Summary: Filmed in Istanbul and Oslo, this artistic documentary by Turkish/Norwegian filmmaker Nefise Ozkal Lorentzen openly explores what it is like to be both gay and Muslim. Through the interrelated stories of a gay rights activist, a gay imam, drag artists, and others, Gender Me gently denounces homophobia in general, encourages discourse and engagement within Islam as a positive societal approach...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: The forms of punishment a society chooses, and what exactly it deems a crime, tell a great deal about that society's values. How is justice pursued and punishment meted out? This program looks at the history of punishment, beginning with early compensatory forms of justice, Hammurabi's Code, and the Law of Moses. Socrates' execution and Roman and medieval forms of justice are analyzed in a...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Throughout history, homosexuality has been censured by some of the world's major religions-and often punished to the severest degree. This program studies the scriptures and doctrines of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam to understand why, and then contrasts their stances with those of Hinduism, Sikhism, and the Rome of Hadrian. A compassionate and compelling discussion of gay marriage and child...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Plato's academy was the first formal arena for education, where young men were tutored in the rigors of logic, philosophy, and mathematics. Prior to this, societies transmitted knowledge from one generation to the next orally, and after the advent of writing, through texts. Although education throughout history has been predominantly a privilege of the elite, universal education is currently...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program sums up the evolution of commerce, from barter, to coinage, to today's stock market. Economist Professor Grantham, of McGill University, discusses how writing and accounting facilitated trade and gave rise to a merchant class in the ancient world, and hence the spread of classical civilization in the Mediterranean and Asia Minor, culminating in the Roman Empire. The importance of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: There can be no society without work. Yet as civilizations prosper and grow, labor historically is shifted onto the less privileged, while the elite either scorn work or only participate in certain types, creating hierarchies and inequalities. This program examines work from the early egalitarian hunter/gatherer and agrarian societies to the modern world-a world of multinationals and child...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: In this program, slang expert Jonathan Green explores the history of English slang and its use around the world. Wittingly revealed are the derivatives and sources of some of the more famous words, such as bimbo-a derivative of the 18th-century Italian word for baby-bambino, and the word slang itself, thought to have derived from the Scandinavian word sling, meaning throw or shot.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: The horrors of World War II are the subject of this episode. We’ve been told all our lives that this war was our greatest triumph, the moment when the forces of light - the Western democracies and the Soviet Union - prevailed over the forces of darkness, the Nazis and the other Axis powers. It was a conflict that began in Europe in September 1939 and ended with the dropping of the atomic bomb...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: Marx divided the industrial world into two antagonistic classes: the bourgeois and the proletariat. In today's society, this simple dichotomy fails to capture the many segments of a global marketplace. From the communal hunter/gatherers and agrarian cultures; to ancient empires and medieval fiefdoms; to the technocrats, executives, laborers, and others of the stratified modern world, this...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: For more than a millennium Western civilization looked to the Church for answers to questions about life’s meaning. But for many, acceptance of ecclesiastical doctrine wasn’t enough. This program traces the roots of modern religious skepticism back over 400 years to examine both the unraveling and the endurance of Christian belief. It explores challenges to established theologies in the ideas...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: Rome was once the center of Christian persecution, but the martyrdom there of Paul and Peter began the unfolding of a historical epic that ended with the seat of empire becoming the spiritual capital of the Western Latin church. This program charts the development of Roman Catholicism, traveling to the ancient Port of Ostia, churches in Ravenna, and a remote Celtic monastery to show how...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: How accurate is the term "identical twins"? Can a cell-for-cell likeness between two siblings really exist? And what does that say about the supposed uniqueness of each human being? This program examines the genetics, physiology, and psychology behind such questions as it presents fascinating real-world case studies of identical twin development. Viewers meet monozygotic twins raised apart and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: In this TEDTalk, Steven Pinker charts the decline of violence from biblical times to the present and argues that although it may seem counterintuitive - and even offensive, given recent genocides and atrocities - we are living in the most peaceful time in our species' existence. Pinker is the author of The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined and one of Time's 100 Most...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: This final episode describes the Cold War as a continuation of the “war of the world” in which millions died in proxy wars conducted by the two superpowers. World War II may have been the central act of an epic struggle between rival empires, but the Cold War continued the turbulence that marked the entire 20th century as the most violent period in history. The end of the Cold War led to great...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: Did racist atrocities in the 19th and 20th centuries bring Western society to an ethical and ideological turning point? Or has racial oppression simply assumed other, more insidious forms? Pursuing answers, this program focuses on a pattern of segregation and genocide evident in King Leopold's Belgian Congo rampages, South Africa's apartheid rule, the terrorism of Jim Crow, and less obvious...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: Reaching back across the centuries, this program sheds light on historical attitudes toward human differences. It assesses the significance of Biblical narratives, including the "curse of Ham," in the evolution of European concepts of race, and goes on to examine the basis of institutionalized racism-entwined with fervent capitalism-on which the transatlantic slave trade operated. The...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: This first episode posits that economic volatility, ethnic conflict and empires in crisis combined to spawn the 20th century’s bloodiest conflicts. This led to the rise of the brutal regimes of Germany, Japan and Russia, the “age of genocide” and a preoccupation with racial purity. It gives an excellent work up to the 20th century in conflict. Spanning Asia and Europe, it portrays the human...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: During the 19th century, racial categorization took on a pseudoscientific stance. This program shows how the academic racism of the period helped to spread imperialist policies across the globe. Sifting through the "science" of eugenics and its link to social Darwinism, the film juxtaposes the racial hygiene theories of Robert Knox, Francis Galton, and Eugen Fischer with racial warfare in...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: In animism, good and bad spirits exercise an influence on humans. The shaman communes with the spirits in order to heal his tribal constituency. These and other less traditional beliefs, practices, and rituals are the topics of this program. Millenarianism is discussed as a nostalgic belief in a 1,000-year reign of the saints either before, or immediately after, the return of Christ. Astrology...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program portrays the Crusades as a response to the rapid rise of Islam. It looks at various orders of Christian monks and their role in the preservation of religious, artistic, and cultural aspects of civilization. The Inquisition-the Church's response to the rise of heresy and the practice of witchcraft and magic in the Middle Ages-illustrates the ultimate in religious intolerance which...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: The life of Cuba's Communist leader reveals much about the Cold War, 20th-century Latin American history, and the political and military dimensions of revolutionary movements. This program reaches into all those subjects as it explores the rise and decades-long rule of Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz. Interviews with Latin American experts-including Argentine columnist Oscar Raul Cardoso, historian...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: The life of Cuba's Communist leader reveals much about the Cold War, 20th-century Latin American history, and the political and military dimensions of revolutionary movements. This program reaches into all those subjects as it explores the rise and decades-long rule of Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz. Interviews with Latin American experts-including Argentine columnist Oscar Raul Cardoso, historian...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program examines the structure and major tenets of these four eastern religious philosophies. The role of the spiritual master in Hinduism is defined, and the belief in transcendental power and a multitude of deities is explained. The history of Buddhism is traced from the 6th century BC. Reincarnation and nonviolence are discussed as major beliefs. Chinese Taoism, especially its stress on...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Is there such a thing as a just war? Is terrorism ever morally acceptable? And can ancient art change the current view of history? This program investigates these and other questions with political philosopher Michael Walzer, who examines the origins of modern terrorism; classicist Glen Bowersock, whose study of ancient mosaics is helping him deepen his understanding of great conquests from...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006