecture with partial screening during the Colloquium of the Anthropology Department, University of Lucerne.
* 15 October 2019, Bern. Lecture with screening during the Research Seminar of the Anthropology Department, University of Bern.
* 20 November 2019, Tuebingen. Lecture with screening during the Colloquium of the Anthropology Department, University of Tuebingen.
* 27 June 2019, Tuebingen. Lecture with screening for Master students at the Anthropology Department, University of Tuebingen.
* 18 January 2019, London. Try-out screening at the Royal Anthropological Institute during the SOAS conference ‘The Familiar Stranger’, SOAS South Asia Institute, University of London.