Marriage and the Family

Films

The Band When filmmaker David Zeiger spends a year documenting his son Danny's high school marching band in Decatur, Georgia, he gets a crash course in love, friendship, and marching in formation. Featuring refreshingly candid student commentary on everything from anorexia and Ritalin to divorced parents and race relations, "The Band" is a lively, engrossing look at the ups and downs of all-American teenage life, 1990s style.

Beyond the Politics of Life and Choice: A New Conversation About Abortion This timely and exceptionally thought-provoking documentary moves the divisive and highly emotional debate over abortion away from politicized battle lines and into a compassionate and sensitive space, where people with opposing views can better understand the deep concerns of one another.

Dance With the Wodaabes This widely acclaimed and visually stunning ethnographic documentary explores, from the point of view of its participants, the complex cultural significance of one of Africa's most spectacular but frequently misunderstood and sensationalized ritual celebrations.

The Family Table The contrasting lives of two families -- a traditional four-generation rural family in a Sichuan village and a modern, single-child family in urban Hangzhou -- are viewed through the routines of their daily meals. In the process, the film illustrates how the Chinese family has endured and how it is changing.

Gender and Relationships: Male-Female Differences in Love and Marriage This often humorous, often poignant, and always profound video explores the differences in the ways that men and women experience the love relationship. It features men and women from a variety of cultural and social backgrounds who provide eloquent -- and sometimes rueful -- testimony on how gender differences affect love, courtship, "couplehood," marriage, emotions, understanding, and sensitivity.

Keep Her Under Control: Law's Patriarchy in India This provocative documentary, which explores the role of women in a Muslim-dominated village in Rajasthan, in northern India, is original, compelling, and instructive, and it is sure to stimulate discussion and analysis in any course that studies gender roles, Islam, India, or cultural anthropology.

Kotla Walks: Performing Locality This engaging documentary explores the changing urban life of a contemporary India caught between local tradition and the effects of globalization. The film provides a richly detailed portrait of the lives of residents of Kotla Mubarakpur, an "urban village" in South Delhi, by focusing on one family and their friends and neighbors.

Kypseli: Women and Men Apart -- A Divided Reality This celebrated ethnographic study of male and female roles in a small Greek village shows how the separation of the sexes and the principle of male dominance have become part of the village's most basic social structures, affecting the daily activities and thoughts of everyone there.

Marriages in Heaven Arranged marriages have been an important aspect of traditional Indian culture since ancient times, and they are still common today. This illuminating documentary explores the ways in which globalization and modernization are affecting young people and changing the traditions of marriage among Indians living both in India and in America.

My Louisiana Love Every few years a new documentary comes along that so powerfully resonates both emotionally and intellectually that it can truly be deemed unforgettable. "My Louisiana Love" is such a film. This profoundly poignant exploration of environmental injustice and loss focuses a revelatory light on an otherwise invisible American tragedy.

No Place Like Home This brilliant documentary explores eight months in the life of a broken family in Seattle and powerfully depicts the cycles that keep families tied to poverty and violence from one generation to the next.

Wedding Advice: Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace With an engaging blend of humor, personal testimony, and expert analysis, this thought-provoking documentary explores the history and contemporary relevance of the institution of marriage.

The Wedding Camels One of Lorang's daughters is going to marry one of his friends and age-mates, but all does not go smoothly. The second part of renowned filmmakers David and Judith Macdougall's classic "Turkana Conversations Trilogy."

A Wife Among Wives This ground-breaking ethnographic documentary investiges the views of the Turkana, and especially Turkana women, on marriage and polygyny. The third and final part of renowned filmmakers David and Judith Macdougall's classic Turkana Conversations Trilogy.

Womanhood and Circumcision: Three Maasai Women Have Their Say This thought-provoking documentary sensitively explores the cultural context of female genital-cutting practices among the Maasai. It will stimulate discussion and reflection in a wide variety of courses in cultural anthropology, women's and gender studies, African studies, and development studies.

XXXY The most frequent question posed to new parents is: "Is it a boy or a girl?" But this question can't be answered in an estimated one out of every 2,000 births. This thought-provoking documentary is the first film to provide an intimate look at the long-term emotional, psychological, and physiological effects of being born "intersex," or with ambiguous genitalia.

You Don't Know Dick Simply put, this is the most profound, compelling, and thought-provoking documentary ever made on gender identity. It may also be the most entertaining. It provides extraordinarily honest and riveting portraits of six men who once were women.