History

Showing all 40 results

  • 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.

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  • film_127

    Backbone of the World

    Set amid the majestic splendor of the northern Rockies, this innovative and inspiring documentary interweaves two compelling parallel stories: film director George Burdeau’s journey home to live and work on the Blackfeet Reservation, and his tribe’s determined struggle to protect its sacred lands and forge a new identity.

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  • film_83

    Bear’s Hiding Place: Ishi’s Last Refuge

    This documentary journey into the past follows a contemporary archaeological expedition to find and confirm the location of Wowunupo’mu Tetna, or Bear’s Hiding Place, the last refuge of the Yahi and of Ishi before his dramatic appearance in 1911.

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  • film_137

    Beijing

    Conveys the texture and flavor of the venerable Chinese capital through a close-up look at a number of its inhabitants, both young and old, with varied and fascinating backgrounds. Their stories unfold against the backdrop of a timeless but rapidly changing metropolis.

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  • film_50

    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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  • 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.

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  • 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.

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  • film_8

    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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  • film_118

    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.

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  • film_126

    Contrary Warriors

    This widely acclaimed documentary chronicles the Crow Indian’s; century-long battle for survival. In spite of every effort by the U.S. government to assimilate the people and acquire their tribal land, the Crows have persisted — their language, family, and culture intact.

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  • film_188

    Cruz Reynoso: Sowing the Seeds of Justice

    This thought-provoking documentary explores the life and achievements of a man who felt the sting of injustice while growing up and later, as a lawyer, judge, and educator, fought for more than five decades to eradicate discrimination and inequality in American life.

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  • 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.

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  • 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.

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  • 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.

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  • film_35

    The Five Suns: A Sacred History of Mexico

    This much-honored animated film employs authentic pre-Columbian Aztec iconography to depict the most important creation myths and sacred stories of the Aztecs and other Nahuatl-speaking peoples of ancient central Mexico.

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  • film_139

    Food for Body and Spirit

    The Tao of cooking and eating — the Way to health and well-being! This film investigates the impact of religious influences on Chinese culture and cuisine.

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  • 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.

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  • film_12

    Ishi, the Last Yahi

    This widely acclaimed film recounts one of the most extraordinary and important stories in American history and explains its contemporary relevance with power and eloquence.

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  • 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.

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  • film_138

    Masters of the Wok

    Like Chinese cuisine and Chinese culture, this film is a study in contrasts. It explores the evolution of Chinese cuisine from basic peasant fare to highly refined and lavish imperial cooking.

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  • 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.

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  • 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.

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  • 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.

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  • 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.

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  • film_144

    The Peyote Road: Ancient Religion in Contemporary Crisis

    This widely acclaimed, landmark documentary was instrumental in the campaign to have Congress overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1990 "Smith" decision, which denied the protection of the First Amendment to the traditional sacramental use of peyote by Indian people.

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  • film_15

    Popol Vuh: The Creation Myth of the Maya

    This much-honored animated film employs authentic imagery from ancient Maya ceramics to create a riveting depiction of the Popol Vuh, the Maya creation myth and the foundation of most Native American religious, philosophical, and ethical beliefs.

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  • film_121

    Popol Vuh: The Creation Myth of the Maya (Spanish Version)

    This much-honored animated film employs authentic imagery from ancient Maya ceramics to create a riveting depiction of the Popol Vuh, the Maya creation myth and the foundation of most Native American religious, philosophical, and ethical beliefs. This is the Spanish-language version.

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  • film_164

    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.

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  • film_146

    The Red Road to Sobriety

    The contemporary Native American Sobriety Movement is flourishing throughout the Indian communities of North America. This vital social movement combines ancient spiritual traditions with modern medical approaches to substance abuse recovery.

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  • film_129

    The Seasons of the Salish

    Shot on location in Idaho and Montana, this lyrical documentary follows the traditional annual round of the Native peoples of the Northern Rockies and Inland Plateau.

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  • 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.

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  • film_60

    Still Revolutionaries

    This compelling documentary explores the lives of two women who were members of the Black Panther Party between 1969 and 1975.

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  • 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.

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  • film_135

    Suzhou

    Known for centuries as the center of Chinese culture and aesthetics, this Yangzi delta city has often been called the "Venice of the East" because of its many canals and bridges. This beautifully filmed portrait of the city leads the viewer through markets and teahouses, sweet shops and bookstores, rice paddies and fish stalls, and two of Suzhou’s exquisite gardens.

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  • film_61

    Unfinished Symphony

    No public topic can ever be more timely than the debate over the nature and limits of liberty and the means by which citizens may oppose the policies of the government. And no documentary in recent memory so clearly and with such heartfelt eloquence poses the key questions and issues of this always-vital debate as does "Unfinished Symphony."

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  • film_141

    Water Farmers

    The Yangzi River delta region south of Shanghai is known as the water country. Hundreds of miles of canals traverse the land, linking towns and villages. Here, near the city of Shaoxing, water has completely shaped the local farmers’ unique way of life.

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  • 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.

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  • film_41

    Who Owns the Past?

    This outstanding documentary relates the powerful history of the American Indian struggle for control of their ancestral remains.

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  • film_142

    Wiping the Tears of Seven Generations

    In December 1990, 300 Lakota Sioux horseback riders rode 250 miles, in two weeks, through bitter, below-zero winter weather, to commemorate the lives lost at the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890.

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  • film_136

    Xian

    This wide-ranging documentary presents a cultural history of the ancient Chinese imperial city, once the greatest capital in the world and the Eastern terminus of the famed Silk Road.

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