Recent videos of interest

Media and Popular Culture

• Animania
  “Explores Japanese anime and teens' interest in it as a hobby.”
• Beauty lies
  DVD only. “Filmmaker Karen Chapman explores her feelings about her natural hair as a young black woman in a media-driven world, revealing layers of insecurities. Beauty Lies questions the ideals, motivations and images of beauty in the media that could be seen as manifesting a 'white standard' of beauty”
• Beyond good and evil: children, media and violent times
  ....[E]xposes how the media has been used to earn public support for the U.S.-led military campaign against Iraq. ... Examines how the 'good and evil' rhetoric, in both the entertainment and the news media, has helped children to dehumanize the enemies, justify their killing and treat the suffering of innocent civilians as necessary sacrifice.
• Consuming kids : the commercialization of childhood
  Interviews with health care professionals, children's advocates, and industry insiders. Focuses on the explosive growth of child marketing in the wake of deregulation, showing how youth marketers have used psychology, anthropology, and neuroscience to transform American children into one of the most powerful and profitable consumer demographics in the world.
• Covered [Snakegirl Productions]
  Explores the world of heavily tattooed women and female tattoo artists in the United States. Takes a larger, sociological perspective on what it means to be a heavily tattooed woman in today's society -- from the perspectives of the women themselves. Features dozens of tattoo artists.
• Flesh
  “Several women with different points of view including a cattle rancher, a vegetarian, a meat-lover, and a Hooter's waitress are interviewed in this discussion of how women and animals are treated by popular culture in a society obsessed with flesh.”
• Freedom of expression: resistance and repression in the age of intellectual property
  “Through news clips, film excerpts, music, legal cases, satire, and a wide range of other examples and illustrations, the concerns regarding traditional copyright laws' infringing on freedom of expression are examined and critiqued.”
• Girl and a gun
  Presents a female perspective on an object whose history is deeply bound up with men and masculinity. Filmed throughout the US, this documentary delves into the psyche of the American gun world to investigate how women relate to guns and gun culture. Reaching far beyond Hollywood's hypersexualized femme fatales, the film candidly explores the modern American woman through intimate portraits encompassing issues of protection, power, feminism, and violence.
• Grrrl love and revolution: Riot Grrrl NYC
  'Filmmaker Abby Moser was at the heart of the NYC Riot Grrrl movement, filming them between 1993 and 1996, creating an invaluable archive for students learning the history of feminism. She captured the excitement of the times, and the articulate self-awareness of its members. She also documents their frustration with a mainstream media which dismissed feminism as a hobby, and the group’s own difficulties respecting the race and class divisions amongst themselves.' from WMM website.
• Le jeu de la mort | Game of death
  Back in the 60s, Stanley Milgram's scientific experiment demonstrated that a large majority of people were ready to administer unbearable electric shocks to another man when encouraged to do so by an authority. The experiment is re-enacted in the form of a TV game show, where 80 participants are asked to follow its despicable rules, despite the candidate's strong yelling complaints. Will they obey the TV host's orders and inflict massive electric shocks? Or will they stop before it's too late? (see also: Obedience ...
• Malls r us
  Combining nostalgia, dazzling architecture, pop culture, economics and politics, 'Malls r us' examines North America's most popular and profitable suburban destination-- the enclosed shopping center-- and how for consumers they function as a communal, even ceremonial experience and, for retailers, sites where their idealism, passion, and greed merge.
• Militainment Inc
  “Militainment, Inc. offers a glimpse into the militarization of American popular culture, examining how U.S. news coverage has come to resemble Hollywood film, video games, and 'reality television' in its glamorization of war. … the film asks: How has war taken its place in the culture as an entertainment spectacle?”
• Miss Representation
  Explores how mainstream media contributes to the under-representation of women in influential positions in America and challenges the media's limiting and often disparaging portrayals of women, which make it difficult for the average girl to see herself as powerful.
• Nanook revisited
  The filmmakers revisit Inukjuak, the Inuit village where Flaherty filmed Nanook of the North. Examines the realities behind the ground-breaking documentary and the changes since it was made almost 70 years ago. Shows the reactions of the Inuit living in the village, to the film, and also looks at the inaccuracies and staged scenes in the original.
• NeverPerfect
  DVD only. “Traversing historical and contemporary notions of beauty, stereotypes and iconography within Asian and popular cultures, this film incorporates a rich selection of archival footage and commentary from numerous voices which ignites lively debate on the phenomena as they pertain to race and gender identity.”
• Pink Ribbons
  Breast cancer has become the poster child of cause-related marketing campaigns. Countless people walk, run and shop for the cure. Each year, millions of dollars are raised in the name of breast cancer, but where does this money go and what does it actually achieve? Pink Ribbons, Inc. is a feature documentary that shows how the devastating reality of breast cancer, which marketing experts have labelled a 'dream cause,' has become obscured by a shiny, pink story of success.
• Rize
  A documentary portrayal of inner city youth in Los Angeles, Calif. who though surrounded by drug addiction, gangs and impoverishment, have developed a unique style of dance that evolves on a daily basis.
• Tagged
  'This playfully smart short doc lets the audience decide: Is it 'hip to be chipped,' as a proposed marketing slogan claimed, or could RFID [Radio Frequency Identification] implants accelerate a slide down the slippery slope from surveillance society to totalitarian nightmare?'
• The mean world syndrome
  “The Mean World Syndrome, based on the groundbreaking work of media scholar George Gerbner, urges us to think about media effects in more nuanced ways. Ranging from Hollywood movies and prime-time dramas to reality programming and the local news, the film examines how media violence feeds a fear-charged cultural environment…”
• Tiara
  dvd only.Are beauty pageants on the radar of today's young women? Tiara discovers that they certainly are in Asian communities in Canada. Tiara explores the connection between the desires of young women from the Chinese, Filipino and South Asian communities for validation of their appearance in the midst of popular media's narrow representation of beauty.
• United States of Africa
  African hip hop pioneer Didier Awadi is on a quest to craft an album that pays tribute to the great black revolutionary leaders and their struggle to realize a dream: a united, independent Africa. In this epic musical and political journey, Awadi visits some 40 countries to collaborate with hip hop activist artists, including Smockey (Burkina Faso), M-1 of Dead Prez (United States) and ZuluBoy (South Africa).
• Val: an Oak Park story
  For thirty plus years Val has offered her customers an incredible array of recorded music from classical to rap, both new and used. In addition, the collective knowledge of Val and her staff makes it possible to carry on an informed conversation about music and recordings. Val's Halla has become part of the disappearing commercial landscape of small businesses run by knowledgeable people interested in what they sell. In this film, Val talks about the changing role of the record store and muses about what Oak ...
• Videocracy
  documentary film which examines the high-glitz, lowbrow, celebrity-obsessed culture promulgated by Silvio Berlusconi's monopolistic media empire. The film analyzes the power of television broadcasting in Italy and how it affects the behavior and choices of the Italian population.
• We are legion: the story of the Hacktivists
  takes us inside the complex culture and history of Anonymous. The film explores early hacktivist groups like Cult of the Dead Cow and Electronic Disturbance Theater, and then moves to Anonymous’ own raucous and unruly beginnings on the website 4Chan. Through interviews... the film traces the collective’s evolution from merry pranksters to a full-blown, global movement.
• Webcam girls
  “This Canadian documentary examines women that live in front of their web-cameras. Some of the pioneers and outlaws of the femcam frontier are Ducky, sexologist and burlesque queen; Dionne, ethical porn producer; Ana Voog, the first art/life webcam; and Terri, internet cultural critic.”
• Why quilts matter : history, art and politics
  A nine-part television series on the history, significance, and culture of quilts. Episode 1. Quilts 101 : antique and contemporary quilts (26:30) -- Episode 2. Quilts bring history alive (26:47) -- Episode 3. The quilt marketplace (26:47) -- Episode 4. What is art ?(25:50) -- Episode 5. Gee's Bend: the most famous quilts in America? (26:35) -- Episode 6. How quilts have been viewed and collected (25:50) -- Episode 7. Empowering women one quilt at a time (26:04) -- Episode 8. Quilt nation : 20,000,000 and counting ...