Summary: This program focuses on the western African countries of Mali, Ghana, and Nigeria. In Bamako, Segou, and Djenne, Jonathan Dimbleby learns how mopeds are moving Mali into a better future; meets a traditional wedding singer whose songs are uncustomarily female-empowering; watches enterprising sand-diggers at work in the Niger River; and visits the intricate Djenne mosque. In Kumasi and Accra, he...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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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: In Africa-where infant mortality is sky-high, tens of millions have AIDS, and life expectancies can be as meager as 39 years-death is an all-too-frequent presence. This program presents sub-Saharan perspectives on the end of life: lavish Ghanaian funerals involving caskets shaped into whatever is most emblematic of the deceased; funeral rites of the Dogon, in Mali, where alcohol fermentation is...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: Corporate greed and vestigial colonialism are Africa's worst enemies-or is homegrown leadership responsible for the continent's troubles? This program explores that dichotomous question from the vantage point of former Ghanaian president Jerry Rawlings and Kenyan law student June Arunga, who undertake a voyage of discovery through Ghana, Tanzania, and Rwanda. Visiting a struggling fishing...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Women form the backbone of sub-Saharan Africa and consistently exert some measure of control alongside men, whether it is as a local ruler, a witch, an activist, a wage earner, a laborer, or a caregiver. This program examines female, male, and mixed power structures, with a focus on the Bijagos Islands, where three queens and a king still rule autonomously even as the state government in...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program uses in-depth interviews with two generations of five African families now living in the Denver area to explore the dynamic process that is ethnic identity. Having emigrated from Ghana, Uganda, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria, the families bring unique traditions to a shared experience: life in America. The interviews reveal the hopes of the first generation for the second, the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: The Ashanti are the best-known tribe of Ghana, comprising around 2 million of the country's 12 million inhabitants. All of the Ashanti kings belong to the Oyoko Dako clan, the clan of chieftains; they are the ones who have created and strengthened the Ashanti nation. This program shows the Ashanti kingdom: it explains the strict hierarchical organization of the village, the importance of the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Is good health simply the absence of physical disease, or should emotional well-being also be of concern to global aid organizations? This program profiles the work of Australia's Nossal Institute for Global Health to explain how psychological and social factors impact life expectancy and infant mortality. The video covers basic health needs, food scarcity, distribution of wealth, the UN's...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: In sub-Saharan Africa, traditionally minded people view everything as being touched by the supernatural-including what might seem, to Western eyes, to be simply athletic or recreational activities. This program explains the deeper meaning of the donga, ritualized stick-fighting bouts of the Surma culture; sacred Senegalese wrestling, an ancient village tradition that has met with immense...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: Christianity, Islam, and a broad range of indigenous religions coexist side by side in Africa, in many cases blending into unique hybrids. This program-an inquiry into the nature of the continent's spiritual practices-spotlights the Reverend Pastor Benoit D. Agbaossi, supreme head of the Celestial Church of Christ, in Benin, and footage of an exorcism and The Ceremony of the Infertile Woman;...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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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