New Releases

New Releases - March 2013

Paths of Hope color, 39 minutes
This latest installment from the Development Communications Workshop provides insights into the challenges and opportunities faced by families in three contrasting communities in Costa Rica. Developed for an innovative teaching collaboration between Southern New Hampshire University and EARTH University, the film looks at key community economic development issues as seen by the region’s residents, university students, and faculty. Read more

Posted on March 13th, 2013

New Releases – February 2013


The One and the Many color, 56 minutes
This anthropological documentary film offers an in-depth look at the Tantrik, Aghori, holy seekers of Northern India who are the disciples of the great Guru Gorakh Nath. Following his journey of discovery in The Lover and the Beloved, Rajive McMullen goes deeper into Tantra presenting his own guru’s story.
Read more


A Media Archaeology of Boston b&w and color, 120 minutes
Using the Boston region as a laboratory for exploring different modes of urban representation across both history and media, Media Archaeology exhibits a carefully-selected excavation of the city’s spaces through a montage of short films, photographs, postcards, and soundscapes of the larger metropolitan area.
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Posted on February 19th, 2013

New Releases - January 2013

Framing the Other color, 25 minutes
Framing the Other portrays the complex relationship between tourism and indigenous communities by revealing the intimate and intriguing thoughts of a Mursi woman from Southern Ethiopia and a Dutch tourist as they prepare to meet each other. Recently, the Mursi have undergone “touristification,” which has affected their authentic culture. While tourists treat the Mursi as curiosities to be photographed, the Mursi deal with the influx of the “other” in their own way. Read more

Mallamall color, 74 minutes
Globalization is causing India’s traditional marketplace culture to undergo rapid changes. The growing middle-class desires a western life style, in which mega malls take precedence over street vendors. But how will this affect the traditional economy so many people count on? Lalita Krishna’s Mallamall is a sensory portrayal of India’s burgeoning retail industry through stories of the people whose lives depend upon it. Read more

The Newcomers color, 30 minutes
Fresh as the day it was made in 1963, this George Stoney film explores the challenges faced by people migrating from the Appalachian region to the city. The necessity to move to find work is set against the backdrop of the challenges of urban living and the struggle to rebuild a sense of community. Read more

Posted on January 3rd, 2013

New Releases - December 2012

Standing on the Edge of a Thorn color, 33 minutes
An intimate portrait of a family in rural Indonesia. Shot over the course of 12 years, the film centers on Iman Rohani, a former civil servant struggling with a mental disorder, who takes in Tri, an unwed pregnant teenager 30 years his junior. The couple is scorned by the other villagers and eventually Tri is brought to a life a prostitution and violence. Narrated by their daughter, Lisa. the film documents her sense of self against the backdrop of an unstable family. Read more

Ngaben: Emotion and Restraint in a Balinese Heart color, 16 minutes
This film takes an impressionistic look at the ngaben from the perspective of a mourning son, Nyoman Asub, and reveals the intimacy, sadness, and tenderness at the core of this funerary ritual. Amidst cultural and interpretive understandings of the cremation ceremony, the film purposefully provides a personalistic, impressionistic, and poetic glimpse of the process and the complex emotions involved. Read more

El Field color, 84 minutes
In a time when immigration has taken the political center stage across the globe, El Field contributes to the discussion by providing a compelling portrait of the life, work and industry of a forgotten section of the largest, busiest land transit border in the world. El Field presents visual historic information that induces the audience to form their own impressions on migrant labor and the industry that employs them. Read more

Smokin’ Fish color, 80 minutes
Cory Mann, a quirky Tlingit businessman, gets hungry for smoked salmon, nostalgic for his childhood, and decides to spend a summer smoking salmon at his family’s traditional fish camp in Juneau, Alaska. By turns tragic, bizarre, or just plain ridiculous, Smokin’ Fish tells the story of one man’s attempts to navigate the messy collision between the modern world and an ancient culture. Read more

Funeral Season color, 87 & 60 minutes
Funeral Season takes the viewer through the red dust of Cameroon and into the heart of the Bamileke country, where one funeral flows into the next. Along the way, the director befriends his guides and becomes increasingly haunted by memories of his own ancestors. Like the dead and the living, they belong to two different worlds often mirroring each other. Read more

If It Doesn’t Rain & If It Doesn’t Rain: First Return color, 107 minutes
The latest installment in the Development Communications Workshop Collection, this 2-disk set takes a serious look at the issue of poverty in Southern Mexico. Great for classroom discussion and filled with in-depth extras, this set examines the strategies associated with development. In the second disk, the filmmakers return and provide an update on the role of government programs, migration and grass-roots organizing. Read more

Posted on December 3rd, 2012

New Releases - November 2012

Unity Through Culture color, 59 minutes
A struggle to define the past, present and future of Baluan culture erupts to the sound of thundering log drum rhythms. Soanin Kilangit organizes the largest cultural festival ever held on the island belonging to Papua New Guinea, but some traditional leaders argue that Baluan never had culture and that culture comes from the white man and is now destroying their old tradition. Others, however, take the festival as a welcome opportunity to revolt against 70 years of cultural oppression by Christianity. Read more

Maasai Migrants Series color, 111 minutes
This collection of 7 films have been produced through a continuing collaboration with Maasai-led and other NGOs and are being screened and discussed in Maasai regions throughout Tanzania, prompting conversations about poverty, migration, and sexual practices. The series also constitutes a self-critical history of a project in applied anthropology and gives an example for applied practitioners who may wish to use video in their work. Read more

Stori Tumbuna color, 89 minutes
In 2001 Paul Wolffram, a cultural researcher, spent over two years living and working among the Lak people in the rainforest of Papua New Guinea. As his relationships with the people grew he began to glimpse a hidden reality, a dark and menacing history that loomed over his host community. Over time the sense that something is amiss grows. As his curiosity deepens Paul brings to light dark secrets that set in motion a compelling and deadly set of events. Read more

Posted on November 10th, 2012

New Releases - October 2012

Bön: Mustang to Menri color, 60 minutes
Filmed in Mustang, Nepal and Menri Monastery, India, this film illuminates the interconnectedness of education, commitment to service and spiritual dedication. Decades after leaving his village, Asonam returns with the education, skill and will to meet an emerging need of the people of Mustang by establishing a cultural center that will support and encourage the sustainability of their ancient and traditional heritage and Tibet’s oldest spiritual tradition, Bön. Read more

Posted on October 22nd, 2012

New Releases - September 2012

Duduki of Tbilisi: Eldar Shoshitashvili and His Students color, 21 minutes
At a rehearsal for an upcoming concert, master musician Eldar Shoshitashvili and his students perform traditional repertoires as well as modern westernized songs, featuring the Georgian duduki, a double-reed wind instrument of the oboe family. Read more

I Dream of Mummers color, 27 minutes
I Dream of Mummers is a story about a custom, called kukeri, in which masked people dance at the end of Winter and the beginning of Spring. In the village of Sushitsa, Bulgaria the ritual has been almost authentically preserved and is shown as it was performed centuries ago. This is a film about a small village and its inhabitants, an ancient rite and a friendship as undying as the tradition itself. Read more

Posted on September 11th, 2012

New Releases - July 2012

A Country Auction color, 112 minutes
A Country Auction Film Project, consists of a trio of films covering a period of almost 30 years. A Country Auction and Can I Get A Quarter? show ethnographic research conducted on estate sales held in a rural Central Pennsylvania community. Thirty years later, the production of Reflexive Musings provides a critical discussion by the producers of the original films. Read more

A Swiss Yodelling Series color, 126 minutes
Filmed in the alpine pastures of Switzerland, these four films explore both musical structure and performance in the “rough” traditional yodel style of villagers of a small mountain valley, in contrast to the polished singing of official yodel choirs, who are subject to the uniformed esthetic of the Swiss Yodelling Association. A 2–DVD set. Read more

Fantome Island color, 82 minutes
Drawing on an evocative archive, Fantome Island exposes how an ideology of racism and eugenics worked to justify the horrific treatment of Australia’s Indigenous communities. While uncovering the shameful history of the isolation of those suffering from leprosy, it is a testimony of strength and endurance, demonstrating one man’s incredible capacity for forgiveness and love. Read more

Posted on July 2nd, 2012

New Releases - June 2012

The Lover and the Beloved color, 70 minutes
A film about one man’s journey across northern India and his search for enlightenment. Rajive McMullen, a history teacher suffering from a debilitating illness, makes the painful journey into the heart of Tantra. This film offers dramatic insight into Tantric ideas about the life cycle, particularly death, and contributes much to our understanding of how we seek knowledge and how we die. Read more

There’s No Hole in My Head color, 14 minutes
In 2007, aged 54, Abby Hale was diagnosed with early onset of Alzheimer’s. As a mom and medical practitioner Abby eloquently shares with grace and insight what she has both gained and lost as a result of this harsh and cruel disease. This film allows us a rare glimpse into a world that is becoming increasingly common in our society, but is rarely discussed in such an honest and open way. Read more

Posted on June 20th, 2012

New Releases - May 2012

Summer Pasture color, 86 minutes
Filmed in the high grasslands of eastern Tibet, Summer Pasture offers an intimate glimpse into the life of a young nomad couple and their infant daughter. In the face of mounting challenges, Locho and Yama ultimately reveal the personal sacrifice they will make to ensure their daughter’s future. Read more

Young Bird Season color, 19 minutes
As the pigeons of Young Bird Season race hundreds of miles night and day, the men of the Braintree Racing Pigeon Club pass the time with chitchat, obsessive stat-keeping, and affable trash-talk adorned with a Boston brogue, revealing the sport’s camaraderie and competitiveness. Read more

Malawi’s Green Revolution color, 140 minutes
Malawi’s Green Revolution brings to life some central dilemmas of development policy as supporters and opponents of Starter Pack express their views and donors press to reshape the program from a focused instrument of technological change into an element of a social safety net. Read more

Posted on May 10th, 2012

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