Summary: Urban punks with green hair and green thumbs, the members of Tierra Viva transform toxic Mexican earth into vegetable gardens. Their actions make up one remarkable part of this wide-ranging Mexican odyssey. Depicting Michoacan farmers who are fighting the trend to move to the cities-and preserving the winter home of the monarch butterflies-the program also journeys to Magdalena Bay,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Infused with the concept of bayanihan, or "spirit of togetherness," this program presents encouraging stories of teamwork and activism in the Philippines. It travels through Manila's bustling Quiapo Market, where commerce thrives in many forms-in contrast to the sprawling Payatas garbage dump outside the city, where a group of mothers have transcended scavenger subsistence, creating a community...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Nelson Mandela spoke of the past haunting the present. This program explores the rebirth of South Africa, demonstrating that a national history racked with oppression can guide and instruct those working for a better future. Studying the moving and provocative art of the apartheid era, the program also visits Robben Island, where Mandela was imprisoned, and examines Cape Town's historic...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: This program profiles the warriors of the White Nile, a tribe that others call Dinka but that calls itself Moinjang: Man of the Men. Wedding negotiations, which involve a bride price usually paid in cattle, are highlighted, along with a traditional high-stakes contest to be the fattest man in the land. The impacts of Sudan's civil war and of a thriving slave trade, intensified by famine and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: Steve Jones travels from Israel's Plains of Armageddon to Africa's Great Zimbabwe to solve the age-old riddle of what happened to the fabled lost tribes of Israel. Genealogists use DNA to trace the connection between a Samaritan tribe and non-indigenous Jewish groups, and to trace the ancestry of Mormons, who claim to be descended from a lost tribe. In Africa, a tribe shows anthropological...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: This program explores the traditional medical practices of the Bono people of central Ghana and how their healers are cooperating with Western doctors, using herbs and spiritualism to improve health-care delivery in rural areas. Traditionally, Bono tribal priests undergo a painful spiritual possession, during which deities reveal to them the causes of illnesses, which plants to use to treat...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: The Yuroks, California's largest Native American tribe, have lived near the mouth of the Klamath and Trinity Rivers for 10,000 years. This program details the many problems that beset them as they try to survive: their lands overrun by prospectors and soldiers in the 19th century, the primeval forest cut by lumber companies, environmental destruction that has nearly wiped out the fish on which...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: In the 2nd century BCE, the Cimbri and Teuton tribes began to move southward from their Scandinavian homeland, Jutland. Soundly defeating the Roman army at Noricum in 113 BCE, they set in motion an era of migration that spelled the beginning of the end of Roman military and political supremacy. This program examines the reasons why these Germanic peoples left their homeland, explores their...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Traveling the world, photographer Phil Borges documents endangered cultures with the hope that he can help preserve them by photographing and interviewing members of them. In this TEDTalk, Borges shows rarely seen images of people from the mountains of Dharamsala, India, and the jungles of the Ecuadorean Amazon, as he tells their stories. In addition, Borges talks about his initiative to link...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: For the Canela, peace is more important than justice, and sharing-especially of sexual partners-means survival and prosperity. By putting the good of the tribe first, the Canela have retained their tribal identity for centuries, thanks both to the bonding that occurs through ritualized, extramarital, multiple-partner sex and to their ability to maintain communal harmony via their intricate...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: This episode begins in March of 1621, in what is now southeastern Massachusetts, when Massasoit, the leading sachem of the Wampanoag, negotiated with a ragged group of English colonists. The pale-skinned Pilgrim foreigners were in desperate need of Native help. Massasoit’s people had been decimated by unexplained sickness, and he calculated that an alliance with the foreigners could help...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: The continued investigation into the epic scandal involving former lobbyist Jack Abramoff is bringing to light additional revelations about corruption at the core of the U.S. government. This edition of the Journal-a condensed version of the acclaimed documentary Moyers on America: Capitol Crimes (item no. 35972), plus an update-further exposes the misuse and outright abuse of power in American...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: It is the basis of many a myth, folk tale, and adventure story-the act of confronting a nearly insurmountable obstacle, either physical or mental, in order to enter the realm of adulthood and self-knowledge. Some rites of initiation may seem bizarre or extreme to Westerners, but within the societies that uphold those traditions they are worth every ounce of pain and endurance required. This...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: This documentary tells the story of generations of young Mexican-Americans who proudly expressed their identity through music. The program is filled with intimate first-person storytelling, rare film and photos, and exuberant music from artists such as Lalo Guerrero, the legendary Ritchie Valens, and classic bands such as Cannibal and the Headhunters, Thee Midniters of “Whittier Blvd.” fame, El...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: DNA testing has become a standard tool in genealogical research, but it takes more than saliva swabs and lab reports to truly understand one's ancestry. In this program, two young New Zealanders of Polynesian descent undergo DNA sampling, wrestle with the surprising results, and then embark on a journey of discovery, searching for their roots across the Pacific and into Asia. Their voyage-by...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: The Karuk, Yurok, and Hoopa peoples live along northern California's Klamath River, and each tribe's ancient culture revolves around the majestic Pacific salmon. Today, four large hydroelectric dams have made salmon extinction a real and frightening possibility. This case study follows tribal members as they confront the owners of the dams-specifically, a global energy giant in Scotland which...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: Experience the rich cultural diversity of Native American tribes and the impact that early white explorers had on their lives. In this program, viewers will learn about the mysterious disappearance of the Anasazi culture and the successful Pueblo revolt against their Spanish conquerors. First-person accounts bring to life the adventures of early explorers, from Cabeza de Vaca, the first white...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1996
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Summary: Born in Warsaw, Tomasz Tomaszewski started his photographic career with Polish magazines and worked with Solidarity Weekly. He has published numerous articles in National Geographic magazine, and his award-winning photos have also appeared in Stern, Paris Match, Geo, Time, and The New York Times. In this program, Tomaszewski shares his life and work as he presents a visual diary of the making...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: The maxim "You are what you eat" could have originated with a few hungry self-experimenters who proved that nutrition is critical to good health. As this program illustrates, one of the most prominent of these scientists was Dr. Joseph Goldberger, an early-20th-century researcher who ate the feces and scabs from patients with pellagra in his quest to prove it was not infectious. Viewers will...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: What is left of Africa's hunter-gatherers, and do they have a future? This program enters the lives of the San bushmen of the Kalahari and the Hadzabe people of Tanzania in a way that may soon become impossible. Examining their crafts and customs, the film studies intriguing methods of making fire, cooking, building huts, and crafting jewelry. Viewers will witness detailed preparations for a...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: Part one of two videos, examines the huge project of restoring the Nisqually River, from its source on Mount Rainier to the estuary in Puget Sound. Led by the Nisqually Indian tribe, the restoration aims to fill the river once again with wild salmon.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2012
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Summary: Democratic political principles have finally reached the highlands of Papua New Guinea. Tanim-"to change" or "to turn"-is the story of how the Apulin people, the ruling tribe of Enga province, are struggling to balance this alien electoral system, with all its implicit values and practices, with the secure familiarity of their traditional approaches to rule, land ownership, and systems of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006