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Content

Social Movements


Social Movements



ACTIVISTS, THE: WAR, PEACE, AND POLITICS IN THE STREETS

Directed by Melody Shemtov

The story of activists who opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including their lives, the tactics they used, and the historical context.

Activists and activism have long been a part of the struggle for peace and justice in American politics and society. Activists have fought battles for civil rights, voter enfranchisement, collective bargaining, and an end to wars. While these struggles have sometimes yielded significant victories, and at other times resulted in disappointing defeats, activism has always been driven by ordinary people who give freely of their time and resources to try to bring about their visions for a new world. However, activists -- as well as how they fit into the political process -- are often overlooked or misunderstood by their fellow citizens.

The Activists: War, Peace, and Politics in the Streets brings to life the stories of ordinary people who tried to stop and end the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. At best, activists had limited influence over the conduct of military policy after 9/11. Yet, their experiences in the antiwar movement helped them to learn about speaking out in the face of injustice. They inspired others to do the same during the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street movements. Indeed, democracy requires more than just one vote every four years. It requires continued pressure by citizens on their government. This is what democracy looks like!

Featuring leading activists and scholars including Tom Hayden, Leslie Cagan, Medea Benjamin, and Michael Heaney.


DVD / 2017 / (Grades 9-12, College, Adults) / 60 minutes

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AMERICAN SOCIALIST: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF EUGENE VICTOR DEBS

Director: Yale Strom

Prolific filmmaker (and Klezmer band leader!) Yale Strom has just completed his latest documentary. The director of the classic films The Last Klezmer, At the Crossroads and many others has turned his attention to an early American political hero.

Bernie Sanders inspired a generation - but who inspired him? American Socialist: The Life and Times of Eugene Victor Debs is the culmination of five years of research and production. Its inspiration was the use of the word "socialist" as a political epithet, and director Yale Strom wanted to define and contextualize the term.

Most people in America do not know that the contemporary political movement to address income inequality began over 100 years ago with Eugene Victor Debs. This film traces the history of American populism, with the man who inspired progressive ideas - from FDR's New Deal to Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign. This is an objective but passionate history of the movement as championed and founded by Debs, a movement that continues to have an impact on our daily lives today.


DVD / 2017 / 97 minutes

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DANGEROUS IDEA, A: GENETICS, EUGENICS AND THE AMERICAN DREAM

Directed by Stephanie Welch

Examines the history of the US eugenics movement and its recent resurrection, which uses false scientific claims and holds that an all-powerful "gene" determines who is worthy and who is not.

There is a dangerous idea that has threatened the American Dream from the very beginning. It is a strong current of biological determinism which views some groups, races and individuals as inherently superior to others and more deserving of fundamental rights. Despite the founders' assertion that "all are created equal," this idea was used to justify disenfranchising women, blacks and Native Americans from the earliest days of the Republic.

A DANGEROUS IDEA: GENETICS, EUGENICS AND THE AMERICAN DREAM reveals how this dangerous idea gained new traction in the 20th century with an increasing belief in the concept of an all-powerful "gene" that predetermines who is worthy and who is not. The film reveals how this new genetic determinism provided an abhorrent rationale for state sanctioned crimes committed against America's poorest, most vulnerable citizens and for violations of the fundamental civil rights of untold millions.

Featuring interviews with social thinkers including Van Jones and Robert Reich as well as prominent scientists in many fields, A DANGEROUS IDEA is a radical reassessment of the meaning, use and misuse of gene science. Like no other film before it, this documentary brings to light how false scientific claims have rolled back long fought for gains in equality, and how powerful interests are poised once again to use the gene myth to unravel the American Dream.


DVD / 2017 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 106 minutes

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EVOLUTION OF ORGANIC: THE STORY OF THE ORGANIC MOVEMENT

Directed by Mark Kitchell

The story of organic agriculture, told by those in California who built the movement.

EVOLUTION OF ORGANIC, which brings us the story of organic agriculture, told by those who built the movement. A motley crew of back-to-the-landers, spiritual seekers and farmers' sons and daughters rejected modern chemical farming and set out to invent organic alternatives. The movement grew from a small band of rebels to a cultural transformation in the way we grow and eat food. By now organic has mainstreamed, become both an industry oriented toward bringing organic to all people, and a movement that has realized a vision of sustainable agriculture.

This is not just a history, but looks forward to exciting and important futures: the next generation who are broadening organic; what lies "beyond organic"; and carbon farming and sequestration as a solution to climate change -- maybe the best news on the planet.

The film is divided into four "acts".

Act I: Origins - Looks at the beginning of the organic movement in California when the 60s counter-culture moved back to the land.

Act 2: Building Organic - Follows the development of increasingly effective organic farming techniques concentrating on the soil and the microbial life within it.

Act 3: Mainstreaming Organic - Organic booms, growing 20% annually for two decades.

Act 4: Organic Futures - The next generation of organic farmers as well as carbon farming and sequestering carbon dioxide hold out great hope for combating climate change.


DVD / 2017 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adults) / 86 minutes

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MORE THAN A WORD

By John and Kenn Little

More Than a Word offers a fascinating look inside the growing movement to change the name of the Washington R dskins football team.

Directed by brothers John and Kenn Little, who are members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, the film traces how the word "r dskin" evolved from being a term of racist derision and slander to being embraced as the name of one of the NFL's most beloved franchises. It also draws on the voices of Native American activists and scholars to place this controversy within the wider context of Native American history and racial stereotyping more generally.

More Than a Word is an ideal classroom resource for clarifying what's truly at stake in contemporary debates about cultural appropriation and Native American-themed mascots.


DVD (With English Subtitles) / 2017 / 70 minutes

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COMPANY TOWN: THE DARK SIDE OF THE SHARING ECONOMY

Directed by Deborah Kaufman, Alan Snitow

A grassroots movement challenges Citizens United, corporate power, and moguls of the "sharing economy" to stop gentrification and wrest back control of San Francisco's future.

The once free-spirited city of San Francisco is now a "Company Town," a playground for tech moguls of the "sharing economy." Airbnb is the biggest hotel, Uber privatizes transit. And now these companies want political power as well.

Meanwhile, middle class and ethnic communities are driven out by gentrification, skyrocketing rents and evictions, sparking a grassroots backlash. Can an insurgent electoral campaign overcome corporate power and billionaires' megabucks to change a city's course?

COMPANY TOWN shows how a grassroots coalition of unions, tenants, neighborhoods of color, activists and artists can come together to win.


DVD / 2016 / (Grades 9-12, College, Adults) / 77 minutes

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DIVEST! THE CLIMATE MOVEMENT ON TOUR

Directed by Josh Fox, Steve Liptay

Chronicles 350.org's 'Do the Math' bus tour as it launched the fossil fuel divestment campaign onto the national and ultimately international stage.

As world governments struggle to meet the aspirational limit of 1.5¢XC of global warming agreed to at COP21 in Paris, a new campaign is targeting the fossil fuel industry in an effort to withdraw its social license to operate. DIVEST! Chronicles 350.org's 'Do the Math' bus tour across the United States in 2012 as it launched the fossil fuel divestment campaign onto the national and ultimately international stage.

Each night Bill McKibben and special guests laid out the findings in his landmark Rolling Stone article 'Global Warming's Terrifying New Math' and made both the moral and historical case for divestment. Three years later over 500 institutions representing over 3 trillion dollars in assets have committed to divest. The campaign is winning, but with the clock ticking down the question remains: will the victories add up enough to matter?

Featuring Naomi Klein, Reverend Lennox Yearwood, Dr. Sandra Steingraber, Josh Fox, Terry Tempest Williams, Winona LaDuke, Desmond Tutu and Ira Glass.


DVD / 2016 / (Grades 9-12, College, Adult) / 77 minutes

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LOVE & SOLIDARITY: JAMES LAWSON & NONVIOLENCE IN THE SEARCH FOR WORKERS' RIGHTS

Directed by Michael Honey

An exploration of nonviolence and organizing through the life and teachings of Rev. James Lawson.

LOVE & SOLIDARITY is an exploration of nonviolence and organizing through the life and teachings of Rev. James Lawson. Lawson provided crucial strategic guidance while working with Martin Luther King, Jr., in southern freedom struggles and the Memphis sanitation strike of 1968. Moving to Los Angeles in 1974, Lawson continued his nonviolence organizing in multi-racial community and worker coalitions that have helped to remake the LA labor movement.

Through interviews and historical documents, acclaimed labor and civil rights historian Michael Honey and award-winning filmmaker Errol Webber put Lawson's discourse on nonviolent direct action on the front burner of today's struggles against economic inequality, racism and violence, and for human rights, peace, and economic justice.


DVD / 2016 / (Grades 9-12, College, Adults) / 38 minutes

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NO GODS, NO MASTERS

This is the story of Anarchism. By going back over the key events of the last two centuries of social history, the series reveals, for the first time, the origins and destiny of a political trend that has been fighting all gods and all masters for over 150 years.

Who exactly are they? Where do those who have always called themselves anarchists come from and what is their line of thought? Why do we consider their thinking to be confused and their history such a cause for concern?

Featuring previously unseen and forgotten archive footage, in addition to outstanding documentation and accounts by world experts, this documentary series recounts the history of a movement that from Paris to New York, and from Tokyo to Buenos Aires, has constantly imbued the world with its freedom and revolt.

Part One: The Passion For Destruction (1840-1906)
Part Two: Land And Freedom (1907-1921)
Part Three: In Memory Of The Vainquished (1922-1945)


3 DVDs / 2016 / 156 minutes

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EDUCATION INC

By Brian Malone

American public education is at a crossroads. For years now, public schools across the country have been struggling, desperately short on funds while facing extreme political pressure to improve student performance.

For advocates of public education, these struggles have been a major cause for concern. But for advocates of privatization, they've been a highly profitable business opportunity.

Education, Inc. is a film about the accelerating movement to privatize America's public schools. Filmmaker and parent Brian Malone travels to public school districts across the country to see for himself what the privatization movement is all about, and to determine what it would mean for his own kids if we abandoned our public school system.

Weaving striking footage from school protests and raucous school board meetings with commentary from some of the best-known educators in the country, Malone shows how private investors, large education corporations, and other for-profit interests have been quietly and systematically privatizing America's public education system under the banner of "school choice." Along the way, he clarifies the key issues at stake, and makes a powerful case for why public education matters.

The result is a powerful and deeply personal look at a pivotal moment in the history of American education.


DVD (With English Subtitles) / 2015 / 60 minutes

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EL POETA

Directed by Katie Galloway, Kelly Duane de la Vega

After his only son is murdered in the Mexican drug war, a mystic poet launches an international crusade to save his country.

EL POETA tells the story of renowned Mexican poet Javier Sicilia, who ignited mass protests and an ongoing movement for peace after the brutal murder of his 24-year-old son Juan Francisco - collateral damage in a drug war that has left 60,000+ dead since 2006 - the majority civilians.

Drawing on the philosophical, artistic and spiritual dimensions of Sicilia and his movement, EL POETA reinterprets the "hard news" horror story of the Mexican drug war as a deeply personal, poetic and at times even hopeful one, tracing Sicilia's path from poet and father to movement leader and international symbol of grief and redemption.


DVD / 2015 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 55 minutes

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DIVIDE IN CONCORD

Directed by Kris Kaczor

A fiery octogenarian activist spearheads a grassroots campaign to ban the sale of single-serve plastic bottled water in Concord, MA.

Jean Hill, a fiery octogenarian, is deeply concerned about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the world's largest landfill. Since 2010, she has spearheaded a grassroots campaign to ban the sale of single-serve plastic bottled water in her hometown of Concord, Massachusetts. She spends her golden years attending city council meetings and cold calling residents. So far, her attempts to pass a municipal bylaw have failed.

As she prepares for one last town meeting, Jean faces the strongest opposition yet, from local merchants and the International Bottled Water Association. But her fiercest challenge comes from Adriana Cohen, mother, model and celebrity publicist-turned-pundit, who insists the bill is an attack on freedom.

When Adriana thrusts Jean's crusade into the national spotlight, it's silver-haired senior versus silver-tongued pro. In the same town that incited the American Revolution and inspired Thoreau's environmental movement, can one senior citizen make history? A tense nail-biter of a vote will decide.


DVD / 2014 / (Grades 5-12, College, Adult) / 142 minutes

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GROUNDSWELL RISING: PROTECTING OUR CHILDREN'S AIR AND WATER

Directed by Renard Cohen

Documents the opposition from both sides of the political spectrum to the ubiquitous practice of fracking for natural gas, and the health and environmental reasons behind it.

GROUNDSWELL RISING gives voice to ordinary folks engaged in a David and Goliath struggle against Big Oil and Gas. We meet parents, scientists, doctors, farmers and individuals across the political spectrum decrying the energy extraction process known as fracking that puts profits over people. This provocative documentary tracks a grassroots movement exposing dangers to clean air, water, and civil rights.

GROUNDSWELL RISING shows how fracking has contaminated drinking water and jeopardized health and quality of life. Homeowners near wells suffer from respiratory ailments and property devaluation. Reina Ripple, of Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project, chronicles mounting ailments related to fracking. A former industry employee shows skin lesions and edema obtained while working with fracking waste.

Grassroots efforts have achieved bans, moratoriums, and referendums on fracking. Stanford University Professor Mark Jacobson paves the way forward globally with his Solutions Project for 100% renewable energy. Transcending the genre of environmental film, GROUNDSWELL's passionate stories inspire and empower.


DVD / 2014 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 70 minutes

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WRENCHED

Directed by ML Lincoln

Captures the generations of eco-activists, from the 1960s to the present day, inspired by Edward Abbey's passionate defense of wilderness in The Monkey Wrench Gang.

From Upton Sinclair's The Jungle to Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, American literature has a history of being in the vanguard when it comes to activism about controversial issues. The books of Edward Abbey carry on that tradition, with memoirs like Desert Solitaire and the classic comic novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang, taking on the degradation of the American Southwest.

WRENCHED reveals how Edward Abbey's anarchistic spirit and riotous novels influenced and helped guide the nascent environmental movement of the 1970s and '80s. Through interviews, archival footage and re-enactments, the film captures the outrage of Abbey's friends who were the original eco-warriors. In defense of wilderness, these early activists pioneered "monkeywrenching" - a radical blueprint for "wrenching the system." Exemplified by EarthFirst! in the early '80s, direct action and civil disobedience grew in popularity.

WRENCHED captures a new generation of monkeywrenchers who use Abbey's books as a source of inspiration. They are personified by Tim DeChristopher, who single-handedly stopped the sale of 100,000+ acres of public trust lands in southeastern Utah. The fight continues to sustain the last bastion of the American frontier - the spirit of the West. And WRENCHED, following in Abbey's footsteps, asks the question: How far are we willing go in defense of wilderness?


DVD / 2014 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 93 minutes

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MIC CHECK: DOCUMENTARY SHORTS FROM THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT

Short documentary films about the most important social movement of the 21st century

When thousands of people concerned about growing economic inequality gathered in Zuccotti Park in New York City on September 17, 2011, there was little indication that they would fundamentally transform American political debate and ignite a full-scale national and global protest movement. But within a year, the Occupy Wall Street protestors had done just that.

This powerful collection of short films, made by Occupy protestors on the ground, tells the story of the movement in real time. While the films range in length from just one to ten minutes, their combined force is spellbinding. Together they show how a fledgling movement came out of nowhere to challenge Wall Street's rapacious and predatory practices, force economic inequality and corporate greed onto the mainstream political agenda, and capture the imagination of the world. The result is a fascinating and multifaceted portrait of one of the defining political struggles of our time.

Mic Check is especially suitable for courses in political science, government, economics, history, human rights, sociology, social justice and activism, and for campus event programming dedicated to social issues.


DVD (With English Subtitles) / 2012 / 100 minutes

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TO TELL THE TRUTH: WORKING FOR CHANGE

By Calvin Skaggs

WORKING FOR CHANGE: DOCUMENTING HARD TIMES (1929-1941)

To expose the worst effects of the Great Depression, documentarians developed a new form, the social documentary. The left-leaning Film and Photo League sounded the alarm on economic conditions, at a time when mainstream media were still insisting prosperity was just around the corner. Police night-stick blows often added shakiness to their footage as they captured evictions, breadlines, and mass protests.

After FDR's election, Pare Lorentz convinced the New Deal administration to pay for a film about the Dust Bowl. Working-and arguing-with veterans of the Film and Photo League, he crafted the classic Plow That Broke the Plains. Lorentz's films had it both ways, parlaying a strong (and government-funded) social critique into a box-office hit.

English pioneer John Grierson likewise found backing from the government, and produced enduring and original portraits of the working class. In keeping with his Tory sponsor's agenda, though, these films all showed a well-oiled, highly-functional social machine-fulfilling Grierson's aim as a Social Democrat to unite British society.

Back in the US, documentarians formed Frontier Films, the first independent, non-profit film production company in the U.S. Their mission was to investigate some of the major American labor struggles of the 1930s-until Pearl Harbor changed everyone's focus.


DVD (Color / Black & White, Closed Captioned) / 2012 / 56 minutes

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BATTLE FOR THE ARAB VIEWER, THE

By Nordin Lasfar

In early 2011, people around the world tuned into Al Jazeera to watch the Egyptian revolution in real time. Meanwhile, rival broadcaster Al Arabiya was also offering near continuous coverage, with cameras on a balcony overlooking the 6th October Bridge, where protesters and police clashed.

How was the content of those broadcasts - and the networks' subsequent coverage - influenced by their political allegiances?

Featuring interviews with current and former journalists from both networks, and analysis from independent pundits, The Battle for the Arab Viewer highlights the philosophical differences between the two pan-Arab networks.

Al Jazeera was created by the Emir of Qatar after he deposed his father in a coup. The station typically champions the poor and social movements - such as the Muslim Brotherhood - that are hostile to the Saudi regime. The station has grown highly influential. In the film, a passerby stops Al Jazeera's chief Cairo correspondent on the street to thank him and the government of Qatar for supporting the anti-Mubarak forces, saying the network is "90%" responsible for the revolution.

With Al Jazeera supporting elements hostile to Saudi Arabia, the Saudis set up their own network as a counterpoint: the more conservative Al Arabiya, owned by a close friend of the royal family.

While The Battle for the Arab Viewer offers insight and analysis, it also shows how the battle between the two networks plays out on the ground in Cairo. We go behind the scenes with Al Arabiya journalist Randa Abul Azm and Al Jazeera's Abdelfattah Fayed as they follow stories, break news, and cover events such as Hosni Mubarak's trial. (Azm is allowed into the courtroom, but Fayed is not.)

Azm and Fayed each mirror their networks' respective demographics. Al Arabiya appeals to well-off, middle-class viewers who value security and stability. Enter Amz, who lives in a building built by her engineer father, on a street named for her grandfather. Fayed, representing the network that purports to stand for the downtrodden, shows us a photo of his father, who worked in agriculture.

Both deny that their work is influenced by the political agendas of their networks' owners. But former employees of both networks tell a different story. Particularly striking is the case of Hafez al Mirazi, who was taken off Al Arabiya's airwaves after promising to put Saudi Arabia under the microscope on his show.

Media bias is nothing new - as Mirazi says, viewers of Fox News and MSNBC each know what they are going to get. What is different in the Arab world is that the networks are directly owned by states. He says, "They keep shifting according to the countries they are sponsored by, and that affects the stories their citizens get on a daily basis."

Ultimately, the problem may resolve itself. As democracy spreads through the region, will truly independent media follow?


DVD (Color) / 2011 / 48 minutes

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FRAGMENTS OF A REVOLUTION

Directed by Anonymous
By Virginie Guibbaud & Gilles Padovani

Fragments of a Revolution goes beyond the headlines and the tweets to tell the story of the protests that swept Iran in the aftermath of the disputed 2009 presidential election.

Directed by an anonymous Iranian living in exile, the film brings together clandestinely sent emails, online videos and footage shot by protesters in the midst of demonstrations.

Fragments of a Revolution is, of necessity, a highly unconventional documentary - one in which the director relies on anonymous correspondents within Iran and on YouTube footage. The director feels as though he or she has been living in a "virtual Tehran" for eight months - watching distressing images from the homeland and trying to reconstruct the story of what happened.

This unusual process leads to a film with an astounding immediacy. We alternate between events in Tehran and the our anonymous director's attempts to make sense of them - until the two storylines converge in early 2010.

As the protest movement grows, we are privy to the immediate experiences of those on the ground: women picking up rocks to hand to protesters; people secretly filming police as they beat people, smash cars and target those in windows who are looking on; marchers coming under fire from rooftop snipers.

Finally, the protests die down, and the forced confessions and show trials begin. "My hopes have become ashes" says the film's director. But under those ashes, embers continue to glow.

Fragments of a Revolution is not the definitive, objective record of the powerful opposition movement that swept the country. But it is a remarkable and impressionistic inside view of the movement, through the images and words of those it most closely affected.


DVD (Color) / 2011 / 57 minutes

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PURITY MYTH, THE: THE VIRGINITY MOVEMENT'S WAR AGAINST WOMEN

This alternately hilarious and infuriating new film adaptation of pioneering feminist blogger Jessica Valenti's bestselling book makes a powerful case that evangelical Christians, right-wing politicians, and conservative activists have been using irrational fears around young women's sexuality to undermine women's autonomy and roll back women's rights. In a wide-ranging analysis that moves from 'purity balls' and the abstinence movement to right-wing attacks on Planned Parenthood and women's reproductive health care, Valenti targets the persistent patriarchal assumption that men know what's best for women -- and that a woman's worth depends on what she does, or does not do, sexually. The result is a timely and clarifying look at the relationship between women's equality, women's sexuality, and a reactionary political movement that is working on multiple fronts to undermine both. Ideal for courses in women's studies, women's health issues, gender studies, and contemporary politics.

DVD (With English Subtitles) / 2011 / 45 minutes

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TUNISIA, YEAR ZERO

By Feriel Ben Mahmoud

On January 14th, 2011, the people of Tunisia took to the streets in mass protest and toppled the government of Ben Ali. The event has a tremendous impact in the region which triggers the Arab Spring. Following the revolution, Tunisians make the radical choice to draft a new state constitution. Called to the urns for the first free elections of their history, the citizens of Tunisia will have to choose which model of society they wish to live in. Islam, secularism and women's status become the major themes of a campaign under high pressure.

Following the events day by day, TUNISIA, YEAR ZERO tells the story of a difficult birth: that of the first democracy in the Arab world. In 6 months, no less than 110 political parties were created. In this political turmoil, a few of them emerge: the Islamist party Ennhada seduces those disappointed with the revolution. Some other modernist parties, such as Ettakatol and the PDP, are divided on the content of their policies as well as on which strategy to adopt. Leading the polls, Ennahdha will confirm its success in the elections with more than 90 seats out of 217.

How could these results be predicted? TUNISIA, YEAR ZERO gives the reasons for the outcome of the elections.


DVD (Color) / 2011 / 52 minutes

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MULTIRACIAL IDENTITY

Explores the social, political and religious impact of the multiracial movement.

Multiracial people are the fastest growing demographic in America, yet there is no official political recognition for mixed-race people. MULTIRACIAL IDENTITY explores the social, political, and religious impact of the multiracial movement and the lived experience of being multiracial.

Different racial and cultural groups see multiracialism differently. For some Whites multiracialism represents the pollution of the White race. For some Blacks it represents an attempt to escape Blackness. And for some Asians, Latinos, and Arabs, multiracialism can be seen as ill equipped to perpetuate cultural traditions and therefore represents the dilution of the culture.


DVD / 2010 / (Grades 9-12, College, Adult) / 77 minutes

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STOLEN LAND

By Margarita Martinez and Miguel Salazar

For the Nasa indigenous community, a tightly knit and fiercely proud people, in southern Colombia, the land is their "Mother Earth." However, since the European conquest, the Nasa have been repeatedly displaced from their land. Now they are caught in a crossfire between the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) guerrillas and the Colombian Army.

STOLEN LAND tells the history of the Nasa's resistance movement, with Dec. 16, 1991 being a symbolic day for the Nasa when 20 of them died claiming their land rights at Hacienda El Nilo Plantation. The Colombian state admitted police complicity in the Nilo massacre before an international court in 1995 and prior to that pledged 39,000 acres of land to the Nasa over the next 3 years.

The film shows that in present day they have received only one-third of the land, making it nearly impossible for their growing community to continue with their traditional agrarian way of life. After 15 years of waiting for their land, the Nasa block the Panamerican highway, demanding compliance with the Nilo agreement.

Their charismatic leader is Lucho Acosta, an imposing tactician descended from Indian warriors who hopes to "liberate Mother Earth." He knows from experience that violence only breeds more violence but facing insurmountable odds, Lucho's beliefs are tested to their very core as the government attacks with tanks, helicopters, guns and tear gas.

STOLEN LAND illustrates the decades-long battle over land, unfortunately commonplace among indigenous populations, which continues in a nation where less than 1% of the population owns well over half the land.


DVD (Color) / 2009 / 73 minutes

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ANTONIO NEGRI: A REVOLT THAT NEVER ENDS

Directed by Alexandra Weltz and Andreas Pichler

Paris, July 1st, 1997. An elderly man arrives in Italy. Upon his arrival at the airport, the special forces of the Carabinieri immediately arrest him. Antonio Negri had returned voluntarily to his home country after 15 years of exile. The newspaper Liberation hails it as, "The return of the Devil"

Over the years few intellectuals have experienced as much admiration and hatred, or as much praise and rejection, as Antonio Negri. His book Empire, coauthored with Michael Hardt, was an international bestseller. A critical analysis of the new global economy, it was hailed as a bold new manifesto for the 21st century and overnight it turned Negri into a leading spokesperson for the international anti-globalization movement.

ANTONIO NEGRI-A REVOLT THAT NEVER ENDS profiles the controversial life and times of this university professor, philosopher, militant, prisoner, refugee, and so-called 'enemy of the state.' It traces Negri's roots in the history of radical left-wing movements in Italy during the Sixties and Seventies, illustrated through archival footage of workers' strikes, factory occupations, terrorist actions, violent street confrontations, political repression, and government trials of dissidents.

During these tumultuous decades, finding himself branded as an evil ideologue with alleged ties to the Red Brigades terrorist group, Negri spent ten years in prison and fourteen years in exile in Paris, where he contributed to philosophical debates with authors such as Deleuze and Guattari. The film features interviews with Negri, conducted following his April 2003 release from confinement, as well as public speaking appearances at seminars and protest demonstrations, plus commentary from his coauthor Michael Hardt, and Italian and French colleagues.

Against the backdrop of scenes of recent anti-globalization protests, Negri discusses the dangers of the economic, cultural and legal transformations being wrought by the forces of globalization as well as the opportunities to resist these changes. ANTONIO NEGRI explores this visionary theoretician's lifelong political struggle, now being expressed in works of contemporary relevance such as Empire and its sequel, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, a powerful intellectual project in protest of the new global order.


DVD (Color / Black & White) / 2004 / 52 minutes

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