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Content

Social Studies

Social Studies


DELPHINE'S PRAYERS

By Rosine Mbakam

Delphine reclines on a daybed in her bright apartment in Belgium, an empty crib beside her. "I started to work the streets like crazy," she says, matter-of-factly recounting her life story. "Selling my body."

Delphine, who is only identified by her first name, is quick-witted, engaging, passionate, and intense. Born and raised in Cameroon, at 30, she has survived a series of personal catastrophes. Her mother died in childbirth, and her father did little to care for his children. She was raped at 13, became a mother soon after, and supported herself with sex work on the streets of Douala. Now, she lives with a Belgian husband three times her age and their children, estranged from much of her family. Unable to find a job, Delphine styles hair at home and still turns to sex work from time to time to have some independence and money of her own.

In DELPHINE'S PRAYERS, she frankly shares her experiences with director Rosine Mbakam over several interview sessions, deftly switching between languages. Mbakam marks the start of each session with preparations for shooting: Delphine adjusting her makeup, tying her hair up in a scarf, or holding up a sheet to help the director adjust the white balance on her camera. The sessions are intimate-sometimes painful, sometimes funny-carried by Delphine's exuberant storytelling style and her clear bond of trust with Mbakam, whom she has known for years. In Cameroon, Delphine and Mbakam came from different cultures and classes. But they both arrived in Belgium within months of each other, neither with friends. The director gives the film over to her subject, appearing herself only in the final moments of the film, where she offers a succinct commentary on her relationship with Delphine and their experiences as West African women. Like so many of her generation, Delphine left the oppression of a patriarchal society looking for a new life in Europe-only to find herself enmeshed in sexual exploitation of a different kind.

DVD (Cameroon Pidgin; French; English With English Subtitles, Color) / 2021 / 91 minutes

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DOWN A DARK STAIRWELL

Directed by Ursula Liang

When a Chinese-American police officer kills an innocent, unarmed Black man in a darkened stairwell of a New York City housing project, it sets off a firestorm of emotion and calls for accountability. When he becomes the first NYPD officer convicted of an on-duty shooting in over a decade, the fight for justice becomes complicated, igniting one of the largest Asian-American protests in history, disrupting a legacy of solidarity, and putting an uneven legal system into sharp focus.

DVD (Region 1, English, Cantonese, Mandarin, Color, Closed Captioned) / 2021 / 83 minutes

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ENTANGLED

Directed by David Abel

How climate change has accelerated a collision between one of the world's most endangered species, N. America's most valuable fishery, and a federal agency mandated to protect both.

ENTANGLED chronicles the efforts to protect North Atlantic right whales from extinction, the impacts of those efforts on the lobster industry, and how the National Marine Fisheries Service has struggled to balance the vying interests.

There are now estimated to be about 350 right whales, making them among the planet's most endangered species. The main threat to their survival, scientists say: millions of lobster lines that stretch from New England up through Atlantic Canada, standard gear for North America's most valuable fishery. Exacerbating that threat is climate change, which has sparked a collapse in the whale's food supply in the warming waters of the Gulf of Maine, forcing them to search for food in areas where they had rarely been seen before. As a result, their population has been plummeting.

DVD / 2021 / (Grades 10-12, 9 -12, College, Adults) / 75 minutes

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GUSTAV STICKLEY: AMERICAN CRAFTSMAN

Director: Herb Stratford

The rise, fall and resurrection of the father of the American Arts and Crafts movement is chronicled in the new documentary Gustav Stickley: American Craftsman.

The film offers an unprecedented look at the life and works of Gustav Stickley as told through interviews, archival materials, and a close examination of his most iconic works. It traces the development and evolution of Stickley's unique style, as well as the creation of his diverse businesses including the Craftsman Magazine, Craftsman Farms and his ground-breaking Manhattan store. It also details the eventual loss of his businesses - and, after several decades, the rebirth and recognition of the movement he inspired.

The film visits several key locations in his lifetime, including his Syracuse home, where he lived and created his first arts and crafts interior, and the pump house at Skaneateles Lake in upstate New York, which he restored as a summer family camp; as well we meet some of the talented collaborators Stickley surrounding himself with, such as Harvey Ellis, Lamont Warner and Irene Sargent.

DVD / 2021 / 68 minutes

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UNMARKED

Directors: Brad J. Bennett & Chris Haley

Throughout the South, vast numbers of African-American gravesites and burial grounds for enslaved persons have been lost or are disappearing through neglect and nature reclaiming the solemn tombstones and markers. Recently, there has been a rise in the restoration and preservation of these forgotten sites by those who have a personal connection with the deceased or an appreciation of their historical significance. But there is much work to be done in order to preserve this part of America's history. Unmarked not only explores these untold stories of the past but also the efforts underway to preserve them.

DVD / 2021 / 40 minutes

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ATLANTIS

By Valentyn Vasyanovych

Atlantis is a gorgeous and visionary sci-fi drama.

In 2025, Eastern Ukraine is a desert unsuitable for human habitation, water a dear commodity brought by trucks. A wall is being built on the border. Sergiy, a former soldier having trouble adapting to his new reality, meets Katya while she's on a humanitarian mission dedicated to exhuming the past. Together, they try to return to some sort of normal life in which they are also allowed to fall in love again.

DVD / 2020 / 106 minutes

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BAATO

By Kate Stryker, Lucas Millard

The stories presented in Baato (n. [Nepali] 1. path, trail 2. way 3. road) follow the route of a partially complete trans-national highway project that promises to transform this roadless Himalayan valley permanently, opening up a direct transport route between China & India. Mikma and her family collect medicinal herbs around their home nestled in the Himalaya of northeastern Nepal, before making an annual 300-kilometer migration, partly on foot and partly by ramshackle vehicle, to urban markets in the lowlands.

The extension of the first road to (and through) their off-the-beaten-path village is fitfully underway, promising less walking and perhaps a less arduous life in some distant future. Road engineers take bribes to avoid destroying homes, while laborers produce gravel - breaking individual stones by hand with hammers. The herb collectors plot to avoid shakedowns by police and bus operators as they miraculously make their way to market.

The documentary is a visual feast that glimpses the effects of development and globalization from the perspective of those affected most directly - it is a journey through the heart of a changing Nepal.

DVD / 2020 / 81 minutes

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CAN YOU HEAR US NOW?

Directed by Jim Cricchi

Unravels the ways that years of minority rule by one party have reshaped democracy in Wisconsin, where voters are finding their lives increasingly irrelevant to state lawmakers.

Small-town activism. Nail-biting elections. A last-minute power grab. In Wisconsin, where extreme partisanship has become the norm, voters are finding their lives increasingly irrelevant to state lawmakers.

Through the stories of four tireless women fighting to have their voices heard, CAN YOU HEAR US NOW? unravels the ways that years of minority rule by one-party have reshaped democracy in a state at the heart of American politics.

DVD / 2020 / (Grades 9-12, College, Adults) / 87 minutes

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CELINE ARCHIVE, THE

By Celine Parrenas Shimizu

In 1932, Celine Navarro was buried alive by her own community in Northern California. This is an attempt to uncover the real story, revealing Navarro's feminism and resistance in a time when neither was embraced, as well as the silences that haunt Filipino-American communities to this day.

THE CELINE ARCHIVE is simultaneously an act of journalism, a journey into family and community memory and archives, a love poem, a story of grief and trauma, and a seance for the buried history of Filipino-Americans. Filmmaker and scholar Celine Parrenas Shimizu artfully weaves together her own story of grief with the story of the tragic death of Celine Navarro, which has become lore. In 1932, Navarro was buried alive by her own community of Filipino-Americans in Northern California, but the circumstances surrounding her death were and are unclear and have oft been spun, sensationalized, and dramatized. The filmmaker, a grieving mother with ties to the same community, finds resonance with Navarro's memory and long-lost story, and she sets out to first learn - and then tell - the truth about Navarro's death, ultimately portraying her as a feminist heroine.

Through animation, portraiture, site visits, archival materials, and interviews with scholars, family, and community members, the film shares the most widely circulated versions of the story. In one version, Celine Navarro committed adultery, but there is no proof beyond the accusations. In another, Navarro reported a crime committed by one the members of the fraternal organization Caballeros Dimas Alang, of which she was a part. The member ended up in San Quentin Prison, and for this she was labelled a traitor and punished. In a variation of this story, the crime she reported was one of gendered violence - rendering Celine a brave, pioneering feminist who refused to be silenced. A final version of her story, one that is documented by the Filipino American National Historical Society and believed by her family members, discloses that a community leader stalked and preyed upon her, ignoring Navarro's repeated refusal of his advances.

What does it mean to be descendants of violence, and in particular, gendered violence? How can women heal and make families whole? How can truth-telling help family members move through grief? Told with great care and respect for Navarro, her family, and her descendants, this film is a gift of love given to generations who have held Celine in heart and women fighting to have a voice in the face of violence.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2020 / 69 minutes

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DAYS

By Tsai Ming-Liang

Under the pain of illness and treatment, Kang (Lee Kang-sheng) finds himself adrift. He meets Non (Anong Houngheuangsy) in a foreign land. They find consolation in each other before parting ways and carrying on with their days. The latest film from Tsai Ming-liang (Goodbye Dragon Inn, Stray Dogs, The Wayward Cloud), Days marks yet another masterwork in one of contemporary cinema's most extraordinary careers.

DVD / 2020 / 127 minutes

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DOWNSTREAM TO KINSHASA

By Dieudo Hamadi

Over six bloody days in June 2000, the Congolese city of Kisangani was the scene of deadly violence between the Ugandan and Rwandan armies. More than 10,000 shells exploded, killing thousands and injuring thousands more.

Since then, victims of the Six-Day War have fought for recognition and compensation. Uganda has been found guilty of war crimes by the International Court of Justice, but the victims remain uncompensated decades later.

Now, they decide to take matters into their own hands. In the first Congolese film to be an official selection Cannes Film Festival, and his country's national submission to the Academy Awards, acclaimed director Dieudo Hamadi (Mama Colonel, National Diploma, Ladies in Waiting) captures their long journey down the Congo River to voice their claims in capital city of Kinshasa, seeking justice at last.

DVD (Swahili; Lingala With English Subtitles, Color) / 2020 / 89 minutes

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EL FATHER PLAYS HIMSELF

By Mo Scarpelli

A young film director returns to Venezuela, inspired to make a film based on his father's life in the Amazon jungle. He casts Father to play himself.

What starts as an act of love and ambition - filmmaking to more deeply understand the self, and the other - spirals into a process which confronts Father's struggles with addiction and his life devoid of his son. EL FATHER PLAYS HIMSELF holds a steady lens to the way the act of cinema unearths, binds, heals and destroys.

DVD / 2020 / 105 minutes

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GIRL WITH THE RIVET GUN, THE

Directed by Anne de Mare, Kirsten Kelly

Takes you beyond the iconic "We Can Do It" poster girl to the millions of real-life women who shook the foundations of the American workplace in WWII.

Built entirely by women filmmakers, THE GIRL WITH THE RIVET GUN is an unconventional animated documentary short based on the adventures of three real-life "Rosie the Riveters"-Esther Horne, Susan Taylor King and Mildred Crow Sargent. From vastly different backgrounds, these three women came of age in an America united by war but struggling with divisions of gender, economics and race.

THE GIRL WITH THE RIVET GUN serves as an entry point into a rich, layered, and adventurous rewriting of history as herstory, inspiring conversations about working women everywhere and taking viewers beyond the iconic "We Can Do It" poster girl to the millions of real-life women who shook the foundations of the American workplace-forever changing not only their own lives, but the very perception of what women can do.

DVD / 2020 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adults) / 15 minutes

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HER SOCIALIST SMILE

By John Gianvito

An experimental documentary essay on the political imagination of iconic humanitarian, author, and advocate for the blind Helen Keller. World famous by the age of 8 for having learned how to read and communicate through the finger alphabet, indelibly dramatized in William Gibson's play The Miracle Worker, Helen Keller (1880-1968) remained for the course of her 87 years the most revered blind-deaf woman on the planet.

Largely omitted or minimized within the voluminous literature her life generated however was the fact that Keller had become, by time she reached her thirties, a committed believer in the principles of Socialism. The product of years of research, Her Socialist Smile resurrects the radical Keller, serving as a rousing reminder that Keller's undaunted activism for labor rights, pacifism, and women's suffrage was philosophically inseparable from her battles for the rights of the disabled.

DVD / 2020 / 93 minutes

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INHERITANCE, THE

By Ephraim Asili

Pennsylvania-born filmmaker Ephraim Asili has been exploring different facets of the African diaspora-and his own place within it-for nearly a decade. His feature-length debut, The Inheritance, is a vibrant, engaging ensemble work that takes place almost entirely within the walls of a West Philadelphia house where a community of young people have come together to form a collective of Black artists and activists.

Based partly on Asili's own experiences in a Black liberationist group, the film interweaves a scripted drama of characters attempting to work towards political consensus with a documentary recollection of the Philadelphia liberation group MOVE, which was the victim of a notorious police bombing in 1985.

DVD / 2020 / 100 minutes

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IWOW: I WALK ON WATER

By Khalik Allah

Since 2011, filmmaker and photographer Khalik Allah (Black Mother) has attracted global attention for his radiant portraits of the denizens of 125th and Lexington in East Harlem. In IWOW: I Walk On Water, Allah returns to the intersection as the foundation to explore personal narratives of intimacy, voice, memory, identity and personal transformation.

Allah focuses his attention on longtime muse Frenchie, a 60-something schizophrenic, homeless Haitian man. Over the summer of 2019, Allah and Frenchie's lives became increasingly intertwined-a relationship that Allah documents with radical, spiritual transparency. In parallel, Allah also turns the camera on himself to document a turbulent romantic relationship and grapple with personal notions of spirituality and mortality - all inquiries about which he gathers advice from charismatic confidants including Fab 5 Freddy, members of the Wu-Tang Clan, and, in deeply moving exchanges, his own mother.

By questioning universal and personal inward dynamics, IWOW obscures the boundary between conceptual art and memoir. Sometimes painful in its vulnerability, often extremely funny in its candor, and always visually extraordinary, Allah's one-of-a-kind, intimate epic is a contemporary rethinking of the diary film: Gordon Parks meets Jonas Mekas.

DVD / 2020 / 200 minutes

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NO FEAR NO FAVOR

Directed by Mirra Bank

African communities on the front lines of the poaching crisis fight to protect their wildlife for future generations.

Shot over two years in Zambia's Kafue National Park--one of the largest intact wilderness areas in the world--as well as in Kenya and Namibia, NO FEAR NO FAVOR illuminates the wrenching choices faced by impoverished Africans who live where community meets wilderness--on the front lines of Africa's poaching crisis. The film follows follows local women and men who fight the illegal wildlife trade through cooperative law enforcement and innovative conservation.

Through community conservancies, the people in these communities protect wildlife and the region's wilderness heritage, return eco-tourism profits to local people, and generate sustainable livelihoods -- especially for women and girls.

DVD / 2020 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adults) / 66 minutes

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ORCHESTRATING CHANGE

Directed by Margie Friedman, Barbara Multer-Wellin

The inspiring story of Me2/Orchestra, the only orchestra in the world created by and for people living with mental illness and those who support them.

ORCHESTRATING CHANGE tells the inspiring story of Me2/Orchestra, the only orchestra in the world created by and for people living with mental illness and those who support them. The orchestra's mission is to erase the stigmatization of people living with mental illness through the creation of beautiful music, community, compassion and understanding...one concert at a time. Most important, it is changing the lives of the musicians and audiences in ways they never imagined.

With compelling characters, striking animation, even humor, ORCHESTRATING CHANGE addresses many of the myths about mental illness by showing what living with a mental illness is really like-with both setbacks and accomplishments. The film challenges audiences to reconsider their preconceived notions about mental illness. For those living with a diagnosis, it is empowering.

The film culminates in an extraordinary concert that is a triumph--for Me2/Orchestra's conductor and co-founder, Ronald Braunstein, who lives with bipolar disorder and thought he might never conduct again, and for the musicians, their families and the audience.

DVD / 2020 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adults) / 85 minutes

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RED POST ON ESCHER STREET

By Sion Sono

When filmmaker Tadashi Kobayashi begins to hold open auditions for a new studio-sponsored film, a wave of experienced and aspiring actors scramble to apply, yearning for a chance to work with the genius director. Behind the scenes, however, Kobayashi struggles to finish the script on schedule and the production quickly spirals out of control.

A funny, chaotic and consistently interesting showcase of Sion Sono's versatile talents (whose latest film starring Nicolas Cage premiered at 2021 Sundance Film Festival), Red Post on Escher Street is a return-to-roots film for the director that develops, in typical Sono fashion, into a boldly subversive affair-a brazenly tongue-in-cheek portrait of the Japanese film industry that harkens to Sono's own career as one of the most distinctive voices in world cinema.

DVD / 2020 / 148 minutes

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SLOW MACHINE

By Paul Felten, Joe Denardo

The thriller genre is exploded and reassembled in DeNardo and Felten's funny and alluring work on paranoia, surveillance, and performance.

Featuring an intriguingly eclectic cast (including the experimental theater performers Stephanie Hayes and Scott Shepherd, the musician Eleanor Friedberger, and Chloë Sevigny), Slow Machine follows an actress (Hayes) whose intimate relationship with a shadowy NYPD-affiliated operative ends abruptly and disastrously, leading her to hide out in a country house otherwise occupied by a band preparing their new record. But la vie bohemienne proves almost as anxious and tense as life in the city...

Deftly lensed in 16mm and unfurling as a digressive, tantalizingly off-kilter mystery, Slow Machine is a fascinating work pitched at the intersection of American independent cinema and the avant-garde theater of Richard Foreman and the Wooster Group.

DVD / 2020 / 72 minutes

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STATELESS

By Michele Stephenson

Through the grassroots campaign of attorney Rosa Iris, STATELESS reveals the depths of racial hatred and institutionalized oppression that divide Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

In 1937, tens of thousands of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent were exterminated by the Dominican army, based on anti-black hatred fomented by the Dominican government. Fast-forward to 2013, the Dominican Republic's Supreme Court stripped the citizenship of anyone with Haitian parents, retroactive to 1929. The ruling rendered more than 200,000 people stateless, without nationality, identity or a homeland. In this dangerous climate, a young attorney named Rosa Iris mounts a grassroots campaign, challenging electoral corruption and advocating for social justice. Director Michèle Stephenson's new documentary Stateless traces the complex tributaries of history and present-day politics, as state-sanctioned racism seeps into mundane offices, living room meetings, and street protests. At a time when extremist ideologies are gaining momentum in the U.S. and around the world, STATELESS is a warning of what can happen in a society when racism runs rampant in the government.

Filmed with a chiaroscuro effect and richly imbued with elements of magical realism, Stateless combines gritty hidden-camera footage with the legend of a young woman fleeing brutal violence to flip the narrative axis, revealing the depths of institutionalized oppression.

DVD (Spanish, Haitian Creole, Color, Closed Captioned) / 2020 / 96 minutes

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UNLEARNING SEX

By Zanah Thirus

Told through a deeply personal lens, this film explores sexual assault and trauma - and how these experiences intersect with race, class, and sexual orientation - with complexity and sensitivity.

Sexual assault and trauma -- and how these experiences intersect with race, class, and sexual orientation -- are rarely discussed in our society. Zanah Thirus's bold new film, UNLEARNING SEX, explores these topics with complexity and sensitivity, simultaneously raising awareness and opening the door for important conversations. Thirus bravely takes us on her six-month journey through sexual trauma therapy and the reclamation of her body in hopes of lending strength and inspiration to others. While told through a deeply personal lens, including intimate audio recordings of Thirus's therapy sessions, the film tells a story that is at once unique and universal. The addition of video interviews with a neuroscientist, sex educators, and therapists lend expert insight into sexual trauma, misconceptions surrounding sexual assault, consent, intersectionality, and sex education. This film will inspire people of all backgrounds, genders, sexual orientations, and races to speak candidly about this sensitive issues.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2020 / 81 minutes

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UPROOTING ADDICTION: HEALING FROM THE GROUND UP

Director: Tory Estern Jadow

An urgent look at the national drug addiction crisis that is ravaging local communities, 'Uprooting Addiction' is a mosaic-like portrait of a single community coming together to take on one of the most critical challenges of our times. The film follows six people from varying walks of life - each affected by childhood trauma - who candidly share their personal stories of addiction and recovery. These testimonies are interwoven with uplifting, up-to-the-minute accounts from an equally diverse group of activists, officials, and experts, working tirelessly on the front lines of this unrelenting public health crisis.

DVD / 2020 / 65 minutes

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BREACH OF TRUST

Directed by Mishal Mahmud

Told from the point of view of women advocating for accountability and change, this compelling documentary by USC Graduate Mishal Mahmud examines the sexual assault scandal at the University of Southern California, detailing crimes committed by former gynecologist Dr. George Tyndall and exposing the active cover-up on the part of the administration.

The high-profile sexual assault scandal at the University of Southern California involving Dr. George Tyndall, the only full-time gynecologist in the school's student health clinic from 1989 to 2016, first made headlines when journalists Harriet Ryan and Matt Hamilton exposed horrific abuses in a 2018 LA Times, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative report. USC recently announced it would pay $1.1 billion to patients, making it the largest sex abuse payout in higher education history. Told from the point of view of the women and sexual assault survivors advocating for change, BREACH OF TRUST offers an inside-look at the abuse, as well as the institution's complicity.

Despite hundreds of accusations and reports of misconduct, Tyndall continued his medical practice for decades, treating more than 17,000 women, without being held accountable. After USC supervising nurse Cindy Gilbert reported Tyndall to the campus rape crisis center in 2016, Tyndall was finally suspended and placed on paid leave. Anchored by stories of the survivors and Gilbert's whistleblower account, this film chronicles the timeline of Tyndall's crimes and his ultimate downfall. Director and USC graduate Mishal Mahmud compassionately brings the voices of hundreds of women to the forefront, allowing space for them to speak up and be heard.

BREACH OF TRUST offers important insight into an all-too-familiar story of male predators employed by high-profile universities (such as Larry Nassar at the University of Michigan and Jerry Sandusky at Penn State University) who used their positions of power to target students - and the administrations' ensuing complicity in allowing the abuse to go unaddressed and unpunished.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2019 / 24 minutes

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LOST COURSE

By Jill Li

Embedding herself in the village of Wukan, southern China for several years starting in 2011, first time documentarian Jill Li witnessed an unprecedented experiment in local democracy. Corrupt officials had illegally sold villagers' land, but the villagers decided to fight back.

The documentary is divided into two halves: the first, "Protests", depicts the grassroots activities of Wukan residents as they work to reverse the land sales and gain a substantial measure of control over their local territory. We see how the villagers themselves learn to organize elections, form alliances, and win support. Part two, "After Protests", confronts the collapse of idealism as the newly elected village government finds itself mired in the same kind of corrupt dealings they had originally condemned.

Li reveals the complexities of their triumphs and setbacks from the inside. Her astonishingly intimate, sympathetic and fair-minded access to the events' major players reveals Chinese local politics with three-dimensional passion and energy.

DVD (Mandarin, With English Subtitles, Color) / 2019 / 180 minutes

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NICE CHINESE GIRLS DON'T: KITTY TSUI

By Jennifer Abod

Nice Chinese Girls Don't is a portrait of Kitty Tsui -- an iconic Asian American lesbian, poet, artist, activist, writer, and bodybuilder who came of age in the early days of the Women's Liberation Movement in San Francisco.

In Nice Chinese Girls Don't, Kitty Tsui recounts her emergence as a poet, artist, activist, writer, and bodybuilder in the early days of the Women's Liberation Movement in San Francisco. She narrates her experience of arriving to the States as an immigrant from Hong Kong by way of her own original poetry and stories.

Tsui wrote the groundbreaking Words of a Woman Who Breathes Fire, the first book written by an Asian American lesbian. She is considered by many to be one of the foremothers of the API, Asian Pacific Islander, lesbian feminist movement.

In 2018, APIQWTC, Asian Pacific Islander Queer Women & Transgender Community honored her with the Phoenix Award for lifetime achievement. In 2019, her alma mater, San Francisco State University inducted Tsui into the Alumni Hall of Fame. Her forthcoming books include Nice Chinese Girls Don't, Battle Cry: Poems of Love & Resistance, and Fire Power: Poems of Love & Resilience. Tsui currently lives in Oakland, California, and is writing a screenplay, Unmasked.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2019 / 20 minutes

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PARIS CALLIGRAMMES

By Ulrike Ottinger

PARIS CALLIGRAMMES is German filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger's love letter to the city where she came of age, and her explorations of her own artistic growth, fueled by bookstores, jazz clubs, workshops and cafes.

"Calligramme" is the term coined by Guillaume Apollinaire for his poems featuring stunning visual typography. Like a series of calligrammes, this film is divided individual poetic segments, covering the period from Ottinger's arrival in Paris in 1962 to her return to Germany seven years later.

In the tradition of flanerie, Ottinger writes in her director's statement, she takes us through the city, turning her lens on decisive personal and political focal points. They include her time at a legendary bookstore, the studio where she learned the art of etching, her embrace of the French New Wave through the Cinematheque Francaise, and the cafes and streets where personal artistic ferment bled into political action against the war in Algeria-and, ultimately, to the protests of May 1968.

Ottinger begins with archival footage re-creating the night she arrived in Paris-picked up by five men who looked like they'd stepped out of a film noir. Although PARIS CALLIGRAMMES was filmed nearly 60 years after the events of that night, Ottinger captures the sense of wonder and belonging she found as a young artist in Paris. She revisits her influences and admits to her failings-like an inability to fully understand the role of colonialism.

Appearing herself only occasionally in archival photos, Ottinger creates a personal film that connects her own artistic awakening to the broader social issues of the day. Combining contemporary and archival footage, she evokes the past without succumbing to nostalgia.

DVD (German; English; French With English Subtitles, Color, Black and White, Closed Captioned) / 2019 / 131 minute

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PAULETTE

By Heather Rae

PAULETTE follows the historic campaign of Paulette Jordan, the first Native American candidate - as well as the first woman -- to win the Idaho Primary for Governor.

PAULETTE is an inspiring short film that follows the historic campaign of the first Native American candidate -- as well as the first woman -- to win the Idaho Primary for Governor.

Coeur d'Alene tribal member Paulette Jordan comes from a long line of ancestral leadership deeply connected to the land of Idaho. The single mother of two ran for Governor in 2018, winning the Democratic Primary by a landslide. A victory in November would have made her the first woman to serve as governor in the state -- and would have marked the first time in U.S. history that a Native American has held the governorship of any state.

Despite a hard-hitting loss in the general election to a conservative Republican male opponent, Jordan's groundbreaking bid for Governor represented a growing movement for Native people, people of color, and women fighting to have a voice and visibility in American politics. Forging ahead and staying true to her path as an Indigenous leader, Paulette Jordan is currently campaigning for a seat in the U.S. Senate and won Idaho's Democratic primary in June 2020.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2019 / 18 minutes

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WHAT IF BABEL WAS JUST A MYTH?

By Sandrine Loncke

Every two weeks, a human language disappears. Within a century, 50 to 90 percent of all languages will be gone.

Does it matter?

Linguist Florian Lionnet of Princeton University emphatically believes it does. For years, he's been documenting Laal, a language spoken by only 700 people living in two villages on the banks of the Moyen-Chari River, in Southern Chad. Language encodes culture and worldviews, and each time a language disappears, we lose an irreplaceable part of humanity.

WHAT IF BABEL WAS A MYTH follows Lionnet as he accompanies villagers during their daily activities-fishing, carving a dugout canoe, dancing, and telling stories. He listens in on conversations, asks questions about vocabulary and grammar, and diligently records everything.

Laal may be the villagers' mother tongue, but most-including children-are fluent in at least five languages. For Lionnet, their ease in language acquisition raises questions about the shortcomings of teaching languages in the West. And he argues that this kind of rich linguistic diversity was likely the norm for most of human history.

Lionnet and film director Sandrine Loncke work hard to be respectful of the community. They speak Laal and have forged genuine connections with the villagers over a period of years. Lionnet shares the results of his research with the language's native speakers, and we see them watching Loncke's footage and giving their approval.

Beautifully shot and enhanced with short animated segments, WHAT IF BABEL WAS A MYTH is a fascinating case study of one language and the challenges of preserving it-and a plea for the protection of linguistic diversity.

DVD (French; English With English Subtitles, Color, Closed Captioned) / 2019 / 56 minutes

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DIVIDED BRAIN, THE

Directed by Manfred Becker

Explores Iain McGilchrist's pioneering exploration of the differences between the brain's right and left hemispheres and their effects on society, history, and culture.

THE DIVIDED BRAIN is a mind-altering odyssey about one man's quest to prove a growing imbalance in our brains, and to help us understand how this makes us increasingly unable to grapple with critical economic, environmental and social issues; ones that shape our very future as a species.

THE DIVIDED BRAIN follows Dr. Iain McGilchrist on a journey of discovery as he travels to meet his champions and critics and defends his vision on the implications of his theory. Dr. McGilchrist is a prominent British psychiatrist and neuroscientist who may have uncovered an insidious problem with the way our brains function. He has been compared to Freud and Darwin. He believes that one half of our brain-the left hemisphere- is slowly taking power, and that we in the Western world are simultaneously feeding its ambitions. This half of the brain is very proficient at creating technologies, procedures and systems, but it cannot understand the implications of these on the people and the world around it.

McGilchrist knows that if he is right, we may be creating the technologies and the conditions that will spell our own downfall. With the clock ticking on critical issues, he must make his case and help us all to find ways to restore balance before it's too late.

DVD / 2018 / (Grades 8-12, College, Adults) / 78 minutes

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BAMAKO

By Abderrahmane Sissako
Starring Aissa Maiga, Tiecoura Traore and Danny Glover

An extraordinary trial is taking place in a residential courtyard in Bamako, the capital city of Mali. African citizens have taken proceedings against such international financial institutions as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), whom civil society blames for perpetuating Africa's debt crisis, at the heart of so many of the continent's woes. As numerous trial witnesses (schoolteachers, farmers, writers, etc.) air bracing indictments against the global economic machinery that haunts them, life in the courtyard presses forward. Mele, a lounge singer, and her unemployed husband Chaka are on the verge of breaking up; a security guard's gun goes missing; a young man lies ill; a wedding procession passes through; and women keep everything rolling - dyeing fabric, minding children, spinning cotton, and speaking their minds.

Written and directed by the celebrated filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako (Waiting for Happiness) and co-executive produced by Danny Glover (who also provides a cameo in the film), this critically acclaimed political drama - filled with a lush mix of warm colors and impassioned music - offers a unique opportunity for audiences to become familiar with contemporary Africa. Sissako, who grew up in the courtyard that the film is set in, hired professional lawyers and judges along with "witnesses" to express their true feelings. Bamako voices Africa's grievances in an original and profoundly moving way.

DVD (French, Bambara, Withh English Subtitles, Color) / 2006 / 117 minutes

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SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE, THE

Directed by Guy Debord

"The spectacle sings not of arms and the man but of commodities and their passions."

Six years after the publication of his Situationist classic The Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord released this semi-experimental, essay-film adaptation. Using the classic Situationist technique of "detournement" (think pre-digital remixing), Debord overlays a dizzying array of still and film images with text from the book. The result is a kind of organized chaos that nonetheless manages to provide a sharp commentary on a world dominated by image and power.

Debord casts a wide net, drawing in footage of topless women, manufacturing, fashion shoots, Hollywood movies, and scenes of wars, uprisings, and protests being crushed by police. He accompanies these images with his critique of life both mediated and sustained by the spectacular, as the central pillar of a capitalist alienation so all-encompassing, even revolution may seem futile.

In the nearly five decades since it was released, the issues raised in THE SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE have become more entrenched. Of course, a film itself is a spectacle, but Debord, with the manner of his delivery and irreverent pacing, seems determined to both undercut viewers' expectations while simultaneously drawing them in.

THE SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE can be viewed simply as an artifact of a particular moment in French and Western modern history in the aftermath of May 1968. But this would be a mistake. It remains a potent and at times exhilarating critique of contemporary society and of the power of the image untethered from its original context.

DVD (French, With English Subtitles, Black and White) / 1973 / 91 minutes

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SIX IN PARIS (PARIS VU PAR)

By Claude Chabrol, Jean Douchet, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Daniel Pollet, Eric Rohmer and Jean Rouch
By Barbet Schroeder

In 1965, young producer Barbet Schroeder supplied a 16mm camera, along with color film stock, to six friends, asking them to each make a short film about a Parisian neighborhood. The resulting films were shot quickly, with low budgets, improvised takes and live sound. Fresh and original, and featuring contributions by luminaries including Nestor Almendros, Albert Maysles and Jackie Reynal, these six vignettes offer captivating and varied glimpses of the City of Lights:

"Saint Germain des Pres" by Jean Douchet
"Gare du Nord" by Jean Rouch
"Rue Saint Denis" by Jean-Daniel Pollet
"Place de l'etoile" by Eric Rohmer
"Montparnasse et Levallois" by Jean-Luc Godard
"La Muette" by Claude Chabrol

DVD (French, With English Subtitles, Color) / 1965 / 96 minutes

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FOOL'S MATE: LE COUP DU BERGER

By Jacques Rivette

An early film from the six-decade career of hugely influential French director and critic Jacques Rivette.

Claire (Virginie Vitry) is given a gorgeous fur coat by her lover, Claude (Jean-Claude Brialy). To avoid raising her sleepy husband's suspicions (Etienne Loinod), she hatches a plan to "find" a baggage claim ticket on the floor of a cab. Claim the bag, see that it contains a fur coat - and voilà! - she can wear it without fear. "The perfect crime," as her lover says... But is it?

While long running times would become a Rivette trademark, FOOL'S MATE is a tautly paced short drama that unfolds like a chess match, with moves and counter-moves as each side tries to outwit the other. The digital restoration highlights the film's exquisite cinematography. Virginie Vitry is a sexy, pouty, luminous lead, and the film features cameos by Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, and Claude Chabrol.

DVD (French, With English Subtitles, Black and White) / 1957 / 27 minutes

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ALL THE WORLD'S MEMORY: TOUTE LA MEMOIRE DU MONDE

By Alain Resnais

This recently restored early short by French New Wave director Alain Resnais (perhaps best known for Hiroshima Mon Amour), pays homage to the National Library of France. For centuries, the library has served as a repository for all the country's publications, and more: Maps, prints, comic books, priceless manuscripts, gems, and medals all form part of the collection.

Much like Susan Orlean's The Library Book, ALL THE WORLD'S MEMORY takes us on an impressive and impressionistic tour, from the reading rooms, to the stunning architecture, to the stacks and the physical plant. We also accompany a new arrival to the library - a recently published book - on its journey from reception to cataloguing to the moment it takes its place on a shelf, joining millions of other items that have made their home here for centuries. At the intersection of artistic and informative, ALL THE WORLD'S MEMORY is a unique look at the effort to catalogue as much knowledge as possible in one of the world's great libraries.

DVD (French, With English Subtitles, Black and White) / 1956 / 21 minutes

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VAN GOGH

By Alain Resnais

Classic French New Wave director Alain Resnais' early film, VAN GOGH won an Oscar for best short documentary film. Recently restored, this 1948 boundary-pushing short brilliantly evokes the life of Vincent Van Gogh, using only his paintings as visuals. VAN GOGH traces the great painter's life and work, from his early days as a realist in the Netherlands, to his stay in Paris, the peak of his career in Provence, and then the dark days of madness that descended on him.

The black-and-white renderings of Van Gogh's paintings, coupled with a dramatic musical score, are surprisingly evocative.

DVD (French, With English Subtitles, Black and White) / 1948 / 18 minutes

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