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: Even today, the majority of African women in both city and country still aspire to get a good husband and have many children. This program sheds light on the pros and cons of marriage customs in sub-Saharan Africa as it relates the story of an Ethiopian woman who fled her home in Harar as a teen to avoid an arranged marriage to an uncle; two happily wedded women of Mali who are wives in a...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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: In Africa, views on sex vary widely from conservative to liberal and from traditional to progressive. Topics covered in this program include gay rights, protected under the law only in post-apartheid South Africa; the practices of female genital excision and "dry sexual intercourse"-each described in detail-as they relate to severe female health issues and the violation of a woman's right to...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: As Africa continues to modernize, the influence of the media in daily life is growing ever larger. This program examines the importance of the press, radio, the Internet, and TV via segments involving the Sowetan, a widely circulated South African newspaper that has its roots in the anti-apartheid struggle; KKC Kagadi, a rural community radio station in Uganda; Kenya-based Africa Online, an...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: In sub-Saharan Africa, water is the focus of daily life. This program seeks to understand its centrality by investigating the situation at Lake Ganvie, Benin, an "African Venice" where survival is threatened by environmental changes, improper sanitation, and water-related illnesses; a perceived correlation among Dogon elders between their people's shift away from the worship of Nommo and an...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
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: Mental images of storybook adventures and stereotyped people, on the one hand, and genocides and pandemics, on the other, make it practically impossible for Westerners to see Africa as it really is: a place with generational conflicts, cultural misunderstandings, and power struggles-just like anywhere else-plus the added dilemma of how to deal with the tension between tradition and modernity as...
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
View online at AVOD
Summary: Taking a grassroots approach to dealing with the physical and societal ills plaguing their countries, individuals and small groups in sub-Saharan Africa are creating success amidst widespread civil and economic instability. This program illustrates five empowering instances of solidarity and self-help: the Yeredeme project, run by single mothers in Mali; the Janjigui So association, for Malian...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: Historically, the arts in Africa were largely communal and unrecorded. But much has changed over the past century, and this program takes a look at art in sub-Saharan Africa as it exists today through profiles of Senegalese rap groups Alif and Wageble and the rap collective Fight and Forget, who use their music as a form of political activism; Senegalese sculptor Babacar Niang, whose workshop...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
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
View online at AVOD
Summary: Speaking in broad sociocultural terms, the overall Western attitude toward Africans has been one of race-based condescension. This program addresses that historically conflicted relationship and ways in which it is changing in sub-Saharan Africa through the stories of an idealistic young French-born woman involved with the Yeredeme project, which supports and educates single mothers in Mali; a...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008