Summary: Ireland never had an industrial revolution-its economy leaped from agrarian gloom into high-tech high-gear almost overnight. This Wide Angle case study visits Limerick, one of the country's largest cities and the epitome of the Celtic Tiger's rise. Once the blighted setting of Angela's Ashes, today's Limerick boasts the glories and the growing pains of all economic boomtowns: heavy foreign...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Every year, at least two million people are packed in shipping containers, pulled through sewage tunnels, secreted in car chassis, and ferried across frigid waters. Among this human cargo, an alarming number end up as prostitutes, thieves, or sweatshop laborers. This Wide Angle documentary explores the worldwide boom in illicit migration and human trafficking, recording the stories of those who...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Exhausted by years of guerilla warfare against Morocco's annexation of Western Sahara, the Sahrawi people are still waiting for the referendum on their sovereignty promised in a 1991 UN-brokered cease-fire. This Wide Angle documentary presents the story of a unique annual marathon in the Sahara desert, designed to draw attention to the plight of the Sahrawi. Following the race through brutal...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: In 2003, the Wide Angle program Time for School profiled children in seven countries-Afghanistan, Benin, Brazil, India, Japan, Kenya, and Romania-as they started their first year of school, often in the face of great adversity. Three years later this Wide Angle episode returns to visit each child, updating the progress of their educational and personal development. The similarities and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Over 100 million children worldwide have never spent a day in school. One in four does not complete even five years of basic education. Now, 182 nations have promised to provide access to free and compulsory education for every child in the world-by 2015. To test the reality of that sweeping commitment, this Wide Angle installment profiles children in Japan, Kenya, Benin, Brazil, Romania,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: The rise of leftist leaders in South America has surprised the international community-and has resulted in some equally surprising alliances. This Wide Angle documentary focuses on populist leader Evo Morales, who has taken up the fight of coca farmers against the Bolivian establishment. Traveling to the stunning highlands of Bolivia, the program examines Morales' efforts to expand the amount...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Wide Angle is on the ground in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as the country holds its first elections in 46 years. The stakes are high for the Congo—a nation rich in timber, diamonds, and other raw materials, yet reeling from decades of dictatorship and civil war. Can it implement democratic institutions and prosper? This program follows a former school principal running for parliament...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Through unfettered access to powerbrokers and ordinary citizens, this Wide Angle report covers Haiti's ongoing struggle to craft a truly representative government from a volatile failed state. Butteur Metayer and Guy Philippe-strongmen of the National Front for the Reconstruction of Haiti Party and former rebels who drove Jean-Bertrand Aristide from power in 2004-and three other Haitians...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Twenty-five years after the Islamic Revolution, Iran is struggling for political reform. Some of the most visible signs of struggle can be found in the nation's media. This Wide Angle documentary goes behind the scenes at Shargh, one of Iran's new pro-reform newspapers, illustrating its efforts to report the news without incurring the "blade of censorship"-an ever-present threat from Iranian...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: With his vast media empire, former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is Italy's richest man. This Wide Angle documentary explores questions about the independence of the Italian media under Berlusconi, analyzing the effect of his combination of political power and personal ownership of a large sector of the press. Clearly illustrating the impediments that the Berlusconi machine placed before the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Every year this nation's economy struggles to absorb millions of the unemployed, while the rich move to gated communities with private schools and tennis courts. That might sound like America, but it isn't. This Wide Angle documentary studies the new China, once the home of Mao's rigidly imposed social equality-and today, a member of the World Trade Organization containing both staggeringly...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Botswana's electric border fence was erected to keep out diseased livestock from neighboring Zimbabwe. It has also proved remarkably effective at stemming the influx of illegal immigrants fleeing economic collapse and political repression. This Wide Angle report examines this frontier flashpoint, profiling both a cattle farmer who strongly supports the fence and illegal immigrants determined to...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This Wide Angle documentary goes behind the scenes at al-Jazeera's broadcast headquarters in Qatar during its nonstop coverage of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The program highlights the Arab-language network's differences from its Western counterparts, yet also illustrates striking similarities between al-Jazeera's media sensibilities and those familiar to most Americans. The flow of world events...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Scottish fishermen have trawled for cod in the North Sea for generations. Under new European Union laws, many families are being forced out of the trade. This Wide Angle documentary poignantly depicts a year in the life of Fraserburgh, a hard-hit community caught between E.U. policies designed to preserve fish stocks and the need to earn a living. Showing how commercial overfishing has...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: New studies show that the devastation of Indonesia's forests has helped to make the country the world's third-largest emitter of carbon dioxide. Can the trees be saved by selling their carbon credits? And if so, will small farmers whose livelihoods depend upon clearing the land reap a part of the profits? This Wide Angle report takes a balanced look at the concept and implementation of carbon...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009