Urban Studies
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All for the Taking: 21st-Century Urban Renewal
This timely and thought-provoking documentary provides an insightful case study of the uses and abuses of the power of eminent domain by the city of Philadelphia as it attempts to redefine itself through "urban renewal" and planned gentrification.
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Brownsville Black and White
This poignant and powerful documentary explores the complex history of interracial cooperation, urban change, and social conflict in Brownsville, a neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, from the 1930s to the present.
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Butte, America
This "beautifully told and eye-opening account of the legacy of industrial mining in the American West" recounts the sometimes glorious, often sorrowful, but always fascinating story of Butte, Montana, once the world’s largest producer of copper.
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California and the American Dream
This incisive, thought-provoking four-part series explores the dynamics of culture, community, and identity in California, one of the most diverse places in the world. Each film provides a trenchant and highly discussible case study of divergent California social trends that are keenly evident all across America.
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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.
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The Democratic Promise: Saul Alinsky and His Legacy
This exceptional and compelling documentary, narrated by Alec Baldwin, examines the life and legacy of legendary community organizer Saul Alinsky.
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Displaced in the New South
This remarkable documentary explores the cultural collision between Asian and Hispanic immigrants and the suburban communities near Atlanta, Georgia, in which they have settled.
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Flag Wars
This profoundly compelling and thought-provoking documentary is the best case study available of the social and human consequences of urban gentrification in contemporary America. Filmed over a four-year period in Columbus, Ohio, "Flag Wars" explores with eye-opening candor and unforgettable poignancy the effects on a long-established black neighborhood when gay white professionals move into and begin to transform the area.
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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.
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Laid to Waste
This acclaimed documentary is the best case study of environmental injustice and racism available on video. It exposes the ugly underbelly of environmental racism and provides an excellent illustration of grassroots organizing and networking.
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Madres Unidas: Parents Researching for Change
This unique and inspiring documentary follows five immigrant mothers who became involved in an effort to start a new small school for their children, and later became researchers and videographers to document their journey.
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Men at Work: Voices from Detroit’s Underground Economy
Detroit, which recently came in first on Forbes magazine’s “Miserable Cities Index,” is viewed as the national reference point for all that has gone wrong in urban America. But abandonment and decay are not the only stories in the poorest, most dramatically shrinking major American city. Detroit is also a tale of ingenuity and reinvention born of necessity. This is the story of how, in an economic climate apparently designed to ensure their failure, some resilient men find work on their own terms, get food and shelter, and raise their children -often making up the means to do so as they go along.
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Monti Moments: Men’s Memories in the Heart of Rome
This rich and revelatory documentary provides a uniquely intimate portrait of social change in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood in Rome.
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The New Los Angeles
This engaging documentary explores the complexities of inclusion in Los Angeles — the nation’s largest "majority-minority" city and the city with the nation’s largest divide between rich and poor.
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Pericles in America
This musical portrait of immigrant clarinetist Pericles Halkias and the Epirot-Greek community explores the aspirations and ambivalences of Greek-Americans.
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The Price of Renewal
What are the challenges in crafting a vibrant urban village from an ethnically, culturally, and economically diverse population? This perceptive documentary examines complex issues of community development, philanthropy, and civic engagement by chronicling the long-term redevelopment of an older, deteriorating neighborhood called City Heights, often referred to as the Ellis Island of San Diego.
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Radical Disciple: The Story of Father Pfleger
Regarded as a hero by many and a renegade by some in the Catholic Church hierarchy, Michael Pfleger, longtime pastor of Chicago’s St. Sabina parish, has consistently used the power of his pulpit to battle social inequity and engage in high profile campaigns to end drug-dealing, prostitution, and the exploitation of the poor by liquor and tobacco companies.
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Roots of Health
This thought-provoking and insightful documentary employs incisive case studies from around the world to explore how people’s health and well-being is primarily determined by where they live, their educational, social, and economic status, and the degree of control they have over their lives.
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To Catch a Dollar: Muhammad Yunus Banks on America
This thought-provoking and powerful documentary follows Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus as he brings his revolutionary microfinance program to the United States, establishing Grameen America. The first stop: Queens, New York, 2008, just as the financial crisis explodes and the American economy plummets.
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