Titles Available as of July 2022
This is a selective list of streaming video holdings in the American University Library. Streaming guides are created by doing multiple keyword searches in the library catalog to capture as many titles on a topic as possible. For complete up-to-date streaming holdings, please refer to our streaming catalog.
FEATURE FILMS
Luis is 27, and lives in the remote peasant village of Sierra de Oaxaca, in southern Mexico. Here, families are numerous and the land is scarce and arid. Like most of the local people, Luis' parents are Mixtecos Indians who survive by growing corn and selling jelly at the weekly local market. But Luis has a dream of how he will escape the surrounding poverty and be able to look after his parents in their old age. Inspired by classic movies of Mexican boxing heroes, he's training to become a famous boxing champion in the United States. This film follows him as he travels north to the U.S. border, joining other migrants determined to outwit the US frontier guards and scale the wall to the New World to realize their dreams.
A tough young man, who helps to kick poor people out of their houses, falls in love with a girl. She lives with her father in the building about to be demolished.
The career of Shakespeare's Sir John Falstaff as roistering companion to young Prince Hal, circa 1400-1413.
The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz
While recovering from a nervous breakdown after the death of his wife, Archibaldo de la Cruz (Ernesto Alonso) tells a nun that as a spoiled child, he believed he was responsible for the death of his governess after she was shot while he wished to his magical music box that she would die. He then pulls out a razor blade and starts towards the nun, but she runs away and falls down an elevator shaft. He tells the police that he killed ... The delirious journey of a mental disordered man, who is obsessed in making the perfect crime.
Susana is a powerful melodrama in which a beautiful, sultry delinquent girl (Rosita Quintana) escapes from a reform school and finds solace in the home of a well to do family. She uses her feminine wiles to tempt the men around her and turns the orderly lives of the locals into a frenzied chaos. The film uses the power of eroticism to reveal the hypocrisies of modern society.
Diarios de Motocicleta (Motorcycle Diaries)
An inspirational adventure, based on the true story of Ernesto Guevara and Alberto Granado, whose thrilling and dangerous road trip across Latin America becomes a life-changing journey of self-discovery.
In this story, a descendant of famous ancestors dreams of more heroic times...until a serious accident takes him to the doors of death, where the past and the present mingle-and where he meets his final destiny.
Luis, young and curious, is determined to find out where Europeans come from. His early investigations lead him to meet Eudald Carbonell, co-director of excavations at Atapuerca, and he invites him on a journey in search of the traces of Europe's ancestors. The extraordinary journeys take the viewer through Africa and Asia to reach Europe where Luis finds that the origin of what are now called Europeans is not in the old continent.
The Exterminating Angel (El Ángel Exterminador)
As the opera opens, a group of elegant socialites gather for a lavish dinner party, but when it is time to leave for the night, no one is able to escape. Soon, their behavior becomes increasingly erratic and savage.
After the mysterious disappearance of an oil well owner, one of his workers, Gerardo (Jorge Negrete) assumes the business management. Soon, the owner's sister (Libertad Lamarque) arrives from Argentina, and, believing that Gerardo killed her brother to keep the wells for himself, she starts working as a singer under a false name in the same casino her brother disappeared, in order to find out what exactly happened. Featuring Libertad Lamarque, Jorge Negrete, Mercedes Barba.
A family's attempts to change the patriarch's somewhat indulgent and hedonistic ways by fooling him into thinking his large fortune is gone. They assume a life of poverty in Mexico in an attempt to teach him a lesson. However, he discovers it's a ruse, but continues to perpetuate the facade of ignorance while sneaking off during the day to conduct his thriving business. Why? To teach his family a lesson - they are all lazy, worthless leeches! Featuring Fernando Soler, Rosario Granados, Andres Soler.
Four vignettes in Batista's Cuba dramatize the need for revolution; long mobile shots tell almost wordless stories.
A Filipino woman and her family leave their fishing village after an oil spill and move to the ghettos outside Manila. There the woman struggles to keep her family together amidst terrorism, crime and corruption, and attempts to prevent her children from falling prey to the dangerous allures of the city's night life.
An unemployed father seeking a gift for his dying daughter, a disturbed woman with a dark past, and a math teacher turned criminal find their fates bound together in this bracing thriller from Spanish director, Carlos Vermut. When his young daughter is diagnosed with terminal leukemia, Luis becomes obsessed with fulfilling her dying wish—to own an exorbitantly expensive dress inspired by her favorite anime character, "Magical Girl Yukiko." After an encounter with the beautiful, rich, and mentally unstable Barbara, Luis decides to extort her for the money he needs. Barbara agrees to meet Luis' demands, but events soon take a shocking turn.
Maria is a spirited 17-year-old Colombian with bold dreams, but little hopes of finding them in a country wracked by poverty and few opportunities. In search of adventure and a chance for better life, Maria is willing to take a risk more dangerous than any she's ever imagined. But how far will she go ... before she's gone too far?
Simon of the Desert (Simón Del Desierto)
In order to prove he is devoted to God, a 4th century saint stays on the top of a pillar for over six years while he is tempted by the devil in the form of a beautiful woman.
Francisco is rich, rather strict on principles, and still a bachelor. After meeting Gloria by accident, he is suddenly intent on her becoming his wife and courts her until she agrees to marry him. Francisco is a dedicated husband, but little by little his passion starts to exhibit disturbing traits. Nevertheless, Gloria meets with skepticism as she expresses her worries to their acquaintances.
Jorge has only a few weeks before his five-year-old son Natan leaves to live with his mother in Rome. Intent on teaching Natan about their Mayan heritage, Jorge takes him to the pristine Chinchorro reef, and eases him into the rhythms of a fisherman's life. As the bond between father and son grows stronger, Natan learns to live in harmony with life above and below the surface of the sea.
After the death of her mother, young Tristana goes to live with her guardian, Don Lope, an older man who eventually breaks through his facade of respectability and seduces her. She repays him a hundred fold, preying on his jealousy and taunting him with perverse whimsies.
Viridiana, a young nun about to take her final vows, pays a visit to her widowed uncle at the request of her Mother Superior.
After indulging in an affair with a man (a friend of the family) she truly loves, a woman returns to her young son and husband for good, and loses contact with the man. Her husband is unaware of the affair. Twenty years later, there is news that the friend has died and left all of his money to the younger son in the family, which leads us to question this younger son's biological origin.
Gone several years, the brooding Alejandro returns to the hacienda of his foster sister, Catalina, whom he loves, to find her married to the wealthy and effete Eduardo. Alejandro hates Eduardo and Catalina's brother Ricardo; he's rich now and has a lien on the drunken Ricardo's ranch. He also wants Catalina to run away with him. She loves him as if he was her soul, but she also loves Eduardo and is pregnant, so she won't leave. She wants Alejandro to stay nearby, a soul mate, but he, ruled by instinct and passion, stays only to hurt her. He woos Isabel, Eduardo's impressionable young sister. The passions of impossible love and corrosive hate play out against Mexico's barren high chaparral.
DOCUMENTARIES
This film follows Dominga, Fabiola and Maryuri, three young women struggling to survive in the Chureca, Central America's largest dump located in Nicaragua. Dominga has terminal Aids and tries to reestablish a relationship with her son that was taken from her at birth. Eleven year-old Fabiola is caught in a struggle between loyalty to her mother, and a group of evangelical Christians fighting for her to join a youth center far from the dump. At nineteen, Maryuri has ongoing health problems and is at risk of losing the second child she is expecting in the Chureca. In their quest for a better life, the three women will have to figure out whether their mothers are their best allies or unexpected foes.
Can a cook change his country through his food? This film follows acclaimed chef Gaston Acurio, largely credited with creating and popularizing Peruvian cuisine, to find out the stories, the inspirations and the dreams behind man who has taken his cuisine outside the kitchen on a mission to change his country with his food. Join the culinary journey into the world of Peruvian cuisine to discover the power of food in Peru--and around the world.
A carefully observed and intimate documentary that follows a family in the village of Quetzalan during the crucial year following the death of Chayo and Jorge's father, Antonio.
In 2003, nine young chefs joined their forces and their knowledge to transform the cuisine of their land: in Galicia, Grupo Nove was born. Along with a new generation of producers and farmers, the Grupo Nove developed an idea of gastronomy grounded in traditions, attached to the land and the product, though using radically new cooking techniques. Grupo Nove is now composed of twenty chefs and in a short period of time, Galicia multiplied its international recognition.
Paraguayan director Renate Costa Perdomo investigates a gay man's persecution and murder.
For the first time, the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres opens its doors for an all-access tour with the master himself. The museum is a place that he poured his entire universe into, that synthesizes his life's dedication to art. Dalí's voice guides us through his unfinished last creation, bringing his work, thoughts and personality to life. Co-produced by the Dalí foundation, Dalí's Last Masterpiece makes us a privileged audience to the magic of art.
On the surface The Tiniest Place is the story of Cinquera, a village literally wiped off the official map during El Salvador's 12-year civil war. But on a deeper level it is a story about the ability to rise, to rebuild and reinvent oneself after a tragedy. Holding the past and present in focus together, the film takes us to the tiny village nestled in the mountains amidst the humid Salvadoran jungle, while villagers, survivors of the war's massacres, recount their journey home at war's end. When they first returned their village no longer existed.
Documentary that looks at the lives of several economically disadvantaged people in Lima, Peru.
The home of acclaimed Chilean filmmaker Ignacio Agüero is often interrupted by an unending stream of people knocking at his door: poor people asking for food, friends, neighbors, etc. Agüero turns the tables on his uninvited guests, and asks them if he may knock on their doors too. His spontaneous excursions into their neighborhoods and homes broaden the film's scope, bringing different aspects of contemporary Chilean society into the picture.
Tells the story of renowned Mexican poet Javier Sicilia, who ignited mass protests and an ongoing movement for peace after the brutal murder of his 24-year-old son Juan Francisco, collateral damage in a drug war that has left 60,000+ dead since 2006--the majority civilians.
The story of a hitman for the drug cartels, in Ciudad Juárez Mexico. Based on the article "The Sicario" written by Charles Bowden and published in Harper's Magazine.
Night after night, Martin watches over the extravagant mausoleums of Mexico's most notorious drug lords like a guardian angel. Set in a massive, labyrinthine cemetery in the hours between dusk and dawn, Natalia Almada's haunting documentary reminds us that even today, during the turmoil of Mexico's bloodiest conflict since the revolution, ordinary life persists. El Velador is a film about violence without violence.
In this exposé, an intrepid group of Florida farmworkers battles to defeat the $4 trillion global supermarket industry through their Fair Food program, which partners with growers and retailers to improve working conditions for farm laborers in the United States. A powerful true story of one small group of workers overcoming corporate greed to end slavery and abuse in America's fields.
Mexico City was built not near water but in the middle of a lake. To supply it with fresh water is such a task that it makes it compulsory to bring it from other states. In addition once sewage water leaves the city it ends up in agriculture. This film is an environmental case study of the Valley of Mexico as it struggles to save itself while its population grows. Can a mega-city mobilize its 22 million citizens to become water sustainable?
Karla's arrival follows 19-year old Sujeylin Aguilar and her baby Karla, who live as part of a group of kids in a small park in Managua, Nicaragua, as they struggle through the first year of the child's life. Months before the birth, Sujeylin is still a glue addict who lives off the generosity of her drug-dealing boyfriend and the NGOs peppering the city. She doesn't expect the arrival of her baby to change her own life considerably. She simply plans to raise her in the park where she has been living with the group of colorful characters she considers her only family. She never imagined the scope of the challenges and dangers she and her young daughter would face.
Patricio Guzmán left Chile more than 40 years ago when the military dictatorship took over the democratically-elected government, but he never stopped thinking about a country, a culture, and a place on the map that he never forgot. After covering the North in Nostalgia for the Light and the South in The Pearl Button, his shots get up-close with what he calls "the vast revealing backbone of Chile's past and recent history.
The film follows three people as they deal with the legacy and personal damage of the civil war that ravaged Peru for 20 years. In 1980, the Shining Path movement launched an armed struggle aimed at overthrowing the Peruvian government and instituting a Communist regime. By the time the civil war ended, in 2000, nearly 70,000 Peruvians had been killed. Government and guerrilla forces were both guilty of horrendous human rights abuses. The belongings of victims killed in a 1984 massacre are laid out on tables. The bodies have been carefully exhumed and their bones collected. Now, all that remains is to identify them, so they can be returned to their families and properly buried.
Every day dozens of decommissioned school buses leave the United States on a southward migration that carries them to Guatemala, where they are repaired, repainted, and resurrected as the brightly-colored camionetas that bring the vast majority of Guatemalans to work each day. Since 2006, nearly 1,000 camioneta drivers and fare-collectors have been murdered for either refusing or being unable to pay the extortion money demanded by local Guatemalan gangs. La Camioneta follows one such bus on its transformative journey: a journey between North and South, between life and death, and through an unfolding collection of moments, people, and places that serve to quietly remind us of the interconnected worlds in which we live.
Meet the children of the Montaña de Luz (Mountain of Light) orphanage who are HIV positive and a living testament to the beauty and innocence of childhood in the face of adversity beyond their years. This documentary paints a stirring portrait of a loving community where nothing is truly certain but home, and where each birthday is a celebration of dreams fulfilled and dreams to come.
Nostalgia for the Light (Nostalgia de la Luz)
Director Patricio Guzman travels to the driest place on earth, Chile's Atacama Desert, where astronomers examine distant galaxies, archaeologists uncover traces of ancient civilizations, and women dig for the remains of disappeared relatives.
In December 2005 Toño Zuniga was picked up off the street in Mexico City, Mexico, and sentenced to 20 years for a murder he knew nothing about. A friend of Toño's contacted two young lawyers, Roberto Hernández and Layda Negrete, who gained prominence in Mexico when they helped bring about the release of another innocent man from prison. Looking into Toño's case, Roberto and Layda managed to get a retrial--on camera--and enlisted the help of filmmaker Geoffrey Smith (THE ENGLISH SURGEON) to chronicle the saga. Shot over three years with unprecedented access to the Mexican courts and prisons, this dramatic story is a searing indictment of a justice system that presumes guilt.
An in-depth portrait of a Cuban agricultural collective that has drawn international acclaim for its sustainable practices.
A feature documentary that follows unaccompanied child migrants on their journey through Mexico as they try to reach the United States. We follow children like Olga and Freddy, 9-year old Hondurans, who are trying to reach their parents in the US. Children like Jose, a 10-year old El Salvadoran, who has been abandoned by smugglers and ends up alone in a Mexican detention center, and Kevin, a streetwise 14-year-old Honduran, whose mother hopes that he will reach the US. As the United States continues to build a wall between itself and Mexico, this documentary shows the personal side of immigration through the eyes of children who face harrowing dangers with enormous courage and resourcefulness as they endeavor to make it to the United States.