Global and Development Studies

Showing all 77 results

  • film_125

    The Age of Reason

    This is the fifth and final film in renowned ethnographic filmmaker David MacDougall’s “Doon School Quintet,”his long-term study of India’s most prestigious boys’ boarding school. In this film he focuses on the life of one student whom he discovers at the school.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_34

    Anonymously Yours

    This extraordinary documentary on sex-trafficking in Southeast Asia interweaves four young women’s stories to reveal an institution that enslaves as many as 40 million women worldwide.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_183

    Archeology of Memory: Villa Grimaldi

    This beautifully crafted, poignant, and timely documentary explores the power of art to heal the trauma of torture. The film follows exiled Chilean musician Quique Cruz from the San Francisco Bay Area to Chile and back as he creates a multimedia installation and musical suite in an effort to heal the emotional wounds inflicted on him by the state-sponsored torture of the Pinochet regime.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_168

    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.”

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_203

    Awareness

    This extraordinarily intimate and illuminating documentary, by renowned ethnographic filmmakers David and Judith MacDougall, continues David's compelling exploration of education and adolescent life in India's Rishi Valley School.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_92

    Between Light and Shadow: Maya Women in Transition

    This vibrant, wide-ranging documentary examines the impact on contemporary Maya culture of changes in the lives and expectations of Maya women in Guatemala.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_167

    Birdsong and Coffee: A Wake Up Call

    This incisive and multifaceted documentary powerfully demonstrates how coffee drinkers in this and other developed countries hold in their hands the fate of farm families, farming communities, and entire ecosystems in coffee-growing regions worldwide.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_200

    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.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_160

    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.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_156

    California’s “Lost” Tribes

    This insightful documentary explores the conflicts over Indian gaming and places them in the context of both California and Native American history. The film examines the historical underpinnings of tribal sovereignty and the evolution of tribal gaming rights. It illustrates the impact of gaming on Indian self-determination, and the challenges that Native people face in defining the identity of their people for the future.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_71

    Cashing in on Culture: Indigenous Communities and Tourism

    This insightful documentary, filmed in the small tropical forest community of Capirona, in Ecuador, serves as an incisive case study of the many issues and potential problems surrounding eco- and ethnic tourism.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_189

    Celebrating Semana Santa: Change, Conflict, and Continuity in Rural Honduras

    This "superb, thought-provoking" ethnographic documentary explores the vitality and controversies surrounding a remarkable syncretic religious ceremony held in neighboring remote villages in rural Honduras during the Easter Holy Week.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_176

    Dakar to Port Loko: Perspectives from West Africa

    This wide-ranging, richly discussible documentary provides an unparalleled opportunity to experience everyday West African life and viewpoints from the ground level.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_192

    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.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_111

    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.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_91

    Daughters of Ixchel: Maya Thread of Change

    This illuminating documentary explores the lives of Maya women today, portrays their ancient weaving processes, and examines the economic, political, and cultural forces that are profoundly affecting the women and their weaving.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_205

    Delhi at Eleven

    This stunningly original and thought-provoking documentary, which was produced by renowned ethnographic filmmaker David MacDougall, presents the work of four 11-year-old filmmakers living in New Delhi, India.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_46

    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.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_163

    Destination: Tourism

    This thought-provoking documentary explores the complex, interconnected effects of tourism, globalization, culture, philanthropy, and religion in Bodh Gaya, the world’s most popular destination of Buddhist pilgrimage.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_37

    Discovering Dominga

    This unforgettably dramatic and powerful documentary relates the extraordinary story of a young Iowa housewife who discovers she is a survivor of one of the most horrific massacres in Guatemalan history, committed in 1982 against Maya Indian villagers. The film follows her remarkable journey of transformation and discovery as she returns to Guatemala in search of her heritage and ultimately joins efforts to bring the perpetrators of the massacre to justice.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_45

    Diya

    This innovative ethnographic documentary by renowned filmmaker Judith MacDougall follows the life history of an important cultural object through the everyday experiences of the people who make, sell, and use it.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_9

    Doon School Chronicles

    This intimate and groundbreaking study of India’s most prestigious boys’ boarding school is the first work in a series of five acclaimed films by renowned ethnographic filmmaker David MacDougall.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_182

    The Doon School Quintet

    This groundbreaking, five-part study of India’s most prestigious boys’; boarding school is a contemporary masterwork of renowned ethnographic filmmaker David MacDougall. Sometimes called “the Eton of India,” Doon School has developed its own characteristic style and presents a curious mixture of privilege and egalitarianism. Each of the five films can stand on its own but taken together as a series the five films provide a unique and revelatory cultural portrait that will take its place among the classics of ethnographic cinema.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_214

    Eleven in Delwara

    This film presents the work of eight young filmmakers, all about eleven years old, in the village of Delwara in southern Rajasthan, India. Three films are included; one is a collaboration by all eight children and two are by individuals. The three films together provide an extraordinary view of contemporary Indian village life.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_213

    Eleven in Kolkata

    This film presents the work of four 11-year-old filmmakers in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), West Bengal. The four girls took part in a video workshop at the Teesta Home, a small foster home. The three films they made explore the textures and events of their daily lives in the orphanage, focusing on play, study, their personal relationships, and their hopes and dreams for the future.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_74

    Festive Land: Carnaval in Bahia

    This perceptive and engaging documentary examines one of the largest and most extraordinary popular celebrations in the world, the week-long Carnaval that brings more than two million people to the streets of Salvador, the capital of Bahia, in northeastern Brazil.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_206

    From Our Strength: Birth and Indigenous Politics in Cañar, Ecuador

    This unique ethnographic case study, filmed in the beautiful and diverse southern Andes of Ecuador, explores the complex relationships between indigenous politics, social change, and health-care choices.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_181

    Gandhi’s Children

    This unforgettable documentary feature film by renowned ethnographic filmmaker David MacDougall explores the life of children in a shelter for orphans and juvenile detainees in a poor area of New Delhi. Despite the harshness of their lives, many of these boys show remarkable strength of character, knowledge, and resilience. Often left to their own devices, they institute a seemingly arbitrary set of checks and balances to make sense of the chaos around them.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_150

    Ganges: River to Heaven

    This extraordinary documentary explores with unparalleled intimacy one of the most cherished of Hindu religious aspirations: to die in the city of Varanasi, on the banks of the sacred Ganges, in the faith that dying here assures liberation from the cycle of earthly life.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_96

    The Great Ceremony to Straighten the World

    Caught between the seduction of prosperity and the threat of cultural disintegration, the people of Bali engage in ceremonies. Through them, the Balinese attempt to maintain balance with God, nature, and one another, and also to turn the recent prosperity from the booming tourist trade into a way of invigorating their culture.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_217

    Gringo Kullki: Sucres to Dollars in Ecuador

    This “thought-provoking and insightful documentary” explores, from an indigenous people’s viewpoint, Ecuador’s difficult transition from the national currency of the sucre to the U.S. dollar beginning in 2000.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_39

    In and Out of Africa

    This extraordinary documentary is one of the most intelligent, perceptive, and engaging films ever made on African culture and art. It explores with irony and humor issues of authenticity, taste, and racial politics in the transnational trade in African art.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_62

    Karam in Jaipur

    This absorbing documentary is the third film in renowned ethnographic filmmaker David MacDougall’s long-term, five-part study of childhood and adolescence at the Doon School in northern India.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_128

    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.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_171

    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.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_59

    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.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_72

    The Last Stand: Ancient Redwoods and the Bottom Line

    This powerful and thought-provoking documentary explores the dramatic history of the 15-year battle to save the last remaining ancient redwoods in northern California’s Headwaters Forest. This riveting history is one of junk bonds and endangered salmon, car bombs and clear-cuts, corporate takeovers, collusion, corruption, greed, and murder. It is also one of courage and conviction, vision and values.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_77

    The Last Zapatista

    This remarkable documentary examines the profound and enduring legacy of Emiliano Zapata in contemporary Mexico. The film focuses on Emeterio Pantaleon, a 97-year-old Mexican farmer and one of the last living veterans who fought with Zapata during the Mexican Revolution of 1910 to 1920.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_194

    Losing Knowledge: 50 Years of Change

    This profound ethnographic documentary explores the myriad of ways in which centuries-old indigenous knowledge is rapidly vanishing in the southern Mexican village of Talea, Oaxaca, and by extension throughout the world.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_132

    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.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_193

    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.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_90

    Mi Puerto Rico

    This wide-ranging and much-honored documentary explores Puerto Rico’s rich cultural traditions and untold history, revealing the remarkable stories of its revolutionaries and abolitionists, poets and patriots.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_162

    Mined to Death

    Working at an elevation of 16,000 feet, Quechua-speaking miners in Potosi, Bolivia, dig out zinc, tin, and silver much like their Incan ancestors did more than five centuries ago. This poignant documentary explores the lives and work of the miners as the veins of ore in the sacred mountain they are mining become increasingly depleted and ever more difficult to discover and remove.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_165

    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.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_109

    Mountain Music of Peru

    This classic documentary on the centuries-old music of the Andes demonstrates the importance or the region’s musical heritage in preserving the cultural identity of the impoverished native peoples.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_195

    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.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_199

    The Myth of the Buddha’s Birthplace

    This fascinating and thought-provoking documentary explores the process by which a modern myth is created. The film illustrates how the people in a small village in eastern India have come to believe that the Buddha was born in their village, despite ample evidence to the contrary.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_63

    The New Boys

    This landmark documentary is the fourth film in renowned ethnographic filmmaker David MacDougall’s long-term, five-part study of childhood and adolescence at the Doon School in northern India.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_158

    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.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_14

    Orphans of Mathare

    This powerful documentary examines the lives of former street children now living at the Good Samaritan Children’s Home, an orphanage and school in the sprawling Mathare slum of Nairobi, Kenya. Although it focuses on one orphanage in Mathare, the film lays bare the complicated relationship between poverty, violence, disease, Christianity, tradition, and the orphan crisis in Kenya and throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_198

    农家乐 Peasant Family Happiness

    This colorful, entertaining, gently ironic documentary presents a vivid and sensitive portrait of a side of China that is little known outside the country: the world of ethnic tourism. In recent years, hundreds of millions of Chinese tourists, mostly city-dwellers, have used their newly increased incomes to travel. And many of the places they visit are ethnic minority villages in China’s West and Southwest.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_157

    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.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_112

    Q’eros: The Shape of Survival

    This classic documentary, by renowned filmmaker John Cohen, provides a multifaceted exploration of the way of life of the Q’eros Indians of Peru, who have lived in the Andes for more than 3,000 years.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_73

    Rancho California (Por Favor)

    This thought-provoking, widely acclaimed visual essay provides a troubling journey through migrant farmworker camps in suburban southern California.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_16

    The Reincarnation of Khensur Rinpoche

    This utterly fascinating and compelling film follows the search of Choenzey, a 47-year-old Tibetan monk who lives in exile in a Buddhist monastery in southern India, to find the reincarnation of his deceased master, Khensur Rinpoche. Choenzey’s search and eventual discovery is of an impish but gentle four-year-old who is recognized by the Dalai Lama to be the looked-for reincarnation.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_159

    Ripe for Change

    This fascinating documentary explores the intersection of food and politics in California over the last 30 years. It illuminates the complex forces struggling for control of the future of California’s agriculture, and provides provocative commentary by a wide array of eloquent farmers, prominent chefs, and noted authors and scientists.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_180

    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.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_177

    Sanpachando: St. Pacho Is for the Revelers

    This exceptional and engaging documentary is an important contribution to the growing body of work on the African Diaspora and Latin America. It perceptively explores the intertwined cultural, religious, political, and afro-ethnic meanings of a vibrant festival honoring St. Francis of Assisi in Quibdo, Choco, on the northwest Pacific coast of Colombia.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_99

    The Shadow Circus: The CIA in Tibet

    Featuring unique archival footage and exclusive interviews with former Tibetan resistance fighters and surviving CIA operatives, this powerful documentary reveals for the first time a hitherto unknown chapter in Tibet’s recent history.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_148

    Sisters and Daughters Betrayed

    Sex trafficking is a global crisis of growing dimensions. Millions of women and young girls have been illegally transported from rural to urban areas and across national borders for the purpose of prostitution. This compelling video explores the social and economic forces that drive this lucrative underground trade, and the devastating impact it has on women’s lives.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_18

    Six Billion and Beyond

    This thought-provoking documentary is, stated simply, the best and most comprehensive introduction available on video to the interconnected issues of population growth, economic development, equal rights and opportunities for women, and environmental protection around the world.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_33

    Sixteen Decisions

    This remarkable documentary explores the human face of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh’s micro-lending experiment of small business loans, usually of $100 or less, that has transformed the lives of millions of Third-World women and their families.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_170

    Some Alien Creatures

    In this carefully observed and richly nuanced film about a progressive co-educational boarding school in South India, young boys and girls jokingly accuse each other of being like "alien creatures." In exploring this gender divide, renowned ethnographic filmmaker David MacDougall examines the lives of three boys at the school.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_97

    A Stranger in My Native Land

    This profound, poetic, and ultimately immensely sad documentary may be the first of its kind about Tibet — a vivid personal account of loss and disappointment as an exile discovers his country for the first time.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_55

    Tempus de Baristas

    "Time of the Barmen" is one of the most acclaimed works of renowned ethnographic filmmaker David MacDougall. It profiles three goatherders in the mountains of eastern Sardinia and, with extraordinary insight and nuance, explores a traditional way of life that is rapidly disappearing as commercial farming displaces herding and young people drift to the coast for the higher pay and glamour of the tourism industry.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_197

    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.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_51

    To Live With Herds

    This classic film on the Jie of Uganda, produced by the renowned ethnographic filmmaking team of David and Judith MacDougall, explores life in a traditional Jie homestead during a harsh dry season.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_117

    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.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_184

    Trees Tropiques

    This innovative and thought-provoking documentary subtly explores the difficult issues that arise when the ethics of deforestation and the ethnographic encounter intersect. The film incisively poses the question: “Who has the right to cut… both trees and film footage?”

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_98

    The Trials of Telo Rinpoche

    This absorbing documentary portrait tells the amazing story of Telo Rinpoche, a.k.a. Eddie Ombadykow, a 21-year-old American from Philadelphia whose favorite band is The Smashing Pumpkins. He is also a Buddhist monk who was brought up in a Tibetan monastery in India from the age of seven and who was recognized by the Dalai Lama as an important reincarnate lama, or spiritual master.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_133

    Trobriand Cricket: An Ingenious Response to Colonialism (Digitally Remastered Version)

    One of the world’s best-known and most honored ethnographic films, this classic documentary depicts the many modifications made by Trobriand Islanders, in Papua New Guinea, to the traditional British game of cricket.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_212

    Under the Palace Wall

    Noted ethnographic filmmaker David MacDougall here employs a masterful series of precisely observed scenes to explore the local primary school and contemporary village life of Delwara, in southern Rajasthan, India.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_123

    Voices of the Sierra Tarahumara

    This powerful and eye-opening documentary examines the plight of the indigenous Tarahumara people of northern Mexico, who are oppressed by criminal drug lords and and trapped in a web of rampant deforestation, crippling drug wars, and governmental corruption.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_190

    Water Puppetry in Vietnam: An Ancient Tradition in a Modern World

    This insightful and original ethnographic documentary explores the complex interplay between the rise and development of the international tourism industry and the production of culture in the performance of Vietnamese water puppetry.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_56

    With Morning Hearts

    This new documentary by renowned ethnographic filmmaker David MacDougall continues his long-term study of the Doon School. "With Morning Hearts" focuses on a group of twelve-year-olds during their first year in one of the "houses" for new boys.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_58

    Womanhood and Circumcision: Three Maasai Women Have Their Say (Extended Version, 2014)

    This thought-provoking and much-acclaimed documentary sensitively explores the cultural context of female genital-cutting practices among the Maasai. The film was re-edited with extensive new material and an additional half-hour of extra commentary in 2014. 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.

    More Information >> Add to cart
  • film_173

    A World Without Strangers

    This engaging and innovative documentary explores the common misperceptions and stereotypes of one another shared by young people in the Middle East and the United States. It connects five college-age women from the United States with five from the Middle East in a media-based dialogue that illuminates and challenges cross-cultural misconceptions.

    More Information >> Add to cart