Adventures of a Brown Man in Search of Civilization is a 54 minute color documentary based on the life and thoughts of Nirad C. Chaudhuri

Nirad C. Chaudhuri

Italic textNirad C. Chaudhuri was a Bengali−English writer and cultural commentator...

. It was made in 1972 and was directed by James Ivory

James Ivory (director)

James Francis Ivory is an American film director, best known for the results of his long collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions, which included both Indian-born film producer Ismail Merchant, and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala...

. In this, Chaudhuri (who was then based in London and Oxford) expounds his views on culture

Culture

Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...

, history

History

History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

, religion

Religion

Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...

 and society

Society

A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...

 from a comparative perspective.

It is available in the DVD sets of several Merchant Ivory films.