Popular Culture

Films

The Art of Regret This brilliant and keenly observed documentary, by renowned ethnographic filmmaker Judith MacDougall, explores the digital revolution in China, where photography is known as the "art of regret."

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.

Body Image: The Quest for Perfection In this candid and thought-provoking video, seven diverse college-age women share their feelings about their bodies during a three-day retreat. They explore some of the complex sources of their feelings and examine images of women's bodies in the mass media.

Chronicle of an American Suburb This fascinating, multifaceted documentary is an extraordinary portrait of one of America's quintessential postwar suburbs, Park Forest, Illinois, from its founding to the present.

Confederacy Theory This powerful and thought-provoking documentary explores the complexities of a controversy steeped in American history and racial divisiveness: the debate over the Confederate flag in South Carolina, the last state to fly the flag on its capitol.

Dancing with the Incas This extraordinary film documents the most popular music of the Andes -- Huayno music -- and explores the lives of three Huayno musicians in a contemporary Peru torn between the military and the Shining Path guerrillas.

Fifty Miles from Times Square A colorful portrait of life in Putnam County, New York, with its "old-time fiddlers, farmers, commuters, and hippies," where an earlier, more traditional, relaxed style of life continues.

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.

The High Lonesome Sound This classic documentary, by renowned filmmaker John Cohen, evocatively illustrates how music and religion help the rural poor of Appalachia maintain their dignity and traditions in the face of change and hardship.

The Human Body: Appearance, Shape and Self-Image This often poignant and always compelling new video, by the noted producer, Prof. Dane Archer, examines with sensitivity and cross-cultural insight the variety, meaning, and importance of the bodies we inhabit. It explores 12 different facets of the human body, each of which impacts our preferences, our ideals, our attitudes, and -- perhaps most important -- our self-images.

Mas Fever: Inside Trinidad Carnival Carnival in the New World is a synthesis of European elements -- Christian traditions and the masquerade -- and African elements -- primarily music and dance. In Trinidad, Carnival is a colorful, exuberant celebration of national focus and pride.

Musical Holdouts This classic, entertaining documentary on American traditional music features varied individuals and groups who have not become part of the "melting pot" of American society.

Personal Space: Exploring Human Proxemics Space is a silent language, and we all "speak" it, whether consciously or not. This fascinating and frequently funny video portrays the effects of space on everyday human behavior in an engaging and dramatic manner. Students from a variety of cultural backgrounds vividly demonstrate how our culture defines our use of space, territory, and touching.

Playing House This incisive and compelling documentary chronicles the lives of five seventh- and eighth-grade girls through their first year at the elite Fay School, the oldest junior boarding school in America. With great sensitivity to individual nuance and a sharp eye for significant moments of interaction, the film reveals how deftly these 12- and 13-year-olds learn and practice "womanly" arts of psycho-social warfare while dealing with complex personal issues such as body image, class and sexual identity, family dysfunction, and self-worth.

The Pornography of Everyday Life This trenchant and provocative documentary essay incorporates more than 200 powerful images from advertising, ancient myth, contemporary art, and popular culture to demonstrate how pornography (defined as the sexualized domination, degradation, and objectification of women and girls and social groups who are put in the demeaned feminine role) is in reality a prevalent mainstream worldview.

Record Store As the American music industry struggles to find its place in the digital world, many music enthusiasts continue to buy and collect vinyl records, sometimes to their financial and emotional detriment. This remarkable documentary explores the various urban subcultures at an independent record store in Philadelphia, focusing on the store's owners, employees, and customers.

Roman Restaurant Rhythms This delightful and mouth-watering documentary provides a "backstage," behind-the-scenes foray into the rhythms of food preparation in four traditional restaurants in Rome.

Salsa in Japan: A Japanese and Latino Mix This remarkable documentary on multiculturalism explores the growing subculture of salsa dancing in Japan, where salsa dancing and salsa clubs serve as a source of interaction and cultural mingling between native Japanese and Latino immigrants to Japan.

Sara and Maybelle A rare filmed performance of two members of the original Carter family, whose recordings helped found the country music industry. Here Sara and Maybelle demonstrate their famous guitar picking and harmony singing on "Sweet Fern" and "Solid Gone."

Sexism in Language: Thief of Honor, Shaper of Lies Designed for use in a broad range of educational settings and disciplines, this lively and provocative video analyzes the gender bias that permeates our everyday language.

The Toured: The Other Side of Tourism in Barbados Tourism is the second-largest industry in the world and the "touristic encounter" may be the most important contact front today between differing cultures. But such encounters, especially between people of the First and Third worlds, are often characterized by strikingly unequal power relations.

True-Hearted Vixens This remarkable documentary follows the fortunes of two women during the Women's Professional Football League's inaugural season of six exhibition games. One of the women is a young political consultant-turned linebacker and the other is an elite amateur basketball player and single mother taking a shot at wide receiver. Both traveled from afar, trading security and leaving jobs and loved ones for this long-shot at stardom.

Waiting to Inhale: Marijuana, Medicine and the Law This provocative and powerful documentary explores the conflict over the legalization of medical marijuana in the United States. Ten states have passed legislation permitting the use of medical marijuana. Yet all marijuana use, cultivation, and possession -- for any reason -- remain illegal under federal law.

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.

A World of Food: Tastes and Taboos in Different Cultures This delectably engaging video explores the extraordinary variety of food likes, food dislikes, food taboos, and food rules around the world. It features frequently humorous and always compelling testimony from people representing a wide array of cultures.