Summary: The world is a mosaic of visions, and each vision is encapsulated by a language. Yet every two weeks, one of the world's approximately 6,500 languages dies out. What is the significance of this loss to those who speak the language as well as for the rest of humankind? Why do some languages become global while others disappear? And how are language and identity connected? In this program,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: In an age of globalization, companies are scrambling to blend the ideals of social justice with the concept of a free-market economy. Drawing on case studies from around the world, this program focuses on progressive efforts being made by businesses to unite profits and principles. Issues under consideration include the practice of social responsibility through ethical investment policies and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: The Changpa people live cut off from the rest of the world on a barren, 4,000-meter-high plateau in the southeast of Ladakh, in the Kashmir Himalayas. Here, livestock must search far and wide to pry something edible from the earth. Inhospitable as it is, the region is also home to a living treasure: Changpa goats, which grow a fine wool - but only at extremely high altitudes and in bitterly...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: An emerging high-tech focal point, Frankfurt has the largest foreign and immigrant population in continental Europe. This program studies the effects of that diversity, for Frankfurt specifically and within the larger context of German culture as it struggles with right-wing extremism. Rosi Wolf-Almanasreh of the Frankfurt Department for Multicultural Affairs focuses on the nation's...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program documents a visit by Brazilian government officials to the Korubo people, hunter/gatherers of the Javari River Valley. Transcending a history of mutual distrust and violence with other groups, especially Caucasians, the Korubo warm to the camera team after receiving medical help for their malaria-stricken leader. The team's unprecedented access leads to breathtaking, revelatory...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Although the social and economic conditions facing the Maasai people have changed significantly since this classic film was produced, it remains a valuable snapshot of the evolving interaction between an age-old culture, modern influences, and the striking natural surroundings of the Serengeti. Today's geography and anthropology students still stand to gain from the story of Tepilit Ole...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: In 1532, 168 Spanish conquistadors arrived in Peru. They were exhausted, outnumbered, and terrified, and ahead of them were camped 80,000 Incan troops. And yet within just 24 hours, more than 7,000 Inca warriors were slaughtered, the Incan emperor languished in chains, and the victorious Europeans began what would become a brutal reign that would leave its marks throughout the Americas. This...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: Coffee is second only to oil as the world's most valuable traded commodity, but small-scale producers rarely profit from it. This program reveals the hardship and uncertainty faced by coffee farmers in Guatemala, and how many are taking steps to obtain better prices and build better lives. Analyzing the country's traumatic history and the lingering effects of its civil war, the video sheds...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Tokyo is one of the most technologically advanced cities on the planet, but Japan's low birth rate and the diversifying interests of its young people are causing Tokyo to rely increasingly on skilled immigrant labor. This program examines the implications of that change, gathering insightful commentary from a wide range of Japanese society about multiculturalism, racism, and interracial...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Controversial writer Johan Norberg argues forcefully for one side of the globalization debate. In this program he examines three developing countries and how they fit into that debate, building a case for deregulation, the abolishment of subsidies and tariffs, and a long-term view of industrialization. He frankly defends the use of sweatshop labor, through which Taiwan has cultivated a...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Who are the Inuit, and what are their origins? In this program, host Niobe Thompson, an anthropologist of Arctic cultures, explores the Inuit, or Tuli, migration from Siberia, across Canada, and ultimately to Greenland during the Middle Ages. First, Thompson examines Tuli life in 11th-century Russia, specifically the reliance on Asian iron to make weapons and boat parts. Anthropologist Max...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: Unlike the primarily east-to-west conquest of the Americas, European incursions into sub-Saharan Africa proceeded south-to-north-an approach, climatically speaking, that did not favor the invaders. Cattle and crops failed to thrive, and indigenous diseases decimated the newcomers, yet still that vast region was subdued. How? This program tells a story of colonization and exploitation that shows...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: In Papua New Guinea, a local man asked Jared Diamond a question that penetrates to the very heart of the issue of global inequality: "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo [material goods], but we black people had little cargo of our own?" In this program, Diamond traces the trail of history and proposes that a society's potential for advanced development lies not in race or...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: Situated near an oasis in Niger’s Ayar Mountains, the remote settlement of Timia is home to small-scale wheat growers. Once a year, after the harvest is done, members of the Kel Ewen clan federation - a subgroup of the Tuareg nomads - will venture into the merciless Tenere desert to trade their wares. Almost 600 kilometers lie between the paradise-like gardens of Timia and the village of Bilma,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: Defining the typical New Yorker has always been impossible; today, the definition of a Londoner is nearly as elusive. This program travels London's increasingly cosmopolitan neighborhoods, sorting through perspectives on immigration and resistance to it. Interviews with leaders and everyday citizens reveal distrust in several quarters; Lord Nazir Ahmed and East London Muslims cite examples of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: To describe New York City’s cultural makeup, the best metaphor is a salad bowl rather than a melting pot. This program follows the Queens #7 subway line through a dazzling array of ethnic communities, each with its own distinct texture and flavor, illustrating demographic changes the city has undergone since the early 1990s. Less inclined to learn English and join mainstream society than...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Based on recent statistics, 90 percent of the world's orphans live in sub-Saharan Africa; 40 percent of African children work seven days a week; and many support themselves by prostitution or are subjected to enslavement. This program highlights the work of the Terre des Hommes Oasis Center, in Benin, which rescues, rehabilitates, and returns exploited children to their families; the Jinja...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: While governments and industries reshape the world on a grand scale, countless individuals have pledged themselves to facilitating change at the grassroots level, one village at a time. This program interviews North American and European volunteers and the people in developing countries who are receiving their humanitarian and political assistance. By living together and sharing cultural...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: As globalization gains momentum, industrialized and developing countries are, to a greater or lesser extent, becoming increasingly similar, with middle-class luxury and abject poverty coexisting side by side. This program explores the repercussions of globalization as well as a growing resentment toward the G8 countries and nongovernmental organizations. Concerns over third-world debt,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: “I have found my mission in Kyrgyzstan,” says French horse expert Jacqueline Ripart. In remote areas of the Tian Shan mountains in Kyrgyzstan, Ripart hopes to find descendents of the small, tough horses with which Genghis Khan once conquered Central Asia - if they are not already extinct. Under Soviet rule, the Kyrgyz horse was bred with larger Russian strains to produce meat for slaughter....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: Poverty, unstable government, and disadvantages in trade have virtually eliminated food security in Malawi. This program explores the African country's struggles on both a personal and national level, interviewing frustrated civil servants and impoverished citizens, and reflecting widespread despair over WTO policies and the government's inability to subsidize the agriculture of its own people....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program examines India's immense child labor problem and the fight against it. The video contrasts this nation's status as the world's largest democracy with the fact that, inside its borders, 80 million children work physically exhausting jobs for minuscule wages. Incorporating interviews with Shanta Sinha, founder of the organization known as MVF, the video illustrates how the group...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program defines Mexico City's globalization in terms of winners and losers, examining how, in the world's largest metropolis, immigration challenges are linked to poverty and population influx from surrounding rural areas. Contrasting the city's high-tech facilities and fashionable neighborhoods with its sprawling slums and their struggling inhabitants, the program outlines the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: In Nicaragua, a growing awareness of domestic violence and its consequences has spurred grassroots activism. This program documents the efforts of two groups, the Xochitl-Acatl Center and the Association of Men Against Violence, both of which confront gender and sexual abuse. Arguing that economic and political oppression influence male tendencies to exercise physical authority within the home,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006