Sailing a Sinking Sea is a feature-length experimental documentary about the culture of the Moken people of Burma and Thailand. From the excerpt:
The Moken are a seafaring community and one of the smallest ethnic minority groups in Asia, traditionally spending eight months out of the year in thatch-roofed wooden boats. Wholly reliant upon the sea, their entire belief system revolves around water. Sailing A Sinking Sea weaves a visual and aural tapestry of Moken mythologies and present-day practices. As a viewer you will swim under the sea past fishes and mermaids, sail boats across turquoise waters, land on 13 different islands, step inside sea shanties on stilts, delve into the minds of shamans, become possessed through the worship of sea gods, dance between lovers and emerge drenched in Moken mythology.
Some notes from the director:
Almost every single Moken survived the Tsunami of 2004, thanks to premonitions from their shamans and ancestral wisdom gained from generations of living intimately with the sea. Numbering less than 3,000 they are the nomads scattered throughout the Andaman Sea and the Mergui Archipelago of Thailand and Myanmar. Living symbiotically with the sea they have a relationship seamlessly integrated with one of the most powerful forces in nature that it has manifested in living myths. In the wake of the tsunami, the Moken have come under unprecedented pressure to assimilate into the mainstream and the mainland.