Latin-American Studies

A film biography of the Colombian priest who was killed by government anti-guerrilla forces in 1966, becoming a revolutionary martyr and symbol of the new activist priest in Latin America.

An emotionally moving investigation of the problems of identity and adjustment confronting Chilean youngsters who returned to Chile after many years in exile with their parents.

Examines the legacy of ten years of dictatorship in Chile, focusing on the four days of nationwide protest surrounding the ten year anniversary of the coup lead by General Pinochet.

Reveals the nature and the extent of the U.S. government and corporate complicity in the 'destabilization' campaign and the 1973 coup that overthrew Allende's Popular Unity government in Chile.

Documents the peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism attempted by Allende's Popular Unity Government in Chile in 1970-73, tracing its historical background, developments and impending tragedy.

In the early Sixties, the Brazilian peasant leader, João Pedro Teixeira, was assasinated by two gunmen hired by local landowners. Teixeira's story was being filmed as a docu-drama when the 1964 military coup prevented the completion of the film. The entire crew was imprisoned and their equipment confiscated. Twenty years later, in a more democratic Brazil, director Eduardo Coutinho recovered his confiscated film and located the murdered peasant's widow and children. Coutinho's interviews with her and other families are interwoven with sequences from the original docu-drama to produce an unusually provocative historical film.

This video documents the struggles of peasants in the Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil, which is engaged in a national political campaign to occupy and cultivate unused land.

In Haiti and many African countries today, voodoo is an integral part of daily life. Filmed in the Republic of Benin, this video examines the reality of voodoo as a polytheistic religion, including more than 260 gods, the beliefs of which include ancestral worship and direct dealing with supernatural forces.

Faced with widespread conditions of mass unemployment, poverty, urban crowding, and governmental crisis, more than a billion people in some 100 underdeveloped nations throughout the Third World have developed their own 'informal economy,' a parallel lifestyle operating on the margins of the society's formal economy and legal system, which provides them with a means of survival.

This video features an interview with Dr. Alexander lief, a gerontology specialist at Harvard University and the Massachusetts General Hospital, who discusses his on-location study of the people living in the Andean village of Vilcabamba in Ecuador.

The historical collage of Cuban Dance forms, including contradanza, danzon, son, mambo, cha-cha-cha, and culminating in an exuberant carnival celebration, features dancers from Cuba's famed El Conjunto Nacional de Danza Moderna.

This documentary examines one of the most significant holidays on the Mexican calendar, showing how it is celebrated today and tracing its historical background, which goes back 3,000 years.