Psychology & Psychiatry

This video, conceived and produced by breast cancer survivors, will serve as an emotional first-aid kit for newly diagnosed breast cancer patients during the frightening time period immediately following diagnosis. The women interviewed provide a range of emotional reactions and ideas for coping with the trauma and treatment from the perspective of long-term survivors.

Examines the risk factors of this widespread and deadly disease, explains breast anatomy and cancer symptoms, interviews women whose lives have been affected by it and doctors involved in treating it, and also demonstrates breast self-examination techniques and their importance in early detection.

Profiles the members of a Second Generation group of children of Holocaust survivors who openly discuss the impact of the Holocaust on their lives and the need to communicate with their parents. Interwoven throughout the film, in addition to emotionally moving family scenes, are interviews with psychologists, authors and historians.

This video explores the Irish tradition of 'waking the dead,' when an all-night vigil is maintained at the home of the deceased the night before burial.

An emotionally moving account of the issues parents face in coming to terms with having a lesbian or gay child, offering a powerful presentation of parents' struggles with society's traditional homophobia and the misinformation and fear about the so-called "Gay Agenda" cultivated by the Radical Right.

Examines the dynamics of the parent-child relationship within several different households where children are being raised by gay and lesbian parents.

Examines nurse-midwifery as a significant and increasingly popular alternative to traditional hospital childbirth methods.

Examines the problem of child abuse and its root causes and shows methods of treatment and prevention. The film includes interviews with parents, doctors, counselors and other professionals, as well as former victims of child abuse, stressing the need for an interdisciplinary approach to this far-reaching problem.

Examines the plight of homeless children through interviews with more than a dozen youngsters living on the streets of California's Bay Area.

This short drama on domestic abuse, based on extensive research with battered Latinas, focuses on a Hispanic family, showing how the father's machismo has intimidated both wife and daughter into continual fear of physical abuse and alienated the son who resents his father's authoritarian attitudes.

An intimate portrait of the filmmaker's immigrant Central American family-in particular the macho traditions of his grandfather-woven from childhood memories and family reminiscences, revealing how exaggerated expressions of male identity can cost a man the love of his entire family.

Filmed over a period of four years, this documentary examines the emotional agony experienced by father and son when separated by divorce, distance and a protracted legal battle for custody. Interviews with a child psychologist, family friends, and babysitter, as well as the child himself (in periodic interviews at the ages of three, five, and six) reveal the psychological impact of this separation on the youngster.

Examines the hectic lifestyles of "fast track" couples, members of the Baby Boom generation whose desire to succeed--at the office, in social circles and through their children's accomplishments--leads to living in a state of chronic stress.

Chronicles the experience of 46-year-old Suzanne, an unmarried American woman who, desiring to create a single-parent family of her own, adopts a baby abandoned on the streets of China in the wake of that country's notorious population laws. Her emotional ordeal illuminates both the joys and problems involved in adopting foreign children and in being a single parent.

Chronicles one season in the life of the Morningside High School basketball team, the defending California state champs, whose school is situated in a crime-ridden L.A. neighborhood.

Examines the culture of failure that is endemic among children of poverty and children of color in our society, its causes, its consequences, and the prognosis for overcoming it.

A compelling investigation of the trauma of rape, portraying the aftermath of a rape and the work of the Rape Crisis Center in Austin, Texas.

Examines the moral and philosophical issues of crime and punishment by focusing on five men serving life sentences as well as the victims of their crimes.

Examines America's juvenile justice system, focusing on three young people in trouble with the law throughout their adolescence.

Dramatizes the loneliness and desperation of long-term prisoners who are denied many of the benefits provided to short-term prisoners, and reveals the emotional damage done to them and their families by extended incarceration.