Cultural Studies

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.

Beginning with cultures of prehistory and primitive dance forms, this film depicts the concert forms of native dancing in the works of Katherine Dunham. The second part of the film deals with folk dances of more than fifteen nations.

In this video, artist and art educator Betty LaDuke presents the lives and work of three American women artists of diverse heritages—Lois Mailou Jones, Mine Okubo, and Pablita Velarde.

Surveys the contemporary Chicano art movement by tracing its development during the height of Chicano political activism in the late Sixties and Seventies, blending archival footage with interviews with the artists and samples of their work, including photographs, murals, graphics, films, paintings, and ephemeral art.

Examines the adoption of Chinese children by U.S. parents, profiling six diverse families who share their adoption stories, meeting a parent who worked inside an orphanage before ever planning to adopt, one who lived through China's Cultural Revolution, and another who has spent over twenty years researching adoption in China. It is a video about building families, as well as overcoming cultural myths and misunderstandings.

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.

This video profiles Frederick Brown, one of America’s most prolific expressionist painters, whose Soho loft studio in New York served as a gathering place for artists, musicians, writers, dancers and other creative personalities during the Sixties and Seventies.

Portrays the revival of Los Pastores (The Shepherd's Play), an ancient Christmas morality play that has long been part of Hispanic folk traditions in the American Southwest.

This entertaining documentary features a variety of African-American poets from all over America, who have gathered to perform at Kafe Kuumba in Indianapolis, a local cultural center sponsored by the Midtown Writers Association.

This documentary examines the tradition of both the Catholic/Nationalist and Protestant/Loyalist communities in Northern Ireland of painting huge murals on building walls, both as a way to celebrate cultural heroes or commemorate significant historical events as well as to demarcate their respective neighborhoods.

Examines the rise and fall of socialism in Albania, tracing the nation's history from its 1944 establishment as a communist republic by Enver Hoxha to its recent emergence from decades of authoritarian rule following Hoxha's death in 1985.

Examines the former Yugoslav Republic and newly independent country of Macedonia and its efforts to make the difficult transition from socialism to capitalism and to forge a democratic society in which ethnic minorities share equally in political and economic decision making.

Chronicles recent changes in Russia, from before the 1991 coup attempt and focusing on life today in post-Soviet Russia.

Weimar: A Modern Day Renaissance City is a celebration of the small town that has capped its triumphant comeback by being recognized as the Culture city of Europe in 1999. This video looks at Weimar's past and present.

This video examines the ancient Red Sea port of Jeddah, one of the oldest commercial waterways in the world, and renowned in the Middle East as "the Bride of the Sea."

Reveals the plight of landless peasants in Guatemala, where property ownership is restricted to a small percentage of the nation's most wealthy citizens.

Portrays the appalling socio-political realities of contemporary Guatemala, where the majority of the population--malnourished and illiterate--are exploited by wealthy landowners and businessmen and brutally repressed by the military.

This three-part video series examines different social aspects of the cultures of Mesoamerica (i.e., the nations of Mexico and Central America).

In 1985, Monica Frota, an independent Brazilian filmmaker, collaborated with the Kayapo people of the Brazilian rain forest to develop Mekaron Opoi D'joi (He Who Creates Images), the first Kayapo media project.

This video chronicles the history of the Mayans, the most sophisticated civilization among pre-Columbian societies.