Week of January 9, 2012
New Documentary DVDs
In the News: Academy Award Nominations for Best Documentary won’t be announced until January 24th. Until then, enjoy one of these films that have been recently added to the Media Center. Highlight: There Once Was an Island: Te Henua e Nnoho, directed by FAU faculty member, Briar March. (Also included here are streaming videos that we have recently acquired through Films for the Humanities & Sciences.)
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30 for 30 (volumes 1 and 2)
From ESPN Films. 12 discs. In celebration of ESPN’s 30th anniversary.
Call Numbers vary
AbUSed: the Postville Raid
Directed by Luis Argueta. Maya Media, 2010
Call Number: JV6970 .P67 A28 2010
Weaves together the personal stories of the individuals, the children, the families, and the town directly affected by the most brutal, most expensive, and largest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid in the United States.
Afro-Iranian Lives
Directed by Ali Ghelichi and Behnaz A. Mizrai, 2008
Call Number: HT1286 .A37 2008
Explores the history of the African slave trade in the nineteenth century using maps and archival photos, the African diaspora and African cultural tradition in Iran, and pays particular attention to socio-economic activities, performances and local religious and traditional rituals of the descendants of African slaves in rural and urban communities.
American Family Revisited
Directed by Susan Raymond. Video Verite, 2007
Call Number: HQ536 .A5477 2007
Follow-up to the famed twelve-hour PBS documentary series, “An American Family.” In the 1973 original series the Loud family of Santa Barbara, California, William and Patricia Loud and their five children (aged 15 to 21) shared their private lives with millions of television viewers, in an attempt to study and illuminate behavior, feelings and attitudes common to American families. In this follow-up, each member of the family talk about what it did to them then and how it has affected their lives since.
Chain Camera
Directed by Kirby Dick. Zeitgeist, 2005
Call Number: HQ796. C43 2005
In August of 1999 at John Marshall High School, two miles east of Hollywood (the location for the “high schools” in Grease and Buffy the Vampire Slayer), ten video cameras were given to students to film their daily lives over the course of one school year–with no limitations on what they could shoot. After one week, the cameras were given to ten new students, and so on. Like chain letters, the cameras moved from student to student. Kirby Dick culls some of the best video diary footage of 16 students, illuminating a profound and surprisingly hopeful portrait of young America at the turn of the 21st century. Candidly riffing on everything from sexuality, drugs and eating disorders to parents and race relations.
Counting on Democracy
Directed by Danny Schecter. Bullfrog Films, 2002
Call Number: JK526 2000 .C68 2002
Investigates the disenfranchisement of voters in the 2000 Presidential election and claims that Florida governor Jeb Bush’s office tried to bury evidence of the exclusion of tens of thousands of legal voters from the voter rolls.
Epigenetics: How Food Upsets Our Genes – (streaming)
Available online via Films on Demand
Why are girls entering puberty at progressively younger ages? Why are the rates of heart attack, cancer, and adult-onset diabetes rising? This program examines growing indications that food affects our genes-a concept vitally important to the science of epigenetics. Viewers encounter a wide range of experiments, case studies, and historical evidence, including Dutch birth records and testimonials from WWII that point to the epigenetic effects of starvation. Findings from animal and human nutritional studies, as well as evidence involving diet habits and environmental threats around the globe, are also presented. DNA methylation, the “”on-and-off switch” of the epigenome, and other important concepts are featured.
High-Tech Foods: Is Genetically-Engineered Food Safe? – (streaming)
Available online via Films On Demand
Fast-tracked by the FDA, GMOs-genetically modified organisms-have already deeply penetrated America’s food supply. Are they safe? In this program, NewsHour correspondent Paul Solman looks at both sides of the GMO controversy. Agricultural law professor Neil Hamilton, a nutrition consultant, and an independent corn farmer counsel a conservative approach, while economist Dermot Hayes, of Iowa State University, reacts to the unfairness of anti-GMO rhetoric, in which the plants are, in effect, considered guilty until proved innocent. Do the potential benefits of GMOs outweigh the possible risks?
John & Jane
Directed by Ashim Ahluwalia. Future East Films, 2009
Call Number: HF5415.1265 .J34 2009
John & Jane discovers a young generation of Indians that live between the real and the virtual. Set in the call centers of Mumbai that explores the effects of globalization on six call agents. Indian by day and American by night, the employees’ split-identity lives warp their sense of reality in a disturbing way.
Lance Loud!: A Death in an American Family
Directed by Alan and Susan Raymond. Video Verite, 2002
Call Number: HQ75.8 .L68 2003
On December 12, 2001, Lance Loud, the first homosexual to appear on American television as an integral member of a family, died of liver failure caused by a hepatitis C and HIV co-infection. He was 50 years old. Hailed as the “final episode” of An American Family — the 1970s public television reality series which followed the Loud family and made its eldest son famous — this documentary records the final months of Lance’s life and revisits his accomplishments as punk rock musician (his band was called Mumps), activist and journalist.
Let’s Get Real
Directed by Debra Chasnoff. New Day Films, 2004
Call Number: LB3013.32 .L48 2004
Name-calling and bullying are at epidemic proportions among youth across the country, and are often the root causes of violence in schools. Let’s Get Real gives young people the chance to tell their stories in their own words–and the results are heartbreaking, shocking, inspiring and poignant.
Mooney vs. Fowle
Directed by James Lipscomb. Docuramafilms.
Call Number: GV956.6 .M66 2011
A cinema verite study of two high school football coaches, Ottis Mooney and Haywood Fowle, pitted against each other for the Florida state championship. (1962 film)
Nitrate Kisses
Directed by Barbara Hammer, 2009
Call Number: HQ76.25 .N58 2009
This first feature by Barbara Hammer, a practicing pioneer of lesbian cinema, weaves images of the sexual activities of four gay and lesbian couples with footage that unearths the forbidden and invisible history of a marginalized people
Old People Driving
Directed by Shaleece Haas. New Day Films, 2010
Call Number: HE5620 .A24 O43 2010
Chronicles the adventures of 96-year-old Milton and 99-year-old Herbert as they confront the end of their driving years.
Out at Work
Directed by Kelly Anderson and Tami Gold. New Day Films, 2009
Call Number: HD6285.5 .U6 O875 2009
Documents the lives of three gay workers from 1991 to 1996 and addresses the startling reality that in forty American states it is legal to fire an employee for being homosexual.
Science Under Attack: Has the Public Lost Faith in Science? – (streaming)
Available online via Films on Demand
The consensus of the world’s science academies, reached after a series of annual conferences, is that climate change is real, and that it’s caused by human activity. Why, then, do so many people doubt these findings? In this program Nobel Prize winner Paul Nurse seeks to understand what may be the greatest amount of suspicion of the scientific community since the Dark Ages. Nurse goes head to head with climate change skeptic Fred Singer, and takes on the misinterpreted “Climategate” emails that ignited a firestorm of denier outrage. Nurse also talks to a man with HIV who does not believe the virus causes AIDS, and examines wariness of genetically modified foods. The role of the media in politicizing research and evidence is also considered.
Tender Fictions
Directed by Barbara Hammer, 2009
Call Number: PN1998.3 .H32 A3 2009
Autobiographical film tracing the life of Barbara Hammer, lesbian filmmaker and activist, presented through numerous stills from her early life, home movies, experimental films, news footage and personal photographs.
There Once Was an Island: Te Henua e Nnoho
Directed by Briar March. New Day Films, 2010
Call Number: QC903.2 .P26 T49 2010
What if your community had to decide whether to leave their homeland forever and there was no help available? This is the reality for the culturally unique Polynesian community of Takuu, a tiny low-lying atoll in the South Western Pacific. As a terrifying tidal flood rips through their already damaged home, the Takuu community experiences the devastating effects of climate change first hand.
Transforming Food: A Global Look at Genetic Modification – (streaming)
Available online via Films on Demand
While the debate over genetically modified foods is far from settled, a growing number of food producers are taking a GM-friendly approach. This program presents arguments in favor of GM technology and suggests ways in which it can boost crop yields and reduce global hunger. Presented by Jim Doherty, a long-time advocate for sustainable agriculture in the U.K., the program travels to Bavaria, Argentina, Uganda, and Pennsylvania as it depicts vast GM farming operations in action. Barley, soy, and other modified crops are studied, while Doherty makes the case that all farming is, in essence, the scientific alteration of wild plant strains. Original BBC broadcast title: Jimmy’s GM Food Fight.
What in the World Are They Spraying?
Directed by Paul Wittenberger. Reality Zone, 2010
Call Number: TD171.9 .W43 2010
Here is the story of a rapidly developing industry called Geo-engineering, driven by scientists, corporations, and governments intent on changing global climate, controlling the weather, and altering the chemical composition of soil and water– all supposedly for the betterment of mankind.