Media Studies
Showing all 27 results
-
Archeology of Memory: Villa Grimaldi
This beautifully crafted, poignant, and timely documentary explores the power of art to heal the trauma of torture. The film follows exiled Chilean musician Quique Cruz from the San Francisco Bay Area to Chile and back as he creates a multimedia installation and musical suite in an effort to heal the emotional wounds inflicted on him by the state-sponsored torture of the Pinochet regime.
More Information >> Add to cart -
The Art of Regret
This brilliant and keenly observed documentary, by renowned ethnographic filmmaker Judith MacDougall, explores the digital revolution in China, where photography is known as the “art of regret.”
More Information >> Add to cart -
Autumn’s Work
This is the third of the four films that make up the series, Mr. Coperthwaite: A Life in the Maine Woods. This beautifully shot and edited film follows Bill Coperthwaite as he prepares for winter in the woods.
More Information >> Add to cart -
Beyond the Politics of Life and Choice: A New Conversation About Abortion
This timely and exceptionally thought-provoking documentary moves the divisive and highly emotional debate over abortion away from politicized battle lines and into a compassionate and sensitive space, where people with opposing views can better understand the deep concerns of one another.
More Information >> Add to cart -
Body Image: The Quest for Perfection
In this candid and thought-provoking video, seven diverse college-age women share their feelings about their bodies during a three-day retreat. They explore some of the complex sources of their feelings and examine images of women’s bodies in the mass media.
More Information >> Add to cart -
Confederacy Theory
This powerful and thought-provoking documentary explores the complexities of a controversy steeped in American history and racial divisiveness: the debate over the Confederate flag in South Carolina, the last state to fly the flag on its capitol.
More Information >> Add to cart -
Delhi at Eleven
This stunningly original and thought-provoking documentary, which was produced by renowned ethnographic filmmaker David MacDougall, presents the work of four 11-year-old filmmakers living in New Delhi, India.
More Information >> Add to cart -
The Doon School Quintet
This groundbreaking, five-part study of India’s most prestigious boys’; boarding school is a contemporary masterwork of renowned ethnographic filmmaker David MacDougall. Sometimes called “the Eton of India,” Doon School has developed its own characteristic style and presents a curious mixture of privilege and egalitarianism. Each of the five films can stand on its own but taken together as a series the five films provide a unique and revelatory cultural portrait that will take its place among the classics of ethnographic cinema.
More Information >> Add to cart -
Funny Old Guys
Frank Tarloff was a man for whom there were "no more victories." This poignant and deeply affecting documentary, filled with the sparkling humor of its subjects and a perceptive eye for compelling moments of revelation, follows Frank and his friends through the last months of his life.
More Information >> Add to cart -
In and Out of Africa
This extraordinary documentary is one of the most intelligent, perceptive, and engaging films ever made on African culture and art. It explores with irony and humor issues of authenticity, taste, and racial politics in the transnational trade in African art.
More Information >> Add to cart -
Kamakha Through Prayerful Eyes
This "finely crafted, lyrical exploration of a sacred site" creatively captures the complexity and mystery surrounding Kamakhya Temple, an ancient place of fertility worship in India’s northeastern state of Assam. This temple is unique among Hindu temples of the Devi (the Goddess) in that it enshrines no image of Her.
More Information >> Add to cart -
Men at Work: Voices from Detroit’s Underground Economy
Detroit, which recently came in first on Forbes magazine’s “Miserable Cities Index,” is viewed as the national reference point for all that has gone wrong in urban America. But abandonment and decay are not the only stories in the poorest, most dramatically shrinking major American city. Detroit is also a tale of ingenuity and reinvention born of necessity. This is the story of how, in an economic climate apparently designed to ensure their failure, some resilient men find work on their own terms, get food and shelter, and raise their children -often making up the means to do so as they go along.
More Information >> Add to cart -
Monuments Are for Men, Waffles Are for Women: Gender, Permanence and Impermanence
The unwritten rules governing the traditional activities of men and women are sharply but subtly defined. Women’s work has traditionally been repetitive and ongoing, and its end result short-lived and impermanent. In contrast, the activities of men are traditionally long-lived, durable, or permanent.
More Information >> Add to cart -
Mr. Coperthwaite: A Life in the Maine Woods
An eloquent and thought-provoking meditation on time and process, this “intense, revelatory” four-part series presents an unforgettable portrait of a remarkable life – one shaped by nature, work, poetry, and the rhythm of changing seasons.
More Information >> Add to cart -
The Myth of the Buddha’s Birthplace
This fascinating and thought-provoking documentary explores the process by which a modern myth is created. The film illustrates how the people in a small village in eastern India have come to believe that the Buddha was born in their village, despite ample evidence to the contrary.
More Information >> Add to cart -
The Pornography of Everyday Life
This trenchant and provocative documentary essay incorporates more than 200 powerful images from advertising, ancient myth, contemporary art, and popular culture to demonstrate how pornography (defined as the sexualized domination, degradation, and objectification of women and girls and social groups who are put in the demeaned feminine role) is in reality a prevalent mainstream worldview.
More Information >> Add to cart -
Radical Disciple: The Story of Father Pfleger
Regarded as a hero by many and a renegade by some in the Catholic Church hierarchy, Michael Pfleger, longtime pastor of Chicago’s St. Sabina parish, has consistently used the power of his pulpit to battle social inequity and engage in high profile campaigns to end drug-dealing, prostitution, and the exploitation of the poor by liquor and tobacco companies.
More Information >> Add to cart -
Rancho California (Por Favor)
This thought-provoking, widely acclaimed visual essay provides a troubling journey through migrant farmworker camps in suburban southern California.
More Information >> Add to cart -
Record Store
As the American music industry struggles to find its place in the digital world, many music enthusiasts continue to buy and collect vinyl records, sometimes to their financial and emotional detriment. This remarkable documentary explores the various urban subcultures at an independent record store in Philadelphia, focusing on the store’s owners, employees, and customers.
More Information >> Add to cart -
SchoolScapes
Inspired by the cinema of Lumiere and the ideas of the 20th-century Indian thinker Krishnamurti, renowned ethnographic filmmaker David MacDougall explores a famous progressive co-educational school in South India. This innovative film is dedicated to the simple act of looking.
More Information >> Add to cart -
Spring in Dickinson’s Reach
This is the first of the four films that make up the series, Mr. Coperthwaite: A Life in the Maine Woods. This film establishes, literally and metaphorically, the scope of Bill Coperthwaite’s world as it explores the unique environment that he has crafted in the Maine forest.
More Information >> Add to cart -
A Summer Task
This is the second of the four films that make up the series, Mr. Coperthwaite: A Life in the Maine Woods. This tightly-focused film examines the rhythm and tempo of work in the forest. It follows Bill Coperthwaite and his cousin, Steve, as they fell and haul trees to build a bridge and begin charting a new trail through the woods.
More Information >> Add to cart -
True-Hearted Vixens
This remarkable documentary follows the fortunes of two women during the Women’s Professional Football League’s inaugural season of six exhibition games. One of the women is a young political consultant-turned linebacker and the other is an elite amateur basketball player and single mother taking a shot at wide receiver. Both traveled from afar, trading security and leaving jobs and loved ones for this long-shot at stardom.
More Information >> Add to cart -
Under the Palace Wall
Noted ethnographic filmmaker David MacDougall here employs a masterful series of precisely observed scenes to explore the local primary school and contemporary village life of Delwara, in southern Rajasthan, India.
More Information >> Add to cart -
Visions of Mary Frank
This intimate and revelatory documentary, by the noted filmmaker, photographer, and musician John Cohen, profiles the life and art of New York artist Mary Frank. In the words of Tom Huhn, Chair of Art History and Visual and Critical Studies at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, “This beautiful film is a profound demonstration of the continuity from art to life to art-making…” and “one of the most powerful and intimate portraits of an artist that we had ever seen.”
More Information >> Add to cart -
Winter Days
This is the fourth of the four films that make up the series, Mr. Coperthwaite: A Life in the Maine Woods. This evocative film reveals the stillness and quietness of the forest in winter.
More Information >> Add to cart -
A World Without Strangers
This engaging and innovative documentary explores the common misperceptions and stereotypes of one another shared by young people in the Middle East and the United States. It connects five college-age women from the United States with five from the Middle East in a media-based dialogue that illuminates and challenges cross-cultural misconceptions.
More Information >> Add to cart