Summary: As Bill Cosby did for African-Americans, comedian George Lopez has worked to "normalize" the image of Latinos through television. This documentary offers behind-the-scenes access to Lopez' life as he shares his struggles to represent his community-not in a way that knuckles under to marketers, but in a manner true to the realities of Latino culture while embracing the potential of the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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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: What prevents minority communities from joining the European mainstream? Is there an appropriate balance between assimilation and preserving one's cultural heritage? This program wrestles with questions of identity-racial, cultural, and sexual-resulting from the startling new diversity of European society. Depicting daily life in immigrant communities on the Continent and in Great Britain, the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
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
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Summary: With a total population estimated between three and six million people, the United States is home to one of the most diverse Muslim communities in the world today. But what is the experience of the Muslim American? How does it differ from European Muslims? A part of the PBS America at a Crossroads series, The Muslim Americans was produced in conjunction with the PBS NewsHour and, by means of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Funerals are the most common death rituals in the world, but there are other ceremonies that involve the dead, often with very different purposes. For the Aghori mystics of India, the corpse isn't something to be avoided, but rather embraced. This program examines the ways in which cultures both foreign and familiar confront the ultimate taboo. From the practice of exhuming the bones of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: Are gender roles universal when it comes to leading a family or family group? Do the concepts of father, mother, offspring, and sibling change among different cultures? Is there a formula for the perfect family? In the Himalayas, that recipe may involve multiple husbands, and in certain provinces of China, it would be ridiculous for a man to be head of the household, while some communities in...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: Directed by Sindi Gordon, this film explores reverse racism, offering a contemporary view of two populations often overlooked in the race dialogue: Native Americans and native Hawaiians. In South Dakota, three generations of Lakota families consider their past and their future. Meanwhile, in Hawaii, beginning in the 1990s, lawsuits challenged the rights of natives to run schools and housing...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2003
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Summary: Many anthropologists believe that Australia's indigenous traditions make up the oldest surviving culture in the world. At the heart of this culture is a robust oral tradition and a belief system based upon reverence for the land, and for the spiritual dimension known as the Dreamtime. Composed of several different groups, each with a distinct set of customs and traditions, the Australian...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: After the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., an elementary school teacher in a small Iowa town decided to introduce ideas about racism and discrimination to her all-white class. This classic Frontline episode recounts Jane Elliott's bold experiment and its provocative approach-awarding special privileges to her blue-eyed students while discriminating against those whose eyes were brown....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1985
View online at AVOD
Summary: Deep inside the Brazilian and Ecuadorian rain forests, several indigenous tribes continue to live according to traditional customs-some violently defying outside influences. This program documents repeated attempts to pacify and often assimilate these vulnerable societies. Outlining the history of Amazonian colonization by Europeans, the film examines the work of researchers and activists such...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: From the Great Rift Valley to the shores of the Indian Ocean, Kenya contains extraordinary diversity in culture, landscape, and wildlife. This program surveys the history of the country, its difficult transition out of colonial rule, and its wide variety of ethnic groups and languages. Visits to a Nairobi high school, a Masai village, and two wildlife conservation areas underscore the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Does a hominid holdover from the Stone Age still walk the Earth? Mainstream science tells us that Neanderthals went extinct about 30,000 years ago, but could a few still exist today? This program looks into anecdotal accounts of a neolithic "wildman" or "man of the forest" surviving in the remote mountains of Russia and Mongolia. Viewers meet an investigator claiming to have skulls and hair...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: Karin Muller is an American on a quest to understand other cultures. This program follows her as she begins her journey of discovery along the route of the ancient Incan highway through South America. In Ecuador, she endures tear gas during a labor riot and witnesses backbreaking toil in a crude, antiquated gold mine. On the disputed border between Ecuador and Peru, she watches ordnance troops...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: Yarmouk, the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, is a stronghold of conservative values where the people hold tightly to their Palestinian identity and the right of return. This program enters the camp's only all-girl secondary school to learn a striking lesson about how the formation of Israel has turned three generations of Palestinians into refugees in Syria-and to follow four...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: How far should a person go to reshape his or her body? Is it natural, healthy, and wise to want to match a cultural ideal of beauty? Or is it the most foolhardy kind of narcissism? Is there a middle ground? This program shows how people around the world go to extremes to meet dramatically varying standards of physical attractiveness. Viewers encounter Mentawai women in Sumatra who file their...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: When it comes to the face we present to the world, what choices to we have? In selecting a car, clothes, hairstyle, and other outward signals, do we display our true selves or is it simply human nature to hold up a mask? No one should find it surprising that the process by which an individual shapes his or her persona-and negotiates its appearance with society-changes vastly depending on...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: Zaki al-Arsuzi School is a girls-only secondary school. Jaramana School is a boys-only middle school. Focusing on two new students-Du'aa, a teenage Muslim girl who has transferred to secular Zaki al-Arsuzi from a Sharia school, and Yusif, a teenage Christian boy from Iraq who is attending Jaramana as a war refugee-this program maps their experiences against the broader picture of Syrian...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: In the 1954 legal case Hernandez v. Texas, defense lawyers forged a daring strategy - one arguing that Mexican-Americans did not fit into a legal structure which recognized only white and black racial categories. This American Experience episode interweaves the story of that landmark case, which went all the way to the Supreme Court, with the broader narrative of the civil rights movement....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: Exploring Kenya's multifaceted urban and rural settings, this program looks at the various cultures found within the nation today. Viewers will experience the country's spectacular diversity-and the difficulty of providing education and mass communication for a population that speaks well over 40 languages. Highlighting the challenges of conflicting cultural traditions and beliefs, the program...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
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: It may be the single greatest cause of disagreement, and even moral disdain, between family members, neighbors, and entire nationalities-but the way we raise our children is also tied to deeply ingrained beliefs and traditions. This program examines the subject, focusing on wide disparities between cultures in the matter of parenting and child-rearing. From India's Tihar prison, where some...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: Among the many religions of the world one can still clearly observe the shamanic imperative to enter the realm of the sacred-and some practitioners will do whatever it takes to reach that elevated state. This program looks at rites and rituals designed to achieve spiritual awakening through physical pain and bodily injury. A village in Nepal welcomes the New Year with a tongue-boring ceremony....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
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