Erik Balling was a Danish TV and film director. He created two of Denmark's most popular TV-series and Huset på Christianshavn, his feature film Qivitoq was nominated for a Golden Palm at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival, for an Oscar as Best Foreign Language Film. His 1962 film Den kære familie was entered into the 3rd Moscow International Film Festival. Together with Henning Bahs, he created the hugely popular series of Olsen Gang feature films. Balling started working for the largest and oldest Danish film production company, Nordisk Films Kompagni, in 1946, he became the boss of the company. His made his directing debut with Adam & Eva, nominated for a Bodil-award as Best Film. In 1956 he directed Kispus, the first Danish movie filmed in color; the most popular films directed by Balling were the feature film comedies about a trio of small-time crooks, the Olsen Gang. There were 13 episodes of this movie series between 1981, starting with Olsen-banden, they were remade in several languages. In 1998, Erik Balling received an Honorary Robert Award.

Christian Monggaard, Balling – Hans liv og film, Informations Forlag, 2011. ISBN 978-87-7514-279-8. Karen Thisted, Erik Balling: manden med de største succeser i dansk film, Møntergården, 1996. ISBN 87-7553-555-6. Erik Balling - Som barn var jeg voldsomt hidsig, Aschehoug, 1998. ISBN 87-11-11180-1. Erik Balling - Gedächtnisbilder: Über ein Leben, die Olsenbande und all die anderen schöne Filme, Mosamax Verlag, Dresden 2016. ISBN 978-3-9817140-0-5 "Erik Balling er død, 80 år". Danmarks Radio. 19 November 2005. Retrieved 23 December 2010. Erik Balling on IMDb Erik Balling at the British Film Institute Erik Balling in the Danish Film Database Erik Balling at Find a Grave

Gumlau spelt Gumlao, is a Kachin and Jinghpaw concept that can be used to describe a social system where the political entity is a village or confederation of villages, described as emphasizing democracy and anarchism, In contemporary Jinghpaw it does not refer to a social system, but can carry the meaning of rebellion. E. R. Leach in the book Political Systems of Highland Burma described the gumlau system and contrasted it with the gumsa system. Leach's "ideal model" of a gumlau system noted that gumlau villages tended to cluster in a confederation with no village being superior, that there was no heredity class system with the associated customary tributes from villagers to chiefs. Leach wrote that Mayu-Dama was not essential to gumlau and that where it was, differences in rank were minimised by keeping the bride price low or by forming circles. However, Maran La Maw notes that although Leach claimed that gumlau societies formed marriage circles within the mayu-dama system in order to minimize class relations, he did not find evidence of this in the areas Leach described, but did find that marriage circles were a part of gumsa societies.

In gumlau societies, justice was delivered by a council of elders which were not heredity. The Gumlau system acted as a mechanism against states as its ideology rejected chiefs or killed those who tried to claim dominant positions. During the British colonial period, gumlau villages termed "republics" by the colonials made navigating Kachinland difficult and the area difficult to govern, hence the British aimed to suppress gumlau rebellions or systems. While Gumlau is not today used as a word to mean social system, many of the ideals described by Leach and others can be found in gumrawng gumtsa or zaw gumsa system; the origins of gumlau are described in Kawlu Ma Nawng's 1942 book The History of the Kachins of the Hukawng Valley which describes origin stories occurring 300–400 years before its publication. In one of the accounts, Dumsa La Lawn makes an offering to a sky spirit called Sinlap who shows him a bird's eye view of gumlau and gumsa villages, explaining that in gumlau villages all men were equal and unlike gumsa villages, men did not have to make customary offerings of animal thighs to chiefs.

Following his return to the world, the Dumsa and the chief of the village begin a feud which culminates in the Dumsa killing the chief and beginning a gumlau rebellion. A second origin story describes the "Blacksmith-Priest" rebellion started by the N'Dup Dumsa lineage who rebelled against their treatment from their relatives who saw them as lower status due to the circumstances of their birth. In 1820s Assam, J. B. Neufville used the term not to describe a system but individual men who were living in their Mayu's house. In the 1860s, violent Gumlau rebellions occurred in Kachinland. Leach believed that the Gumlau and the Gumsa systems formed an oscillatory model and that gumsa polities would become gumlao and vice versa; however this model has been criticized as being overly theoretical and not taking into account historical events. Friedman saw political and economic situations such as debt resulting from Bride price payments or low returns on farming yields as being factors contributing to gumlau upheavals