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- This little-known World War II battle with Japanese forces on the Alaskan island of Attu includes the accounts of two surviving soldiers. The film tells of the tragic operation that saw ill-prepared American troops take on massive casualties.
- In 'What's the Matter with Kansas?' a politically active Kansas megachurch splinters, moves to an amusement park, and when that fails, a Best Western motel. Meanwhile, an idealistic farmer revives Kansas' progressive tradition, taking his message all the way to Washington, D.C.
- The students of England's only free school defend themselves before Parliament, as it attempts to shut down their school.
- This film follows the hunting of a giraffe by four members of the Ju/'hoansi (a !Kung Bushmen tribe) over a 13-day period in the Kalahari desert. The film consists of footage shot in 1952-53 on a Smithsonian-Harvard Peabody expedition.
- Shot in the arid landscape of West Bali, Tajen follows multiple narrative threads of the ancient spectacle of the Balinese cockfight. Through attention to the blade, the rooster, and the cockfighter, the film conveys the intimacy, brutality, and festivity of the fight. The film, and its companion website Tajen: Interactive were conceptualized as a visual ethnography to complement Clifford Geertz's seminal piece, "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight" and bring the study of the fight into the 21st century.
- Monir explores the life and practice of Iranian artist Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, one of the most innovative and influential artists working in the Middle East today.
- This film provides a broad overview of !Kung life, both past and present, and an intimate portrait of N!ai, a !Kung woman who in 1978 was in her mid-thirties.
- Five individuals with disabilities unlock their potential towards employment, live independently and show the value they can bring to society.
- An examination of biculturalism wrapped in an extraordinary personal odyssey.
- A detailed overview of contemporary life in the tiny South Pacific country of Tuvalu, this film documents the earth's first sovereign nation faced with total destruction due to the effects of global warming. With a population of about 11,000 living on a total landmass of only 20 square miles - less than Manhattan - spread over nine low-lying atolls 600 miles to the north of Fiji, Tuvalu has been inhabited for over four millennia. The warm-spirited and highly community-oriented people of this ex-British colony struggle to survive economically while confronting the likelihood of having to evacuate their homeland en masse within the next 50 years. As the industrial world just begins to address the threat and causes of global warming, rising seas and increasingly violent changes in climate have already left their marks on this poor island nation. The government of Tuvalu and other concerned organizations are directing their pleas for solutions to the wealthy countries whose high pollution emissions could be the central human contribution to this phenomenon. Observation, narration, and interviews with Tuvalu citizens from various walks of life flesh out a full portrait of a unique community confronting a dubious future on the front lines of a global environmental assault.
- When Medicine Got it Wrong is the groundbreaking story of loving parents who rocked the halls of psychiatry, changing how we understand schizophrenia. In the 1970s, a small group of parents rebelled against then-popular psychiatric theories blaming schizophrenia on bad parenting. Their activism helped revolutionize treatment forever and their stories reveal the origins of the tragic state of mental health care today.
- This film, shot in 1955, focuses on a small band of /Gwi San living in the arid landscape of the central Kalahari Desert in present-day Botswana.
- Heavy mist hangs over the towering Peruvian mountains as a young subsistence farmer, Feliciano, his wife Locrecia, and their small son Royer till their fertile land. Farming the fields above the Sacred Valley in southern Peru is all the indigenous people of Mullacas know - that and the taste of the local fermented corn beverage, chicha. Though theirs appears at first glance to be a peaceful life, isolation and lack of schooling have given rise to feelings of social inequality and an increase in alcoholism. So while he values the beauty of their surroundings, Feliciano wants his son, as his father wanted him, to move to the city so he can get an education and have a better life. Marking director Jason Burlage's feature debut, this moving documentary chronicles the young family's struggles through the planting season and Feliciano's more lucrative work as a porter along the Incan trails to Machu Picchu. These days, only a small percentage of indigenous Peruvians farm, as one in three members of the population now lives in Lima -sixty percent of whose residents occupy the slums. Yet among mountain communities, the belief that life is better in the city is widely held - and thus the traditions of "planting according to the stars," as their fathers and their fathers' fathers taught them, are slowly disappearing. The crucial practice known as ayni, for instance, or communal reciprocity in the form of such acts as plowing one another's fields, is being lost. Through such unsettling details, Burlage paints a vivid portrait of the complexities facing the future of rural communities throughout Peru.
- An unvarnished look at the lives of Innu teenagers in a small Canadian village where ancestral ways have collided with modern ones and the result is addiction, suicide, lack of jobs, and hopelessness.
- Through the eyes of African filmmakers, an unforgettable portrait of Sierra Leone's heroes as they confront Ebola during the most acute public health emergency of modern times.
- Tashi Bista dreams to install a makeshift wind turbine in Namdok, a remote village nestled high amongst the Himalayas of Nepal. Namdok, battered by wind and cold has been in darkness for centuries. Wearing Ray Bans to shield his eyes from the dust and just a leather jacket to insulate him from the bitter cold he surveys the village. He grew up in this region without electrical power. He is determined to bring lights to Namdok in an effort to prove himself to the skeptical village community. Tashi's Turbine is a character driven film that shows the impact of one man's dream for light, in a village waiting for development.
- Presents an intimate portrait of several generations of women in a village family in India. Focuses on a grandmother in a Jat farm family in Haryana, and gives her viewpoint as well as those of her daughters-in-law.
- Shangri-La to hell in ten years: How did Nepal, a peaceful landlocked country, become home to the most dramatic Maoist insurgency in modern history? Returned: Child Soldiers of Nepal's Maoist Army tells the personal story of Nepali boys and girls as they attempt to rebuild their lives after fighting a Maoist revolution. Through the voices of former child soldiers, the film examines why these children joined the Maoists and explores the prevention of future recruitment. The children describe their dramatic recruitment and participation in the Maoist People's Liberation Army during the eleven-year civil war between the Maoist insurgents and the Hindu monarch of Nepal. The girls' stories demonstrate how voluntarily joining the violent Maoist struggle became their only option to escape the gender discrimination and sexual violence of traditional Hindu culture in Nepal. With the major conflict ended and the Maoists in control of the government, these children are now discarded by the Maoist leadership and forced to return home to communities and families that want nothing to do with them. For many of the children of Nepal's Maoist Army, the return home can be even more painful than the experience of war.
- Young Arabs takes viewers inside an elite preparatory school in heart of Cairo, Egypt. The film offers a quiet encounter with a collection of students as they reflect on God, America, terrorism, marriage, the Middle East, and more.
- "Language is a weapon, it is not for shaving your armpits" says eminent writer Mahasweta Devi in this documentary about the her life and work. At the center of a half-century of tumultuous change, the lifetime of Mahasweta Devi has spanned the British period, Independence, and fifty years of post-colonial turmoil. Her writing has given Indian literature a new life and inspired two generations of writers, journalists and filmmakers. A celebrated writer and tireless activist for the last two decades, she has led a battled on the behalf of the De-notified tribes of India -indigenous groups who were branded "natural criminals" by the British colonial state, and who face discrimination to this day. Informal in style, this video explores how Mahasweta's daily life and writing is a part of her life as a tireless worker for the rights of the Tribal people's of India.
- A stylized documentary about the director's relationship to her mother, and her native identity.
- In 1938, noted anthropologist John Adair travelled to the Navajo reservation in Pine Springs, Arizona with a 16mm hand wind motion picture camera. There, Adair met and filmed the Burnside family, creating a visual record of Navajo life in the 1930's. Adair's previously unseen historical footage is juxtaposed with contemporary scenes and in-depth interviews with the family 50 years later. As their story evolves, the clash between past and present surfaces, documenting four generations of change in one Navajo family. This rich and telling film of the Burnside history becomes a complex microcosm of Navajo culture in transition and raises questions about the survival of ethnicity in 20th century America.
- A documentary in which an ax fight breaks out during a dispute between tribes in a Yanomami village.
- Ben Thresher's mill is one of the few water-powered woodworking mills left in the United States. Operating in rural Vermont, he makes water tubs by hand.
- In 1979, the Islamic Revolution in Iran brought a twenty-five-hundred-year history to a close for the Jews who left their homeland for America. Uncertain about their safety and fearing religious persecution in Khomeini's Islamic Theocracy, an estimated 80,000 of Iran's 100,000 Jews fled the country. This documentary tells the story of those Jews who reestablished a tight-knit community in Los Angeles. Iranian Jewish families and young adults take us through the details of their lives in the United States. The families retell how and why they left Iran, their struggles as Jews while in Iran, how they escaped by land across the Iranian border and how they have tenaciously tried to hold on to their heritage in the United States. We experience the difficulties young adults face being raised in traditional Iranian Jewish homes in America today.
- This documentary made with an all native American crew by an indigenous Hopi director examines the representation of so called Indians in our films and in other media.
- Birds of Passage presents a lyrical journey through the everyday lives of two young Uruguayan songwriters. Ernesto and Yisela have moved to the capital, leaving behind their respective hometowns on the borders of Brazil and Argentina. After many years of composing songs that reflect their origins, both decide to explore new horizons and each seeks to fulfill the dream of recording a first album. While Yisela struggles to reconcile the emerging possibilities of a career in Uruguay with her plans to move to Argentina, Ernesto confronts personal conflicts that threaten to sabotage his creative passion. The film fuses the arts of documentary film and music, interweaving the songs and stories of these two young composers. With vérité cinematography and an unforgettable soundtrack, Birds of Passage explores the challenges of being a young artist, and the art of searching, inside and outside of oneself.
- An Autobiography of Michelle Maren is another gripping portrait from the Michel Negroponte, the director of Jupiter's Wife. Once again, Negroponte's subject is a haunted woman whose past will not release her. The film begins with an email from Michelle Maren to the filmmaker because she has seen and admired Jupiter's Wife. A middle-aged former beauty queen, go-go dancer, professional escort, and porn star, Michelle lives on disability checks and struggles with clinical depression, borderline personality disorder, eating disorders and childhood trauma. Isolated and alone, she is seeking transformation and another chance through film. What unfolds is a cinematic blend of exposure therapy, psychological investigation, and confession. Secrets are revealed and the film builds to a startling conclusion that is as riveting as any fiction.
- Bonnie Jean Foreshaw was sentenced to the longest prison term of any woman in the state of Connecticut in 1986. She was the first person to shoot and kill a pregnant woman, which she did in self defense against a man. This man, Hector Freeman, testified to pulling the women in front of him, and using her as a shield. Pro life groups campaigned to charge her with double murder for the death of the fetus. After a one day trial, during which many of her rights were violated, Bonnie was sent to prison, where she still sits today. She has been a hero and leader, a mother to the inmates, this is her story.
- From the streets of the American city of New Bedford to beautiful shores of the Portuguese Island of Madeira, this film takes viewers on a journey to the roots of what has become the world's largest Portuugese Religious Feast.
- This is one of the few ethnographic films in which the anthropologist appears as one of the subjects, and as such it is a lively introduction to the nature of fieldwork. Napoleon Chagnon, who lived among the Yanomamö for 36 months over a period of eight years, is shown in various roles as "fieldworker": entering a village armed with arrows and adorned with feathers; sharing coffee with the shaman Dedeheiwa who recounts the myth of fire; dispensing eyedrops to a baby and accepting in turn a shaman's cure for his own illness; collecting voluminous genealogies; making tapes, maps, Polaroid photos; and attempting to analyze such patterns as village fission, migration, and aggression. The commentary touches on the problems of the fieldworker (all the genealogies compiled in the first year were based on false data, and had to be discarded). Between the image and the commentary we also glimpse some of the ambiguities of the anthropologist's role and his relation to the subjects of his study, for example in the tension between mutual exploitation and reciprocity. The film complements Chagnon's book on his fieldwork, Studying the Yanomamö.
- The film concerns female excision which has long been a practice in various African cultures and has taken a variety of forms. In those European countries and more recently in the United States, which has seen a rise in immigration from formerly inaccessible areas of Africa, the term "female genital mutilation" or "excision" and it's practice by newly transplanted Africans within the context of European and American society, culture and law, has become contested ground. Anthropologists, many of whom have long been aware of the practice, are finding themselves in the center of the debate. BINTOU IN PARIS is an excellent introduction to the theme as we are able to understand the complex mix of the pressure to adhere to tradition, while dealing with the desires of a younger generation infused with a sense of female emancipation to conform to the roles and demands of a new culture with new laws and protections. While the film is acted, the inter familial relationships ring true, as do the circumstances the film constructs. The film enhances our understanding of a volatile topic without resorting to horrific images or descriptions.
- For the people of Mandak region, New Ireland,the most dramatic and complex ceremonial events are those surrounding death. The creation and presentation of the Malangan Labadama with its carved figures, masked dancers and feasting is the final tribute by three brothers to a deceased clansman and former leader.
- Filmmaker and Anthropologist Roxanne Varzi explores the cultural aftermath of the Iran-Iraq War 1980-1988 by interviewing Iranians and comparing their reactions to her own thoughts and feelings of someone who missed living in Iran during that war.
- Hopi filmmaker Victor Masayesva, Jr. explores the complex relationships between humans, plants, animals, and ceremonies and the cycles of the earth, sun and moon within the universe from a Hopi, Maya, and Nahua perspective.
- Bringing offerings of rice, flowers, and woven coconut leaves, clients visit Jero in her household shrine to determine the cause of their son's death.
- Follows archaeologists as they seek clues to the origins and achievements of ancient Polynesian seafarers.
- An exploration of the tools and hunting practices of the !Kung people of Namibia.
- Shot in a variety of locations all over Turkey, Those Who Are In Love successfully conveys the emotion and beauty of traditional Anatolian village culture as it struggles with the process of modernization and change.
- In rural Nicaragua, Dulce Maria and her brother Francisco are Deaf adults who know no language at all--spoken, written or signed--until Tomasa, a Deaf sign-language teacher, arrives determined to teach them their first words.
- A rare, intimate look at the spiritual and social life of the Yup'ik Eskimo people of Emmonak, Alaska - a culture centered around traditional gift-giving ceremonies featuring dances and drum music.
- This film was shot in Cuba in 1994. The opportunity came when Russel Porter, an Australian documentary filmmaker, was invited to teach at the international film and television school (EICTV) located some forty kilometers from Havana.
- The lyrical story of a community of Jamaican migrant farmers working the tobacco harvest in rural Massachusetts. Subtle and touching, the film rises above the political to focus on the often-overlooked human face of migrant work.
- In a mountain village in southwestern China, just south of Tibet, one of the last remaining traditional bearers of the Lisu ethnic group is amid the mountains of new changes seeping into every crevice of their lives. Will their tradition survive?
- Sardar Sarovar, an impressive cement wall of 121 meters in height, stops river Narmada's flow. It is part of the faraonic "Narmada Valley Development Project", that plans the construction of more than 3000 dams, some of them of huge dimensions. Over two and a half million people are affected, most of them adivasis (indigenous) who are losing their houses and ways of life. For twenty years they have been struggling against the interests of the government and the big corporations. Women have gained consciousness of the dimensions of the problem and have become the main role in this unequal fight. Is this the single way of development? The situation in the Narmada Valley is an example of the 21th century's biggest war: water control, natural resources control.
- In the late 19th century, the Canadian government removed ritual objects from the possession of the Kwakiut'l. In 1921 the Kwakiut'l people of Alert Bay, British Columbia, held their last secret potlatch. In 1980 at Alert Bay, the U'mista Cultural Centre (u'mista means "something of great value that has come back") opened its doors to receive and house the cultural treasures which were seized decades earlier and only then returned to the people. This film documents the cultural significance of these events for today's Kwakiut'l people. It is an eloquent testimony to the persistence and complexity of Kwakiut'l society and to the struggle to redefine cultural identity in one Northwest Coast native American community.