Cultural Studies

An intimate and beautiful documentary that looks at what it's like to be gay in modern China, from the filmmakers of the Academy Award-winning documentary The Blood of Yingzhou District.

The educational version of the 2008 Academy Award® winner for Best Documentary Feature, Taxi to the Dark Side is the definitive investigation into the introduction of torture as an interrogation technique in U.S. facilities and the role played by key figures of the Bush Administration in the process.

On January 16, 2006, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was inaugurated President of Liberia, the first elected female head of state in Africa. With unprecedented access, Iron Ladies of Liberia follows her historic first year in office.

What are the implications for democracy in Pakistan? Before his sudden resignation, President Musharraf agreed to discuss these issues over dinner at his official residence, the Army House. Supplemented by a diverse range of interviews, this documentary provides an important study of today's Pakistan.

From the director of the acclaimed Al-Jazeera documentary Control Room, this extremely prescient and insightful film shows how three women activists used digital cameras and a website to expose widespread fraud and violence in the country's last presidential elections - in which Mubarak won with 88.6% of the vote.

Over the past two decades India has experienced steady economic growth resulting in the rise of a new middle class. But what does it mean to actually live in the world's largest democracy? In Search of Gandhi seeks to discover the current and future state of democracy in India.

Is the small village of Durakovo - where residents unquestioningly obey a self-appointed leader - a microcosm of Russia today? For God, Tsar and the Fatherland deftly explores what drives the current strain of Russian patriotism, and why many of the country's citizens oppose Western-style democracy.

Che Guevara died in Bolivia while trying to ignite the sparks of revolution. Forty years later, the country's first indigenous President, Evo Morales, is promising to continue his work. This documentary takes a closer look at the successes and failures of Morales' 'revolution.'

Filmed across the Middle East, Bloody Cartoons looks at how and why 12 drawings in a Danish newspaper drew a small country into a confrontation with Muslims all over the world. Featuring interviews with key players, this documentary goes behind the controversy to investigate the roots of the crisis.

This is democracy - Japanese style. Campaign provides a startling insider's view of Japanese electoral politics in this portrait of a man plucked from obscurity by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to run for a critical seat on a suburban city council.

An experiment in democracy is taking place in a third grade classroom in China. For the first time, students will be able to elect their own class monitor. A surprising and insightful documentary, Please Vote for Me seeks to determine how - if democracy should come to China - it would be received.

On an abandoned beach off the coast of Israel, against all odds, Israeli and Palestinian fishermen live and work together. Men on the Edge: Fishermen's Diary documents four years in their lives, an eclectic group of men brought together by a shared relationship with the sea.

Afghan Muscles takes us inside the most popular sport in Afghanistan: body building. Suppressed by the Taliban, this thriving spectator sport now attracts thousands of young men across a country ravaged by war and poverty who dream of attaining a better life through muscles.

Hasidic communities in the U.S. and elsewhere are surrounded by an Eyruv, a thin wire that serves as a ritual boundary with the secular world. Beyond Eyruv follows a young man who decides to leave the ultra-orthodox Hasidic community, the only world he's ever known.

The journey of a young boy, hired to carry a red Coca-Cola fridge across the Himalayan Mountains, is an acute portrait of child labor in the developing world. This unusually beautiful and moving documentary is supported by the Global Fund for Children.

The heroic story of the first woman to run for President of Afghanistan. Frontrunner introduces us to Dr. Massouda Jalal, a mother of three children, whose campaign inspired thousands of women across the country to participate in the democratic process.

With unprecedented access to Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits, Cuba: A Lifetime of Passion looks at the extant reality of the Cuban Revolution and its uncertain post-Castro future.

For most of us, pageants conjure up smiling beauty-queen hopefuls parading around in bathing suits or glittery gowns. But most of us have never witnessed the Miss Navajo Nation competition - a unique pageant established in 1952 to celebrate women and tradition in Navajo culture.

After the U.S. and India, the world's third largest producer of feature films is Nigeria. Welcome to Nollywood explores this burgeoning film industry, from its unique challenges to its diverse array of films that both mirror and comment upon the social ills of the continent.

A magical portrait of Russia's revolutionary artistic avant-garde - Mayakovsky, Voloshin, Blok, Malevich, Tatlin - through the life of Sonia Dymshitz-Tolstaya, an impassioned artist whose life reflected the social upheavals of her time. She was one of the few Jewish women who became part of this inner circle.